This woman, Madame Gerard, was the first who began to spread the rumor that some very strange things were going on at Coulteray — not at all in the ordinary run of affairs.
She pretended that the marchioness had taken her into her confidence, and declared that the poor lady was greatly to be pitied, and that if some one did not interfere the poor lady would not be here for long. The gendarme interfered, using means about which she did not boast, and made his better half stop her gossip. He did this so successfully that it was impossible to get another word from her on the subject.
But the peasants’ curiosity was aroused. They watched for the marchioness to come out, and they sighed when she passed them.
“That’s what you get for marrying a vampire,” they said.
And from then on they were not the same with the lord of Coulteray. When he passed they turned from him, shaking their heads, looking at one another in consternation, and sometimes smiling, that they should think about such a thing which could not be possible in these days.
The marquis did not insist. He took his wife away again. Two years later he brought her back at the last gasp, and to-day she was being buried.
CHAPTER XXXVII
IN THE VAMPIRE’S TOMB
CHRISTINE AND JACQUES arrived in the middle of the ceremony. About five or six hundred people were there. The men were bareheaded and the women were on their knees as the funeral procession came on, preceded by the clergy and followed by the mayor, the deputies, and all the people from Coulteray and the neighboring towns.
The “Daughters of Marie,” all in white, and the “Ladies of the Fire,” in their curious sylvan dress and garlanded with wild flowers, surrounded the open bier. This was in accordance with the ancient custom of the house of Coulteray, when they sealed the dead in their tombs before the whole population as witnesses.
The “Ladies of the Fire,” among whom were to be seen old women with white hair and beautiful young girls in the spring of life, was a sisterhood, the origin of which had been lost in the flight of centuries, which followed the druid custom of celebrating the return of the summer solstice with demonstrations of joy and by lighting fires in the glades. These ladies danced around the piles of flaming wood, as is the custom in many of the provinces of France on the night of St. Jean.
In the Coulteray regions there was not a village, nor a hamlet, nor a farm which on this night did not have its own funeral pyre. The curate was usually implored to bestow his blessing upon them, and when the fire had accomplished its work the embers were carefully preserved as a protection against storms.
Religion and superstition were blended in the prettiest way imaginable in this charming province, and on this day they were blended to a still greater degree, when they united to accompany to her last resting place this woman who had been condemned by a cruel fate to share the couch of the vampire.
However, walking behind the bier, carried by four strong young men from the village, this vampire’s unhappy, sorrow stricken face was watered by so many tears; so many moans shook his great griefladen body that the sight of the reality of the hopeless widower soon put aside all thought of the cruel legend, of which, perhaps, this poor Georges-Marie-Vincent was the first victim.
They remembered what great care and attention he had always bestowed on the marchioness. They now only saw a husband who was weeping for his wife; and they wept also, not alone for her, but for him as well. An incident which occurred at the moment when the procession was leaving the courtyard to enter the little cemetery again roused all the people in his favor.
Widow Gerard was there, leaning up against a bit of the wall, half hidden behind a honeysuckle vine, but not well enough to prevent the marquis catching sight of her in spite of his grief. He drew himself up, threatening and terrible; his eyes, which up to now had been filled with tears, now seemed as though they were dried up by the fire which flashed from them; he stretched out his arm, as though it had been propelled by a spring at its highest tension.
His mouth moved, but it did not utter the word “Go!” with which it was filled. As though fear had lifted her from the ground, the Widow Gerard went rushing out of the castle grounds and on toward the prairie like a rolling stone.
It was all they could do to keep from applauding.
They all sympathized with his saintly anger. After all, the poor man must have had enough of these stories. He was not ignorant of all the stupid tales that the Widow Gerard had hawked about, because he had been obliged to put her out of his house! And to think that she would have the nerve to show herself here at such a time!
The affair ended to the satisfaction of all — the procession went on into the little chapel. Christine and Jacques had great difficulty in getting close to the bier, and Jacques would willingly have given up going in if Christine had not pulled him by the hand with irresistible strength and said:
“I want to see her! I want to see her!”
It was true that she had not yet seen her, although the coffin was open. She had tried in vain to force her way to the first row, but she had been pushed back, and all that she had seen was the couch which had been made for the embalmed out of wreaths and flowers.
The chapel was already full when Christine caught sight of a man standing in front of the porch, wearing a surplice, and dealing out little taps with his black, flat rod, which was ornamented with a casing of silver. With this rod he drove back the ones who were pushing him back in their eagerness.
He must be the sexton.
“Druine,” cried Christine.
He turned and saw her. She was still holding on to Jacques’s hand. She told him that her name was Christine Norbert, and introduced her cousin to him.
“Heavens!” sighed Druine, raising his eyes to the sky. “If you only knew how she was expecting you, waiting for you. But you have come too late.”
“Can we still see her?” asked Christine.
“Follow me,” he replied.
He then took them down the little underground steps which led to the crypt.
It was still deserted down there.
“Take your stand in this corner,” he said. “After the mass she will be brought down here. You will be able to see her at your ease. She has never looked more beautiful. She looks like an angel. For the time being they are going to put her in the vampire’s tomb, which is empty, as you know, of course. She will not be taken out of that until she is finally buried in the magnificent tomb which the marquis is going to have made for her. It is to be erected out there close to that of Count François, called the ‘Iron Arm,’ who died in the Holy Land. Oh, but the marquis is very unhappy.”
He left them, for he was needed above.
Christine and Jacques found themselves in a sort of niche scooped out in the wall, from where they could overlook the tomb of the vampire, waiting its new prey.
The slab which had covered it had been pushed aside and slid onto the next tomb. On it could still be read the inscription about Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome, equerry to his majesty.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE DEATH WATCH
JACQUES FELT CHRISTINE’S hand trembling in his. All this pomp of death, these funeral chants which came to them in their subterranean retreat like the moaning of dead persons leaping up from the entrails of the earth; these stone figures lying in the sepulchres with hands clasped in a final gesture of supplication and prayer before the last judgment; all this scene so dismally illumined by the few streaks of light coming from the Gothic ventilators near the ground, which were now overgrown by the brambles in the cemetery, was indeed enough to impress a mind which had been less unsettled than Christine’s.
And Jacques? Well, as usual, he blamed his own weakness, which had resulted in his being closeted with Christine in this blind alley of the dead, at the very moment when he was hoping to revive in his sweetheart all the vital forces in the kingdom of triumphant nature.
He was so strong with others and with himself. He was intelligence itself, bu
t he did not exist, he had never existed but for her alone. He realized, once more, that it was about time for him to give up the struggle. Once upon a time he had tried to get a grip on himself, only to realize that she would have allowed him to slip away from her beautiful tranquility and her beautiful smile without a protest.
“De profundis clamavi ad te, Domini!” Each spirit here below and probably above has its master. It is not becoming even to the proudest to be malicious.
Great brains are often seen linked with repulsive fools. And Christine was beautiful and good— “Dies Irae, Dies Ille!”
The wrought iron door which was behind the tomb of François, the Iron Arm, was opened and the procession of the “Daughters of Marie” and the “Ladies of the Fire” poured into the crypt, preceding the bier that the young men were carrying, raised high so that they might be able to set it temporarily in the tomb of the vampire.
They appeared to be depositing a couch of flowers upon which reclined a sleeping virgin.
Christine’s eyes, grown bigger through anguish, did not leave this ideal form.
Yes, Annie Elizabeth was beautiful in death. Like Juliet when she had descended in her religious freshness into the embalmed sanctuary which effaces all torments and gives back to the earthly envelope its pristine purity. Like Ophelia decked in her garlands of wild flowers and her tresses laden with water flowers.
And, like herself, escaped at last from the outrages of the maniac to whom she had given a pure heart filled with all her hopes and naïve desires, escaped from a circle of horrors which she had not understood, before which her reason had succumbed before she could breathe her last sigh.
“Sleep!” murmured Christine, with a sob, as she sank to her knees, almost fainting. “Sleep thy last sleep, which, I vow, nothing shall disturb.”
A cry of despair responded to this moan and Georges-Marie-Vincent sank down before the grave, which he, perhaps, had opened.
The ceremony was over, the last prayers had been said, and the stone had been pushed upon her who will never again see the soft light of day.
They raised the marquis, who permitted himself to be carried away as though he had suffered a sudden stroke of paralysis. He somewhat recovered the use of his limbs when he got into the fresh air outside and, when he saw Christine and Jacques, who were the last ones to come up from the crypt, he took a few steps toward Christine, grasped her hands effusively — which made her freeze — and said:
“Thank you! Thank you, for having come! You were her friend.”
She introduced Jacques, her fiancé. The marquis did not let go of her hands, but insisted that they must go back with him to the château.
“Do not leave me! Do not leave me! I am so unhappy, if you only knew! If you only knew! But you know all, Christine! There is nothing I can tell you! You, alone, here can understand the depths of my misery. I am the most unhappy of men!”
And while the crowd dispersed, moving silently, emptying the bailiwick, returning to the country village, he detained them in the house of death with its closed shutters.
“I am going away,” he said in a broken voice. “I am going far away — very far! Where? I don’t know yet! But I cannot stay here another moment! Too many memories! Too many memories! Too much sorrow.”
The door was suddenly pushed open, a portière was lifted, and a form which Christine recognized, appeared. It was Saib Kahn, the Hindu physician. He did not utter a word.
At the sight of him, Georges-Marie-Vincent stood up.
“Farewell!” he exclaimed, the words coming forth with a sort of death rattle. “Farewell! Perhaps it is forever! Ah, how I loved her!”
Then he was gone. There was the noise of the motor car which carried him away. He had gone.
They had both remained quiet under the shock of this extraordinary despair. The words “Ah, how I loved her!” rang in their ears for a long time.
“Perhaps this man really loved his wife,” said Jacques after some moments of intense silence.
“How can you say that? How can you say that? Ugolin also loved his children.”
“Exactly,” said Jacques, who would not have vexed her at this moment for anything in the world, “and now, my little Christine,” he said, getting up, “we are also going to leave this place. We have nothing more to do here, and we are going to try and forget.”
“You go, then,” she said, somberly, “but I remain.”
“You remain here? But why?”
She had gone over to the window and, with almost ferocious attention was gazing out at something or some one.
“Look,” she said, “I have spoken enough about them for you to recognize them.”
“Sangor and Shing-shing?”
“Yes, Sangor and Shing-shing. They have not gone, and yet you want me to go,” she added, quivering. “Christine, explain yourself — I do not understand!” She shrugged her shoulders.
And from then on she acted as though he was not there. She left the drawing room and passed on into another room. He followed, giving up all thought of questioning her. They went through a part of the main floor. The château seemed deserted, abandoned. The servants were somewhere down below feasting, as is customary after this sort of ceremony.
They walked through the immense rooms, which bore the stamp of centuries, furnished with priceless objects of art — sculptured coffers, carved ironwork, high chairs dating from the reign of François I, immense Renaissance chimneys, marvels which were scarcely lit up by the half light, stealing through the shutters — and they came to a hall.
Christine mounted the stairs with a haste that Jacques could not understand. The staircase had large slabs of old marble and a balustrade of wrought iron, loose in parts, which, perhaps, had not been repaired since the time of that other Coulteray, Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome.
When they reached the first floor, she went, as though guided by a sure instinct, toward a great double paneled door. She opened it.
The peculiar odor of a death chamber reached them at once. This was the famous room of Dian de Poitiers. On a dais, the great bed with its twisted posts was still strewn with flowers. At the four corners of the dais, the wax candles, scarcely burned out, still gave forth their funereal odor.
She went to the window, opened it wide, and threw back the shutters. The daylight flooded in. Then she turned and looked quickly at the walls, which were hung with Flemish tapestries representing combats and romances of knighthood days.
With increasing astonishment, Jacques watched Christine while she examined minutely the figures portraying the great deeds of the gentlemen of the Round Table. She went from one to the other, studying them with exasperating minuteness. Sometimes she stooped down, sometimes she stood on tiptoe, and sometimes she climbed on a stool.
At last she turned around with a sigh. Her face was drawn. She looked at Jacques, apparently without seeing him and certainly without hearing him, for, although he ventured to ask her a question, which might give him some light on her actions, she passed close to him without replying, and then, suddenly, as though obeying a new impulse, she went out of the room, through the passage, and entered the adjoining room.
This was a Louis XV room. Opposite the bed was a full length portrait of Louis-Jean-Marie-Chrysostome, which could be easily recognized, even in the dim light. Here again, the shutters were closed. Jacques followed close behind her. They were undoubtedly in the room of the present marquis.
Jacques closed the door. Then Christine at once uttered a cry. Near the bed, which was up against the wall that separated this room from the marchioness’s, a ray of sunlight, which seemed to have penetrated the wall, lengthened its streak.
It was the light from the next room which came through a hole — a hole, which one would have had difficulty in finding in the arabesque of the glass where it was hidden, or among the figures in the tapestry on the other side. Christine ran and placed her face against this hole, and, when she had finished looking, she said to Jacques:
; “Now you see — this is the hole through which the monster shot his poisoned arrow.”
And Jacques, also, having held in his hand the trocar, was convinced. But had he not been more than half convinced already? And what could they do, now that she was dead?
He did not ask Christine this question, but she replied to it just the same:
“Oh, Annie Elizabeth,” she declared in a profound voice, “I was a poor guardian of your life, but I will watch over you in death.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
GUARDIAN OF THE DEPARTED
THIS FRENZIED PHRASE, which seemed to Jacques a prophecy that might require their remaining at Coulteray forever, left him greatly perplexed. He became more and more anxious about Christine. She was feverish. She could not remain in one place.
Where should he take her now? Straight to the sexton, whose abode was a little square cabin, built of stones with a hole for a door and two Renaissance windows, located at the back of what was left of the ramparts and half hidden under the Virginia creepers and climbing plants. From this lodge, which was so much like a tomb, he could watch the entrance of the château and guard the dead.
Druine was from Sologne and was not as quick or as impressionable as the native Tourainians. One might have thought, on seeing him so leisurely in his movements, that he lacked animation or was lazy. But it was not so. He worked about fifteen hours a day. Most of the time there was no one at the château and he was in sole charge. The care of the chapel and cemetery took up but little of his time, as he did not dig four graves a year.
But he spent his time digging up the earth along the old ramparts, on a strip of mound that had been turned over to him, where he grew vegetables. He cultivated the vines which spread from outside the ramparts toward the meadow — the marquis allowed him the profits from his labors. And the tourists who came to pay archaeological visits helped to fill his pockets.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 401
