The Black Wolf's Breed Part 31

It appeared that the only thing to be done was to visit the good Cure of St. Martin's, and, enlisting him in the search, find whatever descendants might have been left by this Francois Rene Alois de Pasquier. The task need not be a difficult one, as many old people should still be living who might have known of the man.[2]

I now bethought me of this enterprise as a fair excuse whereby I could leave Biloxi for a s.p.a.ce. I would, therefore, call upon my old friend, and having obtained leave, matters now being safe with the colony, make the journey to Quebec.

But, alas for the weakness of fallen humanity; my last act before putting myself out of temptation's way was to run full tilt into it.

While this came so near to causing my dishonorable death, yet it was, under Divine Providence, the direct means of spreading before me a long life of happiness and honor. After a hard battle with my weaker self I lost the fight.

Just as on the day I departed from Versailles, I determined, cost what it would, to see Agnes once again. So I wrote her a note. Such a blunt and clumsy billet as only a love-sick soldier or a country clown could have written. It craved pardon for the heat and the haste displayed by me when we parted at Sceaux; it implored one last interview before I left the colonies forever. I had not the art to conceal or veil my meaning, but told it out and plainly. Such a note as an idiotic boy might pen, or a simpering school la.s.s be set fluttering to receive.

I bade my man deliver this to Madame de la Mora on the morrow, charging him minutely and repeatedly to see it safe in her own hands. So careful was I, I did not doubt that even so stupid a lout as Jacques understood me perfectly.

His further instructions were to meet me at the Bay when I should return in the evening from my visit to Colonel d'Ortez, and there beside its rippling waters--or so I had arranged--I was to receive her answer.

It had now turned late of the night, and I sought repose. Sleep evaded my bed. What with my own restless desires, my chiding sense of ill-doing, and the d'Ortez story I had read, I tossed and tumbled through the remaining hours of darkness. Tumbled and tossed, whilst the sins and sufferings of men long dead pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed with their spectral admonitions.

Early on the morrow, while the day was yet cool, I crossed the Bay, and climbed the slope of sand before the lonely house. It looked more deserted and desolate than I had ever seen it. The stillness of solitary death clung as a pall about the place. Pachaco, the Indian servant, sat beside the gate, as motionless as the post against which he leaned.

"How is the master, Pachaco?" I inquired, pa.s.sing in.

"Him die yesterday," came the stolid reply.

"What? Dead! When?"

"The shadows were at the longest," he answered, indicating by a gesture the western horizon.

I hurried into the master's room. In the same position he had occupied, when, months ago, he had beckoned me to remain, he sat there, dead in his chair. His clothing hung about him in that sharply angular fas.h.i.+on in which garments cling to a corpse. Long, thin locks were matted above his brow, awesomely disarranged. But the pose of his head, drooped a little forward, suggested a melancholy reverie, nothing more.

The golden locket, which he had shown me that well-remembered night, rested within his shrunken palm. I noted that the side was open which revealed the blazing bar of red. As if absorbed in that same unpleasant thought, there sat the master, dead; dead, and I alone knew his story. How vividly the old man's sorrow came back; how it oppressed me.

I bent down in tender sympathy to look again upon his wasted features, and kneeling, gazed into his wide-open eyes. The calm of promised peace upon his brow was distorted by the unsatisfied expression of one who has left his work undone.

So are the sins of the fathers visited upon their children, for I was no longer in doubt but that the murderer, Pedro Ortez, was the sinning ancestor of my old-time friend. Even in his presence my thoughts flew to Agnes; had she not spoken of her grandsire as being such a man? The stiffening body at my side was speedily forgotten in the music of this meditation.

I gained my feet again and looked down upon him, fascinated by the changeless features of the dead. It was probably natural that standing there I should revolve the whole matter over and over again, from the first I knew of it until the last. A young man's plans, though, work ever with the living; the dead he places in their tomb, covers them with earth, bids them "G.o.d-speed," and banishes the recollection. I was already busy with my contemplated search for the last d'Artin, and stood there leaning against the oaken table pondering over the question, "Where is the last d'Artin?"

My mind wandered, returning with a dogged persistence to that one thought, "Where is the last d'Artin?" "Where could _I_ find him?" My restless eyes roamed round the cheerless room, coming always back to rest upon a long dust-covered mirror set in the wall across the way.

As wind-driven clouds gather and group themselves in fantastic shapes, so, deep in that mirror's shadowy depths, a vague figure gradually took form and character--myself.

With the vacant glance of a man whose mind is intensely preoccupied, I studied minutely the reflection, my own bearing, my dress, my weapons.

I even noted a b.u.t.ton off my coat, and tried dimly to remember where I had lost it, until--great G.o.d--this chamber of death and revelation had turned my brain.

What face was that I saw? My own, a.s.suredly, but so like another.

Aghast, powerless to move or cry out, I stared helplessly into the gla.s.s. Every other sensation vanished now before this new-born terror which held my soul enslaved. I closed my eyes, I dared not look.

My body seemed immovable with horror, but a trembling hand arose and pointed at the mirror. Scant need there was to call attention to that dim, terrible presence; my whole soul shrank from the ghostly face reflected in the gla.s.s. For there, there was the same pallid countenance, death-distorted and drawn, which I had conjured up in many a frightened dream as that of the murdered Count--there was Henri d'Artin.

How long I stood transfixed, pointing into the mirror, I know not. As men think of trifles even in times of deadly fear, so did my lips frame over and over again the last question I had in mind before all sense forsook me, "Where is the last d'Artin? Where is the last d'Artin?

Where--?"

And in answer to my question, that long, rigid finger pointed _directly at me_ from out the dusty gla.s.s. It was as if the hand of the dead had told me who I was.

It had been no blind chance, then, which led me to the Paris house of the "Black Wolf's Head;" the girl's ring with the same device, and the grewsome narrative beneath the shadow of the Wolf at the Norman ruin--nothing less than fate had brought these lights to me.

Verily some more logical power than unreasoning accident must direct the steps of men. A G.o.d of justice perhaps had placed these tokens in my path. And soldiers call this "Fortune."

I dispatched Pachaco to Biloxi with the news of death, and long before the afternoon our few simple arrangements for his funeral had been made.

"Bury me here, Placide, beneath this great oak," he had said to me one day. "The Infinite Mercy will consecrate the grave of penitence, wherever it may be."

He had his wish.

[1] These doc.u.ments have been included in an appendix to this volume.

[2] A very slight investigation showed that this last named Francois Rene Alois de Pasquier was none other than my own good father, who a.s.sumed the name de Mouret to avoid the consequences of a fatal duel in France. This I learned from the pious Cure of St. Martin's, who knew him well.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A NOTE WHICH WENT ASTRAY.

Meanwhile Jacques had undertaken to manage my little affair at Biloxi with tact and discretion. And this is how the fellow did it:

It seems that Jacques thought no harm of the note, and when he took it first to the house my lady was out. The honest fellow, doing his best to carry out my instructions, refused to leave it. When he returned, my lady worked, bent down amongst her flowers, in the little garden beside their cottage. The Chevalier stood some distance off, busied someway, Jacques knew not how, but with his face turned away from my messenger as he came up. Jacques handed the note to my lady through the fence, and she took it gently by the corner, fearing to soil it.

She held it up to look at the name written upon it, and seeing it was her own, looked again more curiously at the writing. She did not know the hand. Then she gaily called to the Chevalier:

"Oh, Charles, come here; see what I have; it is a missive to your wife, and from some gay gallant, too. I do not know the writing. Do you come here and read it to me. My hands are so--" She held up two small white hands dabbled in the dirt.

"Perhaps some invitation to a court ball. We'll go, eh, Agnes?"

He came like the fine, strong gentleman he was, across the garden, taking the note from her and tearing it open. He began straightway to read, my lady on tip-toe behind him reading over his shoulder, and holding her contaminated hands away from his coat. His face grew puzzled at the first, then as he seemed to finish, he stood a pace apart from my lady and read again. There was murder in his face--yet so white and quiet.

He threw down the note and ground it into the soft earth beneath his heel. Then he caught my lady firmly by both her shoulders and held her fast, at full arm's length, gazing steadily into her face.

"G.o.d in heaven," as Jacques said to me; "Master, what eyes has that Chevalier de la Mora! No man could lie to him with those eyes reading what a fellow thought." Jacques could not make himself to leave; he stood rigid and watched.

"Well, Madame?"

"She tried to laugh, but her husband's face forbade that this could be a spark of lover's play.

"Well, Madame?"