At a Winter's Fire Part 18

"No, no, no! Do you trifle with your destiny? It has happened opportunely, while all are within doors and we have a clear field. How do you know? have you seen? Is it possible to descend to it from above?"

"I pa.s.sed there less than an hour ago. It is possible, I am sure."

They set off hurriedly through the rain-beaten night. Not a word pa.s.sed between them as they left the village and struck into the high-valley road that ran past, at a moderate distance, the head of the bay. De Jussac strode rapidly in advance of his companion. His long cloak whirled in the blast; it flogged his gaunt limbs all set to intense action. He seemed uplifted, translated--like one in whom the very article of a life-long faith, or monomania, is about to be justified.

Toiling onward, like driven cattle, they swerved from the road presently and breasted a sharp incline. Their boots squelched on the sodden turf; the wind bore on them heavily.

George saw the dancing lanthorn go up the slope in front of him like a will-o'-the-wisp--stop, and swing steady, heard the loud cry of jubilation that issued from the withered throat.

"It is true! The moment is realized!"

They stood together on the verge of the upper lip of the fissure. It was a cliff now, twenty, thirty feet to its base. The lower ground had fallen like a dead jaw; had slipped--none so great a distance--down the slope leading to the under-cliff, and lay a billowing ma.s.s subsided upon itself.

De Jussac would stand not an instant.

"We must climb down--somehow, anyhow!" he cried feverishly. "We must search all along what was once the bottom of the cleft."

"It is a risk, sir. Why not wait till the morning?"

"No, no! now! My G.o.d! I demand it. Others may forestall us if we delay.

See, my friend, I wish but my own; and what proof of right have I if another should s.n.a.t.c.h the treasure?"

"The treasure?"

"It is our fortune that lies there--yours, and mine, and the little Plancine's. Do I know what I say? Hurry, hurry, hurry! while my heart does not burst."

He forced the lanthorn into the young man's hands. He was panting and sobbing like a child. Before the other realized his intention, he had flung himself upon his hands and knees, had slipped over the edge, and was scrambling down the broken wall of lias.

There was nothing for George but to take his own life in hand and humour his venerated elder. He followed with the lanthorn, thinking of Plancine a little, and hoping he should fall on a soft place.

But they got down in safety, breathing hard and extremely dirty. Caution, it is true, reacts very commonly upon itself.

The moment his companion's feet touched bottom, De Jussac s.n.a.t.c.hed the light from his hand, roughly enough to send him off his balance, and went scurrying to and fro along the face of the cliff like a mad thing.

"I cannot find it!" he cried, rus.h.i.+ng back after an interval--nervous, in an agony of restlessness--a very pitiable old man.

George spoke up from the ground.

"Find what?" said he, feeling all sopped and dazed.

"The box--the casket! It could never perish. It was of sheet-iron. Look, look, my friend! Your eyes are younger than mine--a box, a foot long, of hard iron!"

"I am sitting upon something hard," said George.

He sprang to his feet and took the lanthorn.

"Bones," said he, peering down. "Some old mastodon, I expect. Is this your treasure?"

De Jussac was glaring. His head drooped lower and lower. His lips were parted, and the line of strong white teeth showed between them. His voice, when he spoke, was quite fearful in its low intensity.

"Bones--yes, and human. Where they lie, the other must be near. Ah, Lacombe, Lacombe; you will yield me my own at last!"

He was shaking a slow finger at the poor remnants--a rib or two, the half of a yellow skull.

Suddenly he was down on his knees, tearing at the black, thick soil, diving into it, tossing it hither and thither.

A pause, a rending exclamation, and he was on his feet again with a scream of ecstasy. An oblong casket, rusty, corroded, but unbroken, was in his hand.

"Now," he whispered, sibilant through the wind, controlling himself, though he was shaking from head to foot, "now to return as we have come.

Not a word, not a word till we have this safe in the cottage!"

They found, after some search, a difficult way up. By-and-by they stood once more on the lip of the fall, and paused for breath.

It was at this very instant that De Jussac dropped the box beside him and threw up his hands.

"The guillotine!" he shrieked, and fell headlong into the pit he had just issued from.

IV

The poor bandaged figure; the approaching death; the dog whining softly in the yard.

"I am dying, my little Plancine?"

The girl's forehead was bowed on the homely quilt.

"Nay, cry not, little one! I go very happy. That (he indicated by a motion of his eyelids the fatal box, which, yet unopened, lay on a table by the sunny window) shall repay thee for thy long devotion, for thy poverty, and for thy brave sweetness with the old papa."

"No, no, no!"

"But they are diamonds, Plancine--such diamonds, my bird. They have flashed at Versailles, at the little Trianon. They were honoured to lie on the breast of a beautiful and courageous woman--thine aunt, Plancine; the most n.o.ble the Comtesse de la Morne. She gave her wealth, almost her life, for her king--all but her diamonds. It was at Brussels, whither I had escaped from The Terror--I, a weak and desolate boy of but fourteen. I lived with her, in her common, cheap lodging. For five years we made out our friendless and deserted existence in company. In truth, we were an embarra.s.sment, and they looked at us askance. Long after her mind failed her, the memory of her own former beauty dwelt with her; yet she could not comprehend but that it was still a talisman to conjure with. Even to the end she would deck herself and coquet to her gla.s.s. But she was good and faithful, Plancine; and, at the last, when she was dying, she gave me this box. 'It contains all that is left to me of my former condition,' she said. 'It shall make thy fortune for thee in England, my nephew, whither thou must journey when poor Dorine is underground.' By that I knew it was her cherished diamonds she bequeathed me. 'They do not want thee here,' she said. 'Thou must take boat for England when I am gone.'

"But George, my friend!"

The young man was standing sorrowful by the open window. He could have seen the sailing-boats in the bay, the sailing clouds in the sky placidly floating over a world of serene and verdurous loveliness. But his vision was all inward, of the piteous calm, following storm and disaster, in which the dying voice from the bed was like the lapping of little waves.

He came at once and stood over Plancine, not daring to touch her.

"It was not wilfulness, but my great love," said the broken, gentle voice, "that made the condition. All of you I cannot extol, knowing what I have known. But you are an honest gentleman and a true, my brave; and you shall make this dearest a n.o.ble husband."

Waveringly George stole his hand towards the bowed head and let it rest there.

From the battered face a smile broke like flowers from a blasted soil.

"Withholding my countenance only as I foresaw the means to enrich you both were approaching my grasp, I waited for the hill to break away that I might recover my casket. It was there--it is here; and now my Plancine shall never know poverty more, or her husband restrict the scope of his so admirable art on the score of necessity."