The House of the Wolf, Stanley Weyman [most inspirational books of all time TXT] 📗

in the darkness, the strokes of the great bell in my ears, I had a moment in which to think. The sense of the vibrating depth below me, the airiness, the space and gloom around, frightened me. "Are you ready?" muttered Marie, perhaps with a little impatience. He had not a scrap of imagination, had Marie.

"No! wait a minute!" I blurted out, clinging to the sill, and taking a last look at the bare room, and the two dark figures between me and the light. "No!" I added, hurriedly. "Croisette--boys, I called you cowards just now. I take it back! I did not mean it! That is all!" I gasped. "Let go!"

A warm touch on my hand. Something like a sob.

The next moment I felt myself sliding down the face of the house, down into the depth. The light shot up. My head turned giddily. I clung, oh, how I clung to that rope! Half way down the thought struck me that in case of accident those above might not be strong enough to pull me up again. But it was too late to think of that, and in another second my feet touched the beam. I breathed again. Softly, very gingerly, I made good my footing on the slender bridge, and, disengaging the rope, let it go. Then, not without another qualm, I sat down astride of the beam, and whistled in token of success. Success so far!

It was a strange position, and I have often dreamed of it since. In the darkness about me Paris lay to all seeming asleep. A veil, and not the veil of night only, was stretched between it and me; between me, a mere lad, and the strange secrets of a great city; stranger, grimmer, more deadly that night than ever before or since. How many men were watching under those dimly-seen roofs, with arms in their hands? How many sat with murder at heart? How many were waking, who at dawn would sleep for ever, or sleeping who would wake only at the knife's edge? These things I could not know, any more than I could picture how many boon-companions were parting at that instant, just risen from the dice, one to go blindly--the other watching him--to his death? I could not imagine, thank Heaven for it, these secrets, or a hundredth part of the treachery and cruelty and greed that lurked at my feet, ready to burst all bounds at a pistol-shot. It had no significance for me that the past day was the 23rd of August, or that the morrow was St. Bartholomew's feast!

No. Yet mingled with the jubilation which the possibility of triumph over our enemy raised in my breast, there was certainly a foreboding. The Vidame's hints, no less than his open boasts, had pointed to something to happen before morning--something wider than the mere murder of a single man. The warning also which the Baron de Rosny had given us at the inn occurred to me with new meaning. And I could not shake the feeling off. I fancied, as I sat in the darkness astride of my beam, that I could see, closing the narrow vista of the street, the heavy mass of the Louvre; and that the murmur of voices and the tramp of men assembling came from its courts, with now and again the stealthy challenge of a sentry, the restrained voice of an officer. Scarcely a wayfarer passed beneath me: so few, indeed, that I had no fear of being detected from below. And yet unless I was mistaken, a furtive step, a subdued whisper were borne to me on every breeze, from every quarter. And the night was full of phantoms.

Perhaps all this was mere nervousness, the outcome of my position. At any rate I felt no more of it when Croisette joined me. We had our daggers, and that gave me some comfort. If we could once gain entrance to the house opposite, we had only to beg, or in the last resort force our way downstairs and out, and then to hasten with what speed we might to Pavannes' dwelling. Clearly it was a question of time only now; whether Bezers' band or we should first reach it. And struck by this I whispered Marie to be quick. He seemed to be long in coming.

He scrambled down hand over hand at last, and then I saw that he had not lingered above for nothing. He had contrived after getting out of the window to let down the shutter. And more he had at some risk lengthened our rope, and made a double line of it, so that it ran round a hinge of the shutter; and when he stood beside us, he took it by one end and disengaged it. Good, clever Marie!

"Bravo!" I said softly, clapping him on the back. "Now they will not know which way the birds have flown!"

So there we all were, one of us, I confess, trembling. We slid easily enough along the beam to the opposite house. But once there in a row one behind the other with our faces to the wall, and the night air blowing slantwise--well I am nervous on a height and I gasped. The window was a good six feet above the beam, The casement--it was unglazed--was open, veiled by a thin curtain, and alas! protected by three horizontal bars--stout bars they looked.

Yet we were bound to get up, and to get in; and I was preparing to rise to my feet on the giddy bridge as gingerly as I could, when Marie crawled quickly over us, and swung himself up to the narrow sill, much as I should mount a horse on the level. He held out his foot to me, and making an effort I reached the same dizzy perch. Croisette for the time remained below.

A narrow window-ledge sixty feet above the pavement, and three bars to cling to! I cowered to my holdfasts, envying even Croisette. My legs dangled airily, and the black chasm of the street seemed to yawn for me. For a moment I turned sick. I recovered from that to feel desperate. I remembered that go forward we must, bars or no bars. We could not regain our old prison if we would.

It was equally clear that we could not go forward if the inmates should object. On that narrow perch even Marie was helpless. The bars of the window were close together. A woman, a child, could disengage our hands, and then--I turned sick again. I thought of the cruel stones. I glued my face to the bars, and pushing aside a corner of the curtain, looked in.

There was only one person in the room--a woman, who was moving about fully dressed, late as it was. The room was a mere attic, the counterpart of that we had left. A box-bed with a canopy roughly nailed over it stood in a corner. A couple of chairs were by the hearth, and all seemed to speak of poverty and bareness. Yet the woman whom we saw was richly dressed, though her silks and velvets were disordered. I saw a jewel gleam in her hair, and others on her hands. When she turned her face towards us--a wild, beautiful face, perplexed and tear-stained--I knew her instantly for a gentlewoman, and when she walked hastily to the door, and laid her hand upon it, and seemed to listen--when she shook the latch and dropped her hands in despair and went back to the hearth, I made another discovery I knew at once, seeing her there, that we were likely but to change one prison for another. Was every house in Paris then a dungeon? And did each roof cover its tragedy?

"Madame!" I said, speaking softly, to attract her attention. "Madame!"

She started violently, not knowing whence the sound came, and looked round, at the door first. Then she moved towards the window, and with an affrighted gesture drew the curtain rapidly aside.

Our eyes met. What if she screamed and aroused the house? What, indeed? "Madame," I said again, speaking hurriedly, and striving to reassure her by the softness of my voice, "we implore your help! Unless you assist us we are lost."

"You! Who are you?" she cried, glaring at us wildly, her hand to her head. And then she murmured to herself, "Mon Dieu! what will become of me?"

"We have been imprisoned in the house opposite," I hastened to explain, disjointedly I am afraid. "And we have escaped. We cannot get back if we would. Unless you let us enter your room and give us shelter--"

"We shall be dashed to pieces on the pavement," supplied Marie, with perfect calmness--nay, with apparent enjoyment.

"Let you in here?" she answered, starting back in new terror; "it is impossible."

She reminded me of our cousin, being, like her pale and dark-haired. She wore her hair in a coronet, disordered now. But though she was still beautiful, she was older than Kit, and lacked her pliant grace. I saw all this, and judging her nature, I spoke out of my despair. "Madame," I said piteously, "we are only boys. Croisette! Come up!" Squeezing myself still more tightly into my corner of the ledge, I made room for him between us. "See, Madame," I cried, craftily, "will you not have pity on three boys?"

St. Crois's boyish face and fair hair arrested her attention, as I had expected. Her expression grew softer, and she murmured, "Poor boy!"

I caught at the opportunity. "We do but seek a passage through your room," I said fervently. Good heavens, what had we not at stake! What if she should remain obdurate? "We are in trouble--in despair," I panted. "So, I believe, are you. We will help you if you will first save us. We are boys, but we can fight for you."

"Whom am I to trust?" she exclaimed, with a shudder. "But heaven forbid," she continued, her eyes on Croisette's face, "that, wanting help, I should refuse to give it. Come in, if you will."

I poured out my thanks, and had forced my head between the bars--at imminent risk of its remaining there--before the words were well out of her mouth. But to enter was no easy task after all. Croisette did, indeed, squeeze through at last, and then by force pulled first one and then the other of us after him. But only necessity and that chasm behind could have nerved us, I think, to go through a process so painful. When I stood, at length on the floor, I seemed to be one great abrasion from head to foot. And before a lady, too!

But what a joy I felt, nevertheless. A fig for Bezers now. He had called us boys; and we were boys. But he should yet find that we could thwart him. It could be scarcely half-an-hour after midnight; we might still be in time. I stretched myself and trod the level door jubilantly, and then noticed, while doing so, that our hostess had retreated to the door and