His one remaining backer stayed to cast a look at him,and that was all.The man fled,and I chased him as far as the head of the stairs;where I left him,assured by the speed and agility he displayed in clearing flight after flight that I had nothing to fear from him.Fresnoy lay,apparently stunned,and completely at my mercy.I stood an instant looking down at him,in two minds whether I should not run him through.But the memory of old days,when he had played his part in more honourable fashion and shown a coarse good-fellowship in the field,held my hand;and flinging a curse at him,I turned in anxious haste to the door,the centre of all this bloodshed and commotion.The light still shone through the breach in the panel,but for some minutes--since Fresnoy's rush up the stairs,indeed--I had heard no sound from this quarter.Now,looking in with apprehensions which grew with the continuing silence,I learned the reason.
The room was empty!
Such a disappointment in the moment of triumph was hard to bear.
I saw myself,after all done and won,on the point of being again outwitted,distanced,it might be fooled.In frantic haste and excitement I snatched up the stool beside me,and,dashing it twice against the lock,forced it at last to yield.The door swung open,and I rushed into the room,which,abandoned by those who had so lately occupied it,presented nothing to detain me.Icast a single glance round,saw that it was squalid,low-roofed,unfurnished,a mere prison;then swiftly crossing the floor,Imade for a door at the farther end,which my eye had marked from the first.A candle stood flaring and guttering on a stool,and as I passed I took it up.
Somewhat to my surprise the door yielded to my touch.In trembling haste--for what might not befall the women while Ifumbled with doors or wandered in passages?--I flung it wide,and passing through it,found myself at the head of a narrow,mean staircase,leading,doubtless,to the servants'offices.At this,and seeing no hindrance before me,I took heart of grace,reflecting that mademoiselle might have escaped from the house this way.Though it would now be too late to quit the city,Imight still overtake her,and all end well.Accordingly Ihurried down the stairs,shading my candle as I went from a cold draught of air which met me,and grew stronger as I descended;until reaching the bottom at last,I came abruptly upon an open door,and an old,wrinkled,shrivelled woman.
The hag screamed at sight of me,and crouched down on the floor;and doubtless,with my drawn sword,and the blood dripping from my chin and staining all the front of my doublet,I looked fierce and uncanny enough.But I felt it was no time for sensibility--Iwas panting to be away--and I demanded of her sternly where they were.She seemed to have lost her voice--through fear,perhaps --and for answer only stared at me stupidly;but on my handling my weapon with some readiness she so far recovered her senses as to utter two loud screams,one after the other,and point to the door beside her.I doubted her;and yet I thought in her terror she must be telling the truth,the more as I saw no other door.
In any case I must risk it,so,setting the candle down on the step beside her,I passed out.
For a moment the darkness was so intense that I felt my way with my sword before me,in absolute ignorance where I was or on what my foot might next rest.I was at the mercy of anyone who chanced to be lying in wait for me;and I shivered as the cold damp wind struck my cheek and stirred my hair.But by-and-by,when I had taken two or three steps,my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom,and I made,out the naked boughs of trees between myself and the sky,and guessed that I was in a garden.My left hand,touching a shrub,confirmed me in this belief,and in another moment I distinguished something like the outline of a path stretching away before me.Following it rapidly--as rapidly as I dared--I came to a corner,as it seemed to me,turned it blindly,and stopped short,peeping into a curtain of solid blackness which barred my path,and overhead mingled confusedly with the dark shapes of trees.But this,too,after a brief hesitation,I made out to be a wall.Advancing to it with outstretched hands,I felt the woodwork of a door,and,groping about,lit presently on a loop of cord.I pulled at this,the door yielded,and I went out.
I found myself in a narrow,dark lane,and looking up and down discovered,what I might have guessed before,that it,was the Ruelle d'Arcy.But mademoiselle?Fanchette?Simon?Where were they?No one was to be seen,Tormented by doubts,I lifted up my voice and called on them in turn;first on mademoiselle,then on Simon Fleix.In vain;I got no answer.High up above me I saw,as I stood back a little,lights moving in the house I had left;and the suspicion that,after all,the enemy had foiled me grew upon me.Somehow they had decoyed mademoiselle to another part of the house,and then the old woman had misled me!
I turned fiercely to the door,which I had left ajar,resolved to re-enter by the way I had come,and have an explanation whether or no.To my surprise--for I had not moved six paces from the door nor heard the slightest sound--I found it not;only closed but bolted--bolted both at top and bottom,as I discovered on trying it.
I fell on that to kicking it furiously,desperately;partly in a tempest of rage and chagrin,partly in the hope that I might frighten the old woman,if it was she who had closed it,into opening it again.In vain,of course;and presently I saw this and desisted,and,still in a whirl of haste and excitement,set off running towards the place where I had left Simon Fleix and the horses.It was fully six o'clock as I judged;but some faint hope that I might find him there with mademoiselle and her woman still lingered in my mind.I reached the end of the lane,I ran to the very foot;of the ramparts,I looked right and left.In vain.The place was dark,silent,deserted.
I called 'Simon!Simon!Simon Fleix!'but my only answer was the soughing of the wind in the eaves,and the slow tones of the convent-bell striking Six.
