"Ha, Gaston, what are you doing?" cried Sperver.

"Nothing. I am only looking at the strangers' horses."

"Oh, yes, the Wallachians! I saw them in the stable this morning. They are fine creatures."

The hors.e.m.e.n departed at full speed. The curtain in the tower window dropped.

CHAPTER VII.

MARIE LAGOUTTE RELATES HER EXPERIENCE.

When I again saw Odile her expression was one of complete wretchedness; her swollen eyes told me that she had been weeping long, and her extreme pallor and weariness cut me to the heart.

"My dear mademoiselle," I said to her, with forced cheerfulness, "we must not be despondent. The turning-point of the malady must soon arrive, and this crisis safely pa.s.sed, we may expect to see the Count in as good health as before."

She looked at me with an expression of grat.i.tude for my wish to console her, but underlying it, I felt there was a quiet conviction to the contrary, and I realized the weakness of my position when I reflected that she might very probably be possessed of facts, unknown to me, which entirely disproved my words.

"At all events," she replied, after a pause of some moments, "it is grateful to know that there is some one who shares our anxieties and has the desire really at heart to mitigate them."

"You speak truly, mademoiselle," I returned. "I desire nothing so much as to see peace and contentment restored to this house, and I only wish that I possessed a thousandfold more power to accomplish it than I do.

But whatever my skill is, it shall be devoted to this one end; and I shall not despair of success until all my efforts have proved unavailing."

I was surprised at my own warmth a moment after; but Odile's glance satisfied me that I had not transgressed the limits of that reserve with which she surrounded herself.

"And furthermore," I continued, encouraged by this fact to speak what I had for some time meditated, "if I might add the advice of a friend to that of the doctor, I should beg of you to spare yourself as much as possible in the matter of night watches and too unremitting a care of the Count, for a true woman's strength is exhausted long before her will, and you owe it to your friends as well as to yourself to preserve the life which G.o.d has entrusted to you."

Odile lowered her eyes, then raised them; and as I approached and lifted to my lips the hand which she gave me, I surprised there a look which opened up to me a world of speculation.

I returned to my chamber, where I found an hour none too long to calm in a measure the exuberance of feeling to which my moments with Odile invariably gave rise.

Inclination made me quite as much concerned to spare Odile the suffering which her father's revolting harshness in his moments of delirium caused her, as to restore the Count to health, for after the morning's experience I felt that my pity for the sick man had, in spite of myself, largely given place to loathing; and I felt too, with Sperver, that I could throttle him as he continued to heap injuries upon his daughter's defenceless head.

However, there was but one way to alter the present condition of things and to establish a better one; namely, to effect the Count's cure, and I resolved that the best effort of my life should be expended here.

Meanwhile I knew not where to begin. Medicines used otherwise than as opiates seemed lacking in the smallest efficacy. I saw nothing for it but to await developments.

To remonstrate with Odile in the matter of the vow which she had taken was clearly out of the question, though I was curious to see if any yielding on her part would effect the change in her father's condition which he averred it would.

And the reason of her absolute refusal to entertain even the thought of marriage? What could it be? She was not without feeling, a fact sufficiently demonstrated by her unswerving devotion to the Count. Nor did it seem to me that she could regard with disdain the fulfilment of that position which is the n.o.blest aim and achievement of womankind, and which she was so eminently fitted by every circ.u.mstance of fortune to occupy and adorn. It could not be that there was any lack of understanding; for at times, when I surprised her glance resting upon me, I read in it a depth of sensibility that seemed almost unfathomable; and that its possessor was all kindness, in the strongest and best sense of the term, I was convinced. Of the answer to this riddle, it seemed then, I must forever remain in ignorance; but while any chance remained to solve it, I was determined to do so at all costs.

Meanwhile the Count's illness continued its course. All that Sperver had told me verified itself. Sometimes the Count, starting up and leaning on his elbow with outstretched neck and staring eyes, would mutter, "She is coming! She is coming!" Then Gideon would shake his head and climb the signal-tower; but in vain did he look to right and left: the Black Plague was nowhere to be seen.

After long reflection upon this strange malady, I had finally persuaded myself that the Count was deranged. The singular influence which the old creature exerted upon his mind, his alternate periods of delirium and calm, all served to strengthen me in this opinion. "Unknown chains unite his fate with that of the Black Plague," I said to myself. "That woman may have been young and beautiful in the past; who knows?" and my imagination, once launched in this direction, soon built up a romance; but I was careful to mention nothing of my thoughts,--Sperver would never have forgiven me for entertaining suspicions of a relationship between his master and the hag.

During these anxious days, the one bright thing in my life was Odile's presence. Had it not been for this, I doubt if I should longer have preserved any degree of hope.

I know not if I myself quite realized the extent of my growing affection for Odile, but certain it is that with each day her image became more and more identified with all that I held dearest in the world, and as I moved about the old Castle halls and chambers, the library, the drawing-room, the chapel, her fair figure and light step accompanied me in fancy, and I likened her to the delicate, fragrant rose, which in summer blossomed and waved from the rough interstices of the Castle's battlements.

Things were in this pa.s.s when one morning, at about eight o'clock, I was walking up and down in Hugh's Tower thinking of the Count's malady, the outcome of which I could foresee no more clearly than before, and cudgelling my wits to determine what was next to be done. Suddenly I was roused from these cheerless reflections by three discreet taps on my door.

"Come in!"

The door opened, and Marie Lagoutte entered, dropping a low courtesy.

The worthy woman's arrival annoyed me a good deal; I was on the point of asking her to leave me for the present, when an expression of unusual seriousness on her face aroused my curiosity. She had thrown a large red-and-green shawl over her shoulders, and stood with her lips pursed up and her eyes on the floor. It surprised me not a little to see her, after a moment, approach the door and open it again, apparently to make sure that no one had followed her.

"What does she want of me?" I asked myself. "What do all these precautions mean?" I was puzzled.

"Monsieur," she said at length, drawing nearer me, "I beg your pardon for disturbing you so early in the morning, but I have something important to tell you."

"Pray go on! What is it about?"

"It is about the Count."

"Ah!"

"Yes, monsieur; you probably know that I sat up with him last night."

"I know you did. Pray sit down!"

She seated herself in a chair opposite me, a big, leather-covered armchair, and I remarked with interest the energetic character of the face which had seemed to me only grotesque on the evening of my arrival at the Castle.

"Monsieur," she went on after a brief pause, fixing her dark eyes on me, "I must tell you first of all that I am not a timid woman. I have seen many things in my life,--things so terrible that nothing astonishes me any more. When any one has pa.s.sed through Rossbach, Leuthen, and Zorndorf, he has left fear behind him on the road."

"You speak truly, madame!"

"I don't tell you this from a desire to boast, but only to convince you that I don't lose my wits at nothing, and that you may depend upon what I say when I tell you I have seen something."

"What the deuce can she have to tell me?" I said to myself.

"Well!" she continued; "last night, between nine and ten, just as I was starting up to bed, Offenloch came in and said to me:

"'Marie, you must sit up with the Count to-night.'

"I was surprised at this, and replied:

"'What! sit up with the Count! Isn't madame going to sit up with him herself?'

"'No; our mistress is ill, and you must take her place.'

"Ill, poor child! I was sure it would end that way, and I told her so a hundred times; but what can you do, monsieur? Young people never have any thought for the future,--and then, it was her own father, too. So I took my knitting, said good night to Toby, and went to the master's room. Sperver, who was waiting for me, went off to bed as soon as I came in, and I was left all alone."

Here the good woman paused, slowly breathed up a pinch of snuff, and seemed to be brushing up her memory. I had become attentive.

"At about half past ten," she continued, "I was knitting away beside the bed, and every now and then I raised the curtain to see how the Count was doing; he never stirred; he was sleeping like a child. All went well up to eleven o'clock; then I began to feel tired; when you are old, monsieur, do what you will, you fall asleep in spite of yourself; and then, too, I didn't think anything was going to happen. I said to myself, 'He will sleep like a top till morning!'