Chapter XXXIX: Mere Malheur edit
La Corriveau, eager to commence her work of wickedness, took up her abode at the house of her ancient friend, Mere Malheur, whither she went on the night of her first interview with Angelique.
It was a small house, built of uncut stones, with rough stone steps and lintels, a peaked roof, and low overhanging eaves, hiding itself under the shadow of the cliff, so closely that it seemed to form a part of the rock itself.
Its sole inmate, an old crone who had reached the last degree of woman's ugliness and woman's heartlessness,--Mere Malheur--sold fair winds to superstitious sailors and good luck to hunters and voyageurs. She was not a little suspected of dabbling in other forbidden things. Half believing in her own impostures, she regarded La Corriveau with a feeling akin to worship, who in return for this devotion imparted to her a few secrets of minor importance in her diabolic arts.
La Corriveau was ever a welcome guest at the house of Mere Malheur, who feasted her lavishly, and served her obsequiously, but did not press with undue curiosity to learn her business in the city. The two women understood one another well enough not to pry too closely into each other's secrets.
On this occasion La Corriveau was more than usually reserved, and while Mere Malheur eagerly detailed to her all the doings and undoings that had happened in her circle of acquaintance, she got little information in return. She shrewdly concluded that La Corriveau had business on hand which would not bear to be spoken of.
"When you need my help, ask for it without scruple, Dame Dodier," said the old crone. "I see you have something on hand that may need my aid. I would go into the fire to serve you, although I would not burn my finger for any other woman in the world, and you know it."
"Yes, I know it, Mere Malheur," La Corriveau spoke with an air of superiority, "and you say rightly: I have something on hand which I cannot accomplish alone, and I need your help, although I cannot tell you yet how or against whom."
"Is it a woman or a man? I will only ask that question, Dame Dodier," said the crone, turning upon her a pair of green, inquisitive eyes.
"It is a woman, and so of course you will help me. Our sex for the bottom of all mischief, Mere Malheur! I do not know what women are made for except to plague one another for the sake of worthless men!"
The old crone laughed a hideous laugh, and playfully pushed her long fingers into the ribs of La Corriveau. "Made for! quotha! men's temptation, to be sure, and the beginning of all mischief!"
"Pretty temptations you and I are, Mere Malheur!" replied La Corriveau, with a scornful laugh.
"Well, we were pretty temptations once! I will never give up that! You must own, Dame Dodier, we were both pretty temptations once!"
"Pshaw! I wish I had been a man, for my part," replied La Corriveau, impetuously. "It was a spiteful cross of fate to make me a woman!"
"But, Dame Dodier, I like to be a woman, I do. A man cannot be half as wicked as a woman, especially if she be young and pretty," said the old woman, laughing till the tears ran out of her bleared eyes.
"Nay, that is true, Mere Malheur; the fairest women in the world are ever the worst! fair and false! fair and false! they are always so. Not one better than another. Satan's mark is upon all of us!" La Corriveau looked an incarnation of Hecate as she uttered this calumny upon her sex.
"Ay, I have his mark on my knee, Dame Dodier," replied the crone. "See here! It was pricked once in the high court of Arras, but the fool judge decided that it was a mole, and not a witch-mark! I escaped a red gown that time, however. I laughed at his stupidity, and bewitched him for it in earnest. I was young and pretty then! He died in a year, and Satan sat on his grave in the shape of a black cat until his friends set a cross over it. I like to be a woman, I do, it is so easy to be wicked, and so nice! I always tell the girls that, and they give me twice as much as if I had told them to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw! Nice! If only men knew us as we really are!"
"Well, I do not like women, Mere Malheur," replied La Corriveau; "they sneer at you and me and call us witch and sorceress, and they will lie, steal, kill, and do worse themselves for the sake of one man to-day, and cast him off for sake of another to-morrow! Wise Solomon found only one good woman in a thousand; the wisest man now finds not one in a worldful! It were better all of us were dead, Mere Malheur; but pour me out a glass of wine, for I am tired of tramping in the dark to the house of that gay lady I told you of."
Mere Malheur poured out a glass of choice Beaume from a dame-jeanne which she had received from a roguish sailor, who had stolen it from his ship.
"But you have not told me who she is, Dame Dodier," replied Mere Malheur, refilling the glass of La Corriveau.
"Nor will I yet. She is fit to be your mistress and mine, whoever she is; but I shall not go again to see her."
And La Corriveau did not again visit the house of Angelique. She had received from her precise information respecting the movements of the Intendant. He had gone to the Trois Rivieres on urgent affairs, and might be absent for a week.
Angelique had received from Varin, in reply to her eager question for news, a short, falsified account of the proceedings in the Council relative to Caroline and of Bigot's indignant denial of all knowledge of her.
Varin, as a member of the Council, dared not reveal the truth, but would give his familiars half-hints, or tell to others elaborate lies, when pressed for information. He did not, in this case, even hint at the fact that a search was to be made for Caroline. Had he done so, Angelique would herself have given secret information to the Governor to order the search of Beaumanoir, and thus got her rival out of the way without trouble, risk, or crime.
But it was not to be. The little word that would have set her active spirit on fire to aid in the search for Caroline was not spoken, and her thoughts remained immovably fixed upon her death.
But if Angelique had been misled by Varin as to what had passed at the Council, Mere Malheur, through her intercourse with a servant of Varin, had learned the truth. An eavesdropping groom had overheard his master and the Intendant conversing on the letters of the Baron and La Pompadour. The man told his sweetheart, who, coming with some stolen sweetmeats to Mere Malheur, told her, who in turn was not long in imparting what she had heard to La Corriveau.
La Corriveau did not fail to see that, should Angelique discover that her rival was to be searched for, and taken to France if found, she would at once change her mind, and Caroline would be got rid of without need of her interference. But La Corriveau had got her hand in the dish. She was not one to lose her promised reward or miss the chance of so cursed a deed by any untimely avowal of what she knew.
So Angelique was doomed to remain in ignorance until too late. She became the dupe of her own passions and the dupe of La Corriveau, who carefully concealed from her a secret so important.
Bigot's denial in the Council weighed nothing with her. She felt certain that the lady was no other than Caroline de St. Castin. Angelique was acute enough to perceive that Bigot's bold assertion that he knew nothing of her bound him in a chain of obligation never to confess afterwards aught to the contrary. She eagerly persuaded herself that he would not regret to hear that Caroline had died by some sudden and, to appearance, natural death, and thus relieved him of a danger, and her of an obstacle to her marriage.
Without making a full confidant of Mere Malheur, La Corriveau resolved to make use of her in carrying out her diabolical scheme. Mere Malheur had once been a servant at Beaumanoir. She knew the house, and in her heyday of youth and levity had often smuggled herself in and out by the subterranean passage which connected the solitary watchtower with the vaults of the Chateau. Mere Malheur knew Dame Tremblay, who, as the Charming Josephine, had often consulted her upon the perplexities of a heart divided among too many lovers.
The memory of that fragrant period of her life was the freshest and pleasantest of all Dame Tremblay's experience. It was like the odor of new-mown hay, telling of early summer and frolics in the green fields. She liked nothing better than to talk it all over in her snug room with Mere Malheur, as they sat opposite one another at her little table, each with a cup of tea in her hand, well laced with brandy, which was a favorite weakness of them both.
Dame Tremblay was, in private, neither nice nor squeamish as to the nature of her gossip. She and the old fortune-teller, when out of sight of the rest of the servants, had always a dish of the choicest scandal fresh from the city.
La Corriveau resolved to send Mere Malheur to Beaumanoir, under the pretence of paying a visit to Dame Tremblay, in order to open a way of communication between herself and Caroline. She had learned enough during her brief interview with Caroline in the forest of St. Valier, and from what she now heard respecting the Baron de St. Castin, to convince her that this was no other than his missing daughter.
"If Caroline could only be induced to admit La Corriveau into her secret chamber and take her into her confidence, the rest--all the rest," muttered the hag to herself, with terrible emphasis, "would be easy, and my reward sure. But that reward shall be measured in my own bushel, not in yours, Mademoiselle des Meloises, when the deed is done!"
La Corriveau knew the power such a secret would enable her to exercise over Angelique. She already regarded the half of her reputed riches as her own. "Neither she nor the Intendant will ever dare neglect me after that!" said she. "When once Angelique shall be linked in with me by a secret compact of blood, the fortune of La Corriveau is made. If the death of this girl be the elixir of life to you, it shall be the touchstone of fortune forever to La Corriveau!"
Mere Malheur was next day despatched on a visit to her old gossip, Dame Tremblay. She had been well tutored on every point, what to say and how to demean herself. She bore a letter to Caroline, written in the Italian hand of La Corriveau, who had learned to write well from her mother, Marie Exili.
The mere possession of the art of writing was a rarity in those days in the class among whom she lived. La Corriveau's ability to write at all was a circumstance as remarkable to her illiterate neighbors as the possession of the black art which they ascribed to her, and not without a strong suspicion that it had the same origin.
Mere Malheur, in anticipation of a cup of tea and brandy with Dame Tremblay, had dressed herself with some appearance of smartness in a clean striped gown of linsey. A peaked Artois hat surmounted a broad-frilled cap, which left visible some tresses of coarse gray hair and a pair of silver ear-rings, which dangled with every motion of her head. Her shoes displayed broad buckles of brass, and her short petticoat showed a pair of stout ankles enclosed in red clocked stockings. She carried a crutched stick in her hand, by help of which she proceeded vigorously on her journey.
Starting in the morning, she trudged out of the city towards the ferry of Jean Le Nocher, who carefully crossed himself and his boat too as he took Mere Malheur on board. He wafted her over in a hurry, as something to be got rid of as quickly as possible.
Mere Malheur tramped on, like a heavy gnome, through the fallen and flying leaves of the woods of Beaumanoir, caring nothing for the golden, hazy sky, the soft, balmy air, or the varicolored leaves-- scarlet, yellow, and brown, of every shade and tinge--that hung upon the autumnal trees.
A frosty night or two had ushered in the summer of St. Martin, as it was called by the habitans,--the Indian summer,--that brief time of glory and enchantment which visits us like a gaudy herald to announce the approach of the Winter King. It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks is allowed to flutter like a bird of paradise amid the pleasures and gaieties of the world, and then comes the end. Her locks of pride are shorn off; she veils her beauty, and kneels a nun on the cold stones of her passionless cell, out of which, even with repentance, there comes no deliverance.
Mere Malheur's arrival at Beaumanoir was speedily known to all the servants of the Chateau. She did not often visit them, but when she did there was a hurried recital of an Ave or two to avert any harm, followed by a patronizing welcome and a rummage for small coins to cross her hand withal in return for her solutions of the grave questions of love, jealousy, money, and marriage, which fermented secretly or openly in the bosoms of all of them. They were but human beings, food for imposture, and preyed on by deceivers. The visit of Mere Malheur was an event of interest in both kitchen and laundry of the Chateau.
Dame Tremblay had the first claim, however, upon this singular visitor. She met her at the back door of the Chateau, and with a face beaming with smiles, and dropping all dignity, exclaimed,--
"Mere Malheur, upon my life! Welcome, you wicked old soul! you surely knew I wanted to see you! come in and rest! you must be tired, unless you came on a broom! ha! ha! come to my room and never mind anybody!"
This last remark was made for the benefit of the servants who stood peeping at every door and corner, not daring to speak to the old woman in the presence of the housekeeper, but knowing that their time would come, they had patience.
The housekeeper, giving them a severe look, proceeded to her own snug apartment, followed by the crone, whom she seated in her easiest chair and proceeded to refresh with a glass of cognac, which was swallowed with much relish and wiping of lips, accompanied by a little artificial cough. Dame Tremblay kept a carafe of it in her room to raise the temperature of her low spirits and vapors to summer heat, not that she drank, far from it, but she liked to sip a little for her stomach's sake.
"It is only a thimbleful I take now and then," she said. "When I was the Charming Josephine I used to kiss the cups I presented to the young gallants, and I took no more than a fly! but they always drank bumpers from the cup I kissed!" The old dame looked grave as she shook her head and remarked, "But we cannot be always young and handsome, can we, Mere Malheur?"
"No, dame, but we can be jolly and fat, and that is what we are! You don't quaff life by thimblefuls, and you only want a stout offer to show the world that you can trip as briskly to church yet as any girl in New France!"
The humor of the old crone convulsed Dame Tremblay with laughter, as if some invisible fingers were tickling her wildly under the armpits.
She composed herself at last, and drawing her chair close to that of Mere Malheur, looked her inquiringly in the face and asked, "What is the news?"
Dame Tremblay was endowed with more than the ordinary curiosity of her sex. She knew more news of city and country than any one else, and she dispensed it as freely as she gathered. She never let her stock of gossip run low, and never allowed man or woman to come to speak with her without pumping them dry of all they knew. A secret in anybody's possession set her wild to possess it, and she gave no rest to her inordinate curiosity until she had fished it out of even the muddiest waters.
The mystery that hung around Caroline was a source of perpetual irritation to the nerves of Dame Tremblay. She had tried as far as she dared by hint and suggestion to draw from the lady some reference to her name and family, but in vain. Caroline would avow nothing, and Dame Tremblay, completely baffled by a failure of ordinary means to find out the secret, bethought herself of her old resource in case of perplexity, Mere Malheur.
For several days she had been brooding over this mode of satisfying her curiosity, when the unexpected visit of Mere Malheur set aside all further hesitation about disobeying the Intendant's orders not to inquire or allow any other person to make inquisition respecting Caroline.
"Mere Malheur, you feel comfortable now!" said she. "That glass of cognac has given you a color like a peony!"
"Yes, I am very comfortable now, dame! your cognac is heavenly: it warms without burning. That glass is the best news I have to tell of to-day!"
"Nay, but there is always something stirring in the city; somebody born, married, or dead; somebody courted, won, lost, or undone; somebody's name up, somebody's reputation down! Tell me all you know, Mere Malheur! and then I will tell you something that will make you glad you came to Beaumanoir to-day. Take another sip of cognac and begin!"
"Ay, dame, that is indeed a temptation!" She took two deep sips, and holding her glass in her hand, began with loose tongue to relate the current gossip of the city, which was already known to Dame Tremblay; but an ill-natured version of it from the lips of her visitor seemed to give it a fresh seasoning and a relish which it had not previously possessed.
"Now, Mere Malheur! I have a secret to tell you," said Dame Tremblay, in a low, confidential tone, "a dead secret, mind you, which you had better be burnt than reveal. There is a lady, a real lady if I ever saw one, living in the Chateau here in the greatest privacy. I and the Intendant only see her. She is beautiful and full of sorrow as the picture of the blessed Madonna. What she is, I may guess; but who she is, I cannot conjecture, and would give my little finger to know!"
"Tut, dame!" replied Mere Malheur, with a touch of confidence, "I will not believe any woman could keep a secret from you! But this is news, indeed, you tell me! A lady in concealment here, and you say you cannot find her out, Dame Tremblay!"
"In truth, I cannot; I have tried every artifice, but she passes all my wit and skill. If she were a man, I would have drawn her very teeth out with less difficulty than I have tried to extract the name of this lady. When I was the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport, I could wind men like a thread around which finger I liked; but this is a tangled knot which drives me to despair to unravel it."
"What do you know about her, dame? Tell me all you suspect!" said Mere Malheur.
"Truly," replied the dame, without the least asperity, "I suspect the poor thing, like the rest of us, is no better than she should be; and the Intendant knows it, and Mademoiselle des Meloises knows it too; and, to judge by her constant prayers and penitence, she knows it herself but too well, and will not say it to me!"
"Ay, dame! but this is great news you tell me!" replied Mere Malheur, eagerly clutching at the opportunity thus offered for the desired interview. "But what help do you expect from me in the matter?"
Mere Malheur looked very expectant at her friend, who continued, "I want you to see that lady under promise of secrecy, mark you!--and look at her hands, and tell me who and what she is."
Dame Tremblay had an unlimited faith in the superstitions of her age.
"I will do all you wish, dame, but you must allow me to see her alone," replied the crone, who felt she was thus opening the door to La Corriveau.
"To be sure I will,--that is, if she will consent to be seen, for she has in some things a spirit of her own! I am afraid to push her too closely! The mystery of her is taking the flesh off my bones, and I can only get sleep by taking strong possets, Mere Malheur! Feel my elbow! Feel my knee! I have not had so sharp an elbow or knee since Goodman Tremblay died! And he said I had the sharpest elbow and knee in the city! But I had to punch him sometimes to keep him in order! But set that horrid cap straight, Mere Malheur, while I go ask her if she would like to have her fortune told. She is not a woman if she would not like to know her fortune, for she is in despair, I think, with all the world; and when a woman is in despair, as I know by my own experience, she will jump at any chance for spite, if not for love, as I did when I took the Sieur Tremblay by your advice, Mere Malheur!"
Dame Tremblay left the old crone making hideous faces in a mirror. She rubbed her cheeks and mouth with the corner of her apron as she proceeded to the door of Caroline's apartment. She knocked gently, and a low, soft voice bade her enter.
Caroline was seated on a chair by the window, knitting her sad thoughts into a piece of work which she occasionally lifted from her lap with a sudden start, as something broke the train of her reflections.
She was weighing over and over in her thoughts, like gold in a scale, by grains and pennyweights, a few kind words lately spoken to her by Bigot when he ran in to bid her adieu before departing on his journey to Trois Rivieres. They seemed a treasure inexhaustible as she kept on repeating them to herself. The pressure of his hand had been warmer, the tone of his voice softer, the glance of his eye more kind, and he looked pityingly, she thought, upon her wan face when he left her in the gallery, and with a cheery voice and a kiss bade her take care of her health and win back the lost roses of Acadia.
These words passed through her mind with unceasing repetition, and a white border of light was visible on the edge of the dark cloud which hung over her. "The roses of Acadia will never bloom again," thought she sadly. "I have watered them with salt tears too long, and all in vain. O Bigot, I fear it is too late, too late!" Still, his last look and last words reflected a faint ray of hope and joy upon her pallid countenance.
Dame Tremblay entered the apartment, and while busying herself on pretence of setting it in order, talked in her garrulous way of the little incidents of daily life in the Chateau, and finished by a mention, as if it were casual, of the arrival of the wise woman of the city, who knew everything, who could interpret dreams, and tell, by looking in a glass or in your hand, things past, present, and to come.
"A wonderful woman," Dame Tremblay said, "a perilous woman too, not safe to deal with; but for all that, every one runs after her, and she has a good or bad word for every person who consults her. For my part," continued the dame, "she foretold my marriage with the Goodman Tremblay long before it happened, and she also foretold his death to the very month it happened. So I have reason to believe in her as well as to be thankful!"
Caroline listened attentively to the dame's remarks. She was not superstitious, but yet not above the beliefs of her age, while the Indian strain in her lineage and her familiarity with the traditions of the Abenaquis inclined her to yield more than ordinary respect to dreams.
Caroline had dreamed of riding on a coal-black horse, seated behind the veiled figure of a man whose face she could not see, who carried her like the wind away to the ends of the earth, and there shut her up in a mountain for ages and ages, until a bright angel cleft the rock, and, clasping her in his arms, bore her up to light and liberty in the presence of the Redeemer and of all the host of heaven.
This dream lay heavy on her mind. For the veiled figure she knew was one she loved, but who had no honest love for her. Her mind had been brooding over the dream all day, and the announcement by Dame Tremblay of the presence in the Chateau of one who was able to interpret dreams seemed a stroke of fortune, if not an act of Providence.
She roused herself up, and with more animation than Dame Tremblay had yet seen in her countenance, requested her to send up the visitor, that she might ask her a question.
Mere Malheur was quickly summoned to the apartment of Caroline, where Dame Tremblay left them alone.
The repulsive look of the old crone sent a shock through the fine, nervous organization of the young girl. She requested Mere Malheur to be seated, however, and in her gentle manner questioned her about the dream.
Mere Malheur was an adept in such things, and knew well how to humor human nature, and lead it to put its own interpretations upon its own visions and desires while giving all the credit of it to herself.
Mere Malheur therefore interpreted the dream according to Caroline's secret wishes. This inspired a sort of confidence, and Mere Malheur seized the opportunity to deliver the letter from La Corriveau.
"My Lady," said she, looking carefully round the room to note if the door was shut and no one was present, "I can tell you more than the interpretation of your dream. I can tell who you are and why you are here!"
Caroline started with a frightened look, and stared in the face of Mere Malheur. She faltered out at length,--"You know who I am and why I am here? Impossible! I never saw you before."
"No, my Lady, you never saw me before, but I will convince you that I know you. You are the daughter of the Baron de St. Castin! Is it not so?" The old crone looked frightfully knowing as she uttered these words.
"Mother of mercies! what shall I do?" ejaculated the alarmed girl. "Who are you to say that?"
"I am but a messenger, my Lady. Listen! I am sent here to give you secretly this letter from a friend who knows you better than I, and who above all things desires an interview with you, as she has things of the deepest import to communicate."
"A letter! Oh, what mystery is all this? A letter for me! Is it from the Intendant?"
"No, my Lady, it is from a woman." Caroline blushed and trembled as she took it from the old crone.
A woman! It flashed upon the mind of Caroline that the letter was important. She opened it with trembling fingers, anticipating she knew not what direful tidings when her eyes ran over the clear handwriting.
La Corriveau had written to the effect that she was an unknown friend, desirous of serving her in a moment of peril. The Baron de St. Castin had traced her to New France, and had procured from the King instructions to the Governor to search for her everywhere and to send her to France. Other things of great import, the writer said, she had also to communicate, if Caroline would grant her a private interview in the Chateau.
There was a passage leading from the old deserted watch-tower to the vaulted chamber, continued the letter, and the writer would without further notice come on the following night to Beaumanoir, and knock at the arched door of her chamber about the hour of midnight, when, if Caroline pleased to admit her, she would gladly inform her of very important matters relating to herself, to the Intendant, and to the Baron de St. Castin, who was on his way out to the Colony to conduct in person the search after his lost daughter.
The letter concluded with the information that the Intendant had gone to Trois Rivieres, whence he might not return for a week, and that during his absence the Governor would probably order a search for her to be made at Beaumanoir.
Caroline held the letter convulsively in her hand as she gathered its purport rather than read it. Her face changed color, from a deep flush of shame to the palest hue of fear, when she comprehended its meaning and understood that her father was on his way to New France to find out her hiding-place.
"What shall I do! Oh, what shall I do!" exclaimed she, wringing her hands for very anguish, regardless of the presence of Mere Malheur, who stood observing her with eyes glittering with curiosity, but void of every mark of womanly sympathy or feeling.
"My father, my loving father!" continued Caroline, "my deeply- injured father coming here with anger in his face to drag me from my concealment! I shall drop dead at his feet for very shame. Oh, that I were buried alive with mountains piled over me to hide me from my father! What shall I do? Whither shall I go? Bigot, Bigot, why have you forsaken me?"
Mere Malheur continued eyeing her with cold curiosity, but was ready at the first moment to second the promptings of the evil spirit contained in the letter.
"Mademoiselle," said she, "there is but one way to escape from the search to be made by your father and the Governor,--take counsel of her who sends you that friendly letter. She can offer you a safe hiding-place until the storm blows over. Will you see her, my Lady?"
"See her! I, who dare see no one! Who is she that sends me such strange news? Is it truth? Do you know her?" continued she, looking fixedly at Mere Malheur, as if in hope of reading on her countenance some contradiction of the matter contained in the letter.
"I think it is all true, my Lady," replied she, with mock humility; "I am but a poor messenger, however, and speak not myself of things I do not know, but she who sends me will tell you all."
"Does the Intendant know her?"
"I think he told her to watch over your safety during his absence. She is old and your friend; will you see her?" replied Mere Malheur, who saw the point was gained.
"Oh, yes, yes! tell her to come. Beseech her not to fail to come, or I shall go mad. O woman, you too are old and experienced and ought to know,--can she help me in this strait, think you?" exclaimed Caroline, clasping her hands in a gesture of entreaty.
"No one is more able to help you," said the crone; "she can counsel you what to do, and if need be find means to conceal you from the search that will be made for you."
"Haste, then, and bid her come to-morrow night! Why not tonight?" Caroline was all nervous impatience. "I will wait her coming in the vaulted chamber; I will watch for her as one in the valley of death watches for the angel of deliverance. Bid her come, and at midnight to-morrow she shall find the door of the secret chamber open to admit her."
The eagerness of the ill-fated girl to see La Corriveau outran every calculation of Mere Malheur. It was in vain and useless for her to speak further on the subject; Caroline would say no more. Her thoughts ran violently in the direction suggested by the artful letter. She would see La Corriveau to-morrow night, and would make no more avowals to Mere Malheur, she said to herself.
Seeing no more was to be got out of her, the crone bade her a formal farewell, looking at her curiously as she did so, and wondering in her mind if she should ever see her again. For the old creature had a shrewd suspicion that La Corriveau had not told her all her intentions with respect to this singular girl.
Caroline returned her salute, still holding the letter in her hand. She sat down to peruse it again, and observed not Mere Malheur's equivocal glance as she turned her eyes for the last time upon the innocent girl, doomed to receive the midnight visit from La Corriveau.
"There is death in the pot!" the crone muttered as she went out,-- "La Corriveau comes not here on her own errand either! That girl is too beautiful to live, and to some one her death is worth gold! It will go hard, but La Corriveau shall share with me the reward of the work of tomorrow night!"
In the long gallery she encountered Dame Tremblay "ready to eat her up," as she told La Corriveau afterwards, in the eagerness of her curiosity to learn the result of her interview with Caroline.
Mere Malheur was wary, and accustomed to fence with words. It was necessary to tell a long tale of circumstances to Dame Tremblay, but not necessary nor desirable to tell the truth. The old crone therefore, as soon as she had seated herself in the easy chair of the housekeeper and refreshed herself by twice accepting the dame's pressing invitation to tea and cognac, related with uplifted hands and shaking head a narrative of bold lies regarding what had really passed during her interview with Caroline.
"But who is she, Mere Malheur? Did she tell you her name? Did she show you her palm?"
"Both, dame, both! She is a girl of Ville Marie who has run away from her parents for love of the gallant Intendant, and is in hiding from them. They wanted to put her into the Convent to cure her of love. The Convent always cures love, dame, beyond the power of philtres to revive it!" and the old crone laughed inwardly to herself, as if she doubted her own saying.
Eager to return to La Corriveau with the account of her successful interview with Caroline, she bade Dame Tremblay a hasty but formal farewell, and with her crutched stick in her hand trudged stoutly back to the city.
Mere Malheur, while the sun was yet high, reached her cottage under the rock, where La Corriveau was eagerly expecting her at the window. The moment she entered, the masculine voice of La Corriveau was heard asking loudly,--
"Have you seen her, Mere Malheur? Did you give her the letter? Never mind your hat! tell me before you take it off!" The old crone was tugging at the strings, and La Corriveau came to help her.
"Yes! she took your letter," replied she, impatiently. "She took my story like spring water. Go at the stroke of twelve to-morrow night and she will let you in, Dame Dodier; but will she let you out again, eh?" The crone stood with her hat in her hand, and looked with a wicked glance at La Corriveau.
"If she will let me in, I shall let myself out, Mere Malheur," replied Corriveau in a low tone. "But why do you ask that?"
"Because I read mischief in your eye and see it twitching in your thumb, and you do not ask me to share your secret! Is it so bad as that, Dame Dodier?"
"Pshaw! you are sharing it! wait and you will see your share of it! But tell me, Mere Malheur, how does she look, this mysterious lady of the Chateau?" La Corriveau sat down, and placed her long, thin hand on the arm of the old crone.
"Like one doomed to die, because she is too good to live. Sorrow is a bad pasture for a young creature like her to feed on, Dame Dodier!" was the answer, but it did not change a muscle on the face of La Corriveau.
"Ay! but there are worse pastures than sorrow for young creatures like her, and she has found one of them," she replied, coldly.
"Well! as we make our bed so must we lie on it, Dame Dodier,--that is what I always tell the silly young things who come to me asking their fortunes; and the proverb pleases them. They always think the bridal bed must be soft and well made, at any rate."
"They are fools! better make their death-bed than their bridal bed! But I must see this piece of perfection of yours to-morrow night, dame! The Intendant returns in two days, and he might remove her. Did she tell you about him?"
"No! Bigot is a devil more powerful than the one we serve, dame. I fear him!"
"Tut! I fear neither devil nor man. It was to be at the hour of twelve! Did you not say at the hour of twelve, Mere Malheur?"
"Yes! go in by the vaulted passage and knock at the secret door. She will admit you. But what will you do with her, Dame Dodier? Is she doomed? Could you not be gentle with her, dame?"
There was a fall in the voice of Mere Malheur,--an intonation partly due to fear of consequences, partly to a fibre of pity which--dry and disused--something in the look of Caroline had stirred like a dead leaf quivering in the wind.
"Tut! has she melted your old dry heart to pity, Mere Malheur! Ha, ha! who would have thought that! and yet I remember she made a soft fool of me for a minute in the wood of St. Valier!" La Corriveau spoke in a hard tone, as if in reproving Mere Malheur she was also reproving herself.
"She is unlike any other woman I ever saw," replied the crone, ashamed of her unwonted sympathy. "The devil is clean out of her as he is out of a church."
"You are a fool, Mere Malheur! Out of a church, quotha!" and La Corriveau laughed a loud laugh; "why I go to church myself, and whisper my prayers backwards to keep on terms with the devil, who stands nodding behind the altar to every one of my petitions,--that is more than some people get in return for their prayers," added she.
"I pray backwards in church too, dame, but I could never get sight of him there, as you do: something always blinds me!" and the two old sinners laughed together at the thought of the devil's litanies they recited in the church.
"But how to get to Beaumanoir? I shall have to walk, as you did, Mere Malheur. It is a vile road, and I must take the byway through the forest. It were worth my life to be seen on this visit," said La Corriveau, conning on her fingers the difficulties of the by- path, which she was well acquainted with, however.
"There is a moon after nine, by which hour you can reach the wood of Beaumanoir," observed the crone. "Are you sure you know the way, Dame Dodier?"
"As well as the way into my gown! I know an Indian canotier who will ferry me across to Beauport, and say nothing. I dare not allow that prying knave, Jean Le Nocher, or his sharp wife, to mark my movements."
"Well thought of, Dame Dodier; you are of a craft and subtlety to cheat Satan himself at a game of hide and seek!" The crone looked with genuine admiration, almost worship, at La Corriveau as she said this; "but I doubt he will find both of us at last, dame, when we have got into our last corner."
"Well, vogue la galere!" exclaimed La Corriveau, starting up. "Let it go as it will! I shall walk to Beaumanoir, and I shall fancy I wear golden garters and silver slippers to make the way easy and pleasant. But you must be hungry, Mere, with your long tramp. I have a supper prepared for you, so come and eat in the devil's name, or I shall be tempted to say grace in nomine Domini, and choke you."
The two women went to a small table and sat down to a plentiful meal of such things as formed the dainties of persons of their rank of life. Upon the table stood the dish of sweetmeats which the thievish maidservant had brought to Mere Malheur with the groom's story of the conversation between Bigot and Varin, a story which, could Angelique have got hold of it, would have stopped at once her frightful plot to kill the unhappy Caroline.
"I were a fool to tell her that story of the groom's," muttered La Corriveau to herself, "and spoil the fairest experiment of the aqua tofana ever made, and ruin my own fortune too! I know a trick worth two of that," and she laughed inwardly to herself a laugh which was repeated in hell and made merry the ghosts of Beatrice Spara, Exili, and La Voisin.
All next day La Corriveau kept closely to the house, but she found means to communicate to Angelique her intention to visit Beaumanoir that night.
The news was grateful, yet strangely moving to Angelique; she trembled and turned pale, not for truth, but for doubt and dread of possible failure or discovery.
She sent by an unknown hand to the house of Mere Malheur a little basket containing a bouquet of roses so beautiful and fragrant that they might have been plucked in the garden of Eden.
La Corriveau carried the basket into an inner chamber, a small room, the window of which never saw the sun, but opened against the close, overhanging rock, which was so near that it might be touched by the hand. The dark, damp wall of the cliff shed a gloomy obscurity in the room even at midday.
The small black eyes of La Corriveau glittered like poniards as she opened the basket, and taking out the bouquet, found attached to it by a ribbon a silken purse containing a number of glittering pieces of gold. She pressed the coins to her cheek, and even put them between her lips to taste their sweetness, for money she loved beyond all things. The passion of her soul was avarice; her wickedness took its direction from the love of money, and scrupled at no iniquity for the sake of it.
She placed the purse carefully in her bosom, and took up the roses, regarding them with a strange look of admiration as she muttered, "They are beautiful and they are sweet! men would call them innocent! they are like her who sent them, fair without as yet; like her who is to receive them, fair within." She stood reflecting for a few moments, and exclaimed as she laid the bouquet upon the table,--
"Angelique des Meloises, you send your gold and your roses to me because you believe me to be a worse demon than yourself, but you are worthy to be crowned tonight with these roses as queen of hell and mistress of all the witches that ever met in Grand Sabbat at the palace of Galienne, where Satan sits on a throne of gold!"
La Corriveau looked out of the window and saw a corner of the rock lit up with the last ray of the setting sun. She knew it was time to prepare for her journey. She loosened her long black and gray elfin locks, and let them fall dishevelled over her shoulders. Her thin, cruel lips were drawn to a rigid line, and her eyes were filled with red fire as she drew the casket of ebony out of her bosom and opened it with a reverential touch, as a devotee would touch a shrine of relics. She took out a small, gilded vial of antique shape, containing a clear, bright liquid, which, as she shook it up, seemed filled with a million sparks of fire.
Before drawing the glass stopper of the vial, La Corriveau folded a handkerchief carefully over her mouth and nostrils, to avoid inhaling the volatile essence of its poisonous contents. Then, holding the bouquet with one hand at arm's length, she sprinkled the glowing roses with the transparent liquid from the vial which she held in the other hand, repeating, in a low, harsh tone, the formula of an ancient incantation, which was one of the secrets imparted to Antonio Exili by the terrible Beatrice Spara.
La Corriveau repeated by rote, as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times of heathen Rome:
"'Hecaten voco!
Voco Tisiphonem!
Spargens avernales aquas,
Te morti devoveo, te diris ago!"'
The terrible drops of the aqua tofana glittered like dew on the glowing flowers, taking away in a moment all their fragrance, while leaving all their beauty unimpaired. The poison sank into the very hearts of the roses, whence it breathed death from every petal and every leaf, leaving them fair as she who had sent them, but fatal to the approach of lip or nostril, fit emblems of her unpitying hate and remorseless jealousy.
La Corriveau wrapped the bouquet in a medicated paper of silver tissue, which prevented the escape of the volatile death, and replacing the roses carefully in the basket, prepared for her departure to Beaumanoir.