The Woman of Mystery

"Would you know her again if you saw her, Paul?"

"Would I know her again! I should know her among a thousand. Even if she were disfigured by age, I should discover in the wrinkles of the old woman that she had become the face of the younger woman who stabbed my father to death on that September evening. Know her again! Why, I noticed the very shade of the dress she wore! It seems incredible, but there it is. A gray dress, with a black lace scarf over the shoulders; and here, in the bodice, by way of a brooch, a heavy cameo, set in a gold snake with ruby eyes. You see, Élisabeth, I have not forgotten and I never shall forget."

He ceased. Élisabeth was crying. The past which her husband had revealed to her was filling her with the same sense of horror and bitterness. He drew her to him and kissed her on the forehead.

"You are right not to forget," she said. "The murder will be punished because it has to be punished. But you must not let your life be subject to these memories of hatred. There are two of us now and we love each other. Let us look towards the future."

The Château d'Ornequin is a handsome sixteenth century building of simple design, with four peaked turrets, tall windows with denticulated pinnacles and a light balustrade projecting above the first story. The esplanade is formed by well-kept lawns which surround the courtyard and lead on the right and left to gardens, woods and orchards. One side of these lawns ends in a broad terrace overlooking the valley of the Liseron. On this terrace, in a line with the house, stand the majestic ruins of a four-square castle-keep.

The whole wears a very stately air. The estate, surrounded by farms and fields, demands active and careful working for its maintenance. It is one of the largest in the department.

Seventeen years before, at the sale held upon the death of the last Baron d'Ornequin, Élisabeth's father, the Comte d'Andeville, bought it at his wife's desire. He had been married for five years and had resigned his commission in the cavalry in order to devote himself entirely to the woman he loved. A chance journey brought them to Ornequin just as the sale, which had hardly been advertised in the local press, was about to be held. Hermine d'Andeville fell in love with the house and the domain; and the Count, who was looking for an estate whose management would occupy his spare time effected the purchase through his lawyer by private treaty.

During the winter that followed, he directed from Paris the work of restoration which was necessitated by the state of disrepair in which the former owner had left the house. M. d'Andeville wished it to be not only comfortable but also elegant; and, little by little, he sent down all the tapestries, pictures, objects of art and knicknacks that adorned his house in Paris.

They were not able to take up their residence until August. They then spent a few delightful weeks with their dear Élisabeth, at this time four years old, and their son, Bernard, a lusty boy to whom the Countess had given birth that same year. Hermine d'Andeville was devoted to her children and never went beyond the confines of the park. The Count looked after his farms and shot over his coverts, accompanied by Jérôme, his gamekeeper, a worthy Alsatian, who had been in the late owner's service and who knew every yard of the estate.

At the end of October, the Countess took cold; the illness that followed was pretty serious; and the Comte d'Andeville decided to take her and the children to the south. A fortnight later she had a relapse; and in three days she was dead.

The Count experienced the despair which makes a man feel that life is over and that, whatever happens, he will never again know the sense of joy nor even an alleviation of any sort. He lived not so much for the sake of his children as to cherish within himself the cult of her whom he had lost and to perpetuate a memory which now became the sole reason of his existence.

He was unable to return to the Château d'Ornequin, where he had known too perfect a happiness; on the other hand, he would not have strangers live there; and he ordered Jérôme to keep the doors and shutters closed and to lock up the Countess' boudoir and bedroom in such a way that no one could ever enter. Jérôme was also to let the farms and to collect the tenants' rents.

This break with the past was not enough to satisfy the Count. It seems strange in a man who existed only for the sake of his wife's memory, but everything that reminded him of her – familiar objects, domestic surroundings, places and landscapes – became a torture to him; and his very children filled him with a sense of discomfort which he was unable to overcome. He had an elder sister, a widow, living in the country, at Chaumont. He placed his daughter Élisabeth and his son Bernard in her charge and went abroad.

Aunt Aline was the most devoted and unselfish of women; and under her care Élisabeth enjoyed a grave, studious and affectionate childhood in which her heart developed together with her mind and her character. She received the education almost of a boy, together with a strong moral discipline. At the age of twenty, she had grown into a tall, capable, fearless girl, whose face, inclined by nature to be melancholy, sometimes lit up with the fondest and most innocent of smiles. It was one of those faces which reveal beforehand the pangs and raptures held in store by fate. The tears were never far from her eyes, which seemed as though troubled by the spectacle of life. Her hair, with its bright curls, lent a certain gaiety to her appearance.

At each visit that the Comte d'Andeville paid his daughter between his wanderings he fell more and more under her charm. He took her one winter to Spain and the next to Italy. It was in this way that she became acquainted with Paul Delroze at Rome and met him again at Naples and Syracuse, from which town Paul accompanied the d'Andevilles on a long excursion through Sicily. The intimacy thus formed attached the two young people by a bond of which they did not realize the full strength till the time came for parting.

Like Élisabeth, Paul had been brought up in the country and, again like her, by a fond kinswoman who strove, by dint of loving care, to make him forget the tragedy of his childhood. Though oblivion failed to come, at any rate she succeeded in continuing his father's work and in making of Paul a manly and industrious lad, interested in books, life and the doings of mankind. He went to school and, after performing his military service, spent two years in Germany, studying some of his favorite industrial and mechanical subjects on the spot.

Tall and well set up, with his black hair flung back from his rather thin face, with its determined chin, he made an impression of strength and energy.

His meeting with Élisabeth revealed to him a world of ideas and emotions which he had hitherto disdained. For him as for her it was a sort of intoxication mingled with amazement. Love created in them two new souls, light and free as air, whose ready enthusiasm and expansiveness formed a sharp contrast with the habits enforced upon them by the strict tendency of their lives. On his return to France he asked for Élisabeth's hand in marriage and obtained her consent.

On the day of the marriage contract, three days before the wedding, the Comte d'Andeville announced that he would add the Château d'Ornequin to Élisabeth's dowry. The young couple decided that they would live there and that Paul should look about in the valleys of the neighboring manufacturing district for some works which he could buy and manage.

They were married on Thursday, the 30th of July, at Chaumont. It was a quiet wedding, because of the rumors of war, though the Comte d'Andeville, on the strength of information to which he attached great credit, declared that no war would take place. At the breakfast in which the two families took part, Paul made the acquaintance of Bernard d'Andeville, Élisabeth's brother, a schoolboy of barely seventeen, whose holidays had just begun. Paul took to him, because of his frank bearing and high spirits; and it was arranged that Bernard should join them in a few days at Ornequin. At one o'clock Élisabeth and Paul left Chaumont by train. They were going hand-in-hand to the château where the first years of their marriage were to be spent and perhaps all that happy and peaceful future which opens up before the dazzling eyes of lovers.

It was half-past six o'clock when they saw Jérôme's wife standing at the foot of the steps. Rosalie was a stout, motherly body with ruddy, mottled cheeks and a cheerful face.

Before dining, they took a hurried turn in the garden and went over the house. Élisabeth could not contain her emotion. Though there were no memories to excite her, she seemed, nevertheless, to rediscover something of the mother whom she had known for such a little while, whose features she could not remember and who had here spent the last happy days of her life. For her, the shade of the dead woman still trod those garden paths. The great, green lawns exhaled a special fragrance. The leaves on the trees rustled in the wind with a whisper which she seemed already to have heard in that same spot and at the same hour of the day, with her mother listening beside her.

"You seem depressed, Élisabeth," said Paul.

"Not depressed, but unsettled. I feel as though my mother were welcoming us to this place where she thought she was to live and where we have come with the same intention. And I somehow feel anxious. It is as though I were a stranger, an intruder, disturbing the rest and peace of the house. Only think! My mother has been here all alone for such a time! My father would never come here; and I was telling myself that we have no right to come here either, with our indifference for everything that is not ourselves."

Paul smiled:

"Élisabeth, my darling, you are simply feeling that impression of uneasiness which one always feels on arriving at a new place in the evening."

"I don't know," she said. "I daresay you are right… But I can't shake off the uneasiness; and that is so unlike me. Do you believe in presentiments, Paul?"

"No, do you?"

"No, I don't either," she said, laughing and giving him her lips.

They were surprised to find that the rooms of the house looked as if they had been constantly inhabited. By the Count's orders, everything had remained as it was in the far-off days of Hermine d'Andeville. The knickknacks were there, in the same places, and every piece of embroidery, every square of lace, every miniature, all the handsome eighteenth century chairs, all the Flemish tapestry, all the furniture which the Count had collected in the old days to add to the beauty of his house. They were thus entering from the first into a charming and home-like setting.

After dinner they returned to the gardens, where they strolled to and fro in silence, with their arms entwined round each other's waists. From the terrace they looked down upon the dark valley, with a few lights gleaming here and there. The old castle-keep raised its massive ruins against a pale sky, in which a remnant of vague light still lingered.

"Paul," said Élisabeth, in a low voice, "did you notice, as we went over the house, a door closed with a great padlock?"

"In the middle of the chief corridor, near your bedroom, you mean?"

"Yes. That was my poor mother's boudoir. My father insisted that it should be locked, as well as the bedroom leading out of it; and Jérôme put a padlock on the door and sent him the key. No one has set foot in it since. It is just as my mother left it. All her own things – her unfinished work, her books – are there. And on the wall facing the door, between the two windows that have always been kept shut, is her portrait, which my father had ordered a year before of a great painter of his acquaintance, a full-length portrait which, I understand, is the very image of her. Her prie-Dieu is beside it. This morning my father gave me the key of the boudoir and I promised him that I would kneel down on the prie-Dieu and say a prayer before the portrait of the mother whom I hardly knew and whose features I cannot imagine, for I never even had a photograph of her."

"Really? How was that?"

"You see, my father loved my mother so much that, in obedience to a feeling which he himself was unable to explain, he wished to be alone in his recollection of her. He wanted his memories to be hidden deep down in himself, so that nothing would remind him of her except his own will and his grief. He almost begged my pardon for it this morning, said that perhaps he had done me a wrong; and that is why he wants us to go together, Paul, on this first evening, and pray before the picture of my poor dead mother."

"Let us go now, Élisabeth."

Her hand trembled in her husband's hand as they climbed the stairs to the first floor. Lamps had been lighted all along the passage. They stopped in front of a tall, wide door surmounted with gilded carvings.

"Unfasten the lock, Paul," said Élisabeth.

Her voice shook as she spoke. She handed him the key. He removed the padlock and seized the door-handle. But Élisabeth suddenly gripped her husband's arm:

"One moment, Paul, one moment! I feel so upset. This is the first time that I shall look on my mother's face.. and you, my dearest, are beside me… I feel as if I were becoming a little girl again."

"Yes," he said, pressing her hand passionately, "a little girl and a grown woman in one."

Comforted by the clasp of his hand, she released hers and whispered:

"We will go in now, Paul darling."

He opened the door and returned to the passage to take a lamp from a bracket on the wall and place it on the table. Meanwhile, Élisabeth had walked across the room and was standing in front of the picture. Her mother's face was in the shadow and she altered the position of the lamp so as to throw the full light upon it.

"How beautiful she is, Paul!"

He went up to the picture and raised his head. Élisabeth sank to her knees on the prie-Dieu. But presently, hearing Paul turn round, she looked up at him and was stupefied by what she saw. He was standing motionless, livid in the face, his eyes wide open, as though gazing at the most frightful vision.

"Paul," she cried, "what's the matter?"

He began to make for the door, stepping backwards, unable to take his eyes from the portrait of Hermine d'Andeville. He was staggering like a drunken man; and his arms beat the air around him.

"That.. that." he stammered, hoarsely.

"Paul," Élisabeth entreated, "what is it? What are you trying to say?"

"That.. that is the woman who killed my father!"

CHAPTER III

THE CALL TO ARMS

The hideous accusation was followed by an awful silence. Élisabeth was now standing in front of her husband, striving to understand his words, which had not yet acquired their real meaning for her, but which hurt her as though she had been stabbed to the heart.

She moved towards him and, with her eyes in his, spoke in a voice so low that he could hardly hear:

"You surely can't mean what you said, Paul? The thing is too monstrous!"

He replied in the same tone:

"Yes, it is a monstrous thing. I don't believe it myself yet. I refuse to believe it."

"Then – it's a mistake, isn't it? – Confess it, you've made a mistake."

She implored him with all the distress that filled her being, as though she were hoping to make him yield. He fixed his eyes again on the accursed portrait, over his wife's shoulder, and shivered from head to foot:

"Oh, it is she!" he declared, clenching his fists. "It is she – I recognize her – it is the woman who killed my – "

A shock of protest ran through her body; and, beating her breast, she cried:

"My mother! My mother a murderess! My mother, whom my father used to worship and went on worshiping! My mother, who used to hold me on her knee and kiss me! – I have forgotten everything about her except that, her kisses and her caresses! And you tell me that she is a murderess!"

"It is true."

"Oh, Paul, you must not say anything so horrible! How can you be positive, such a long time after? You were only a child; and you saw so little of the woman.. hardly a few minutes."

"I saw more of her than it seems humanly possible to see," exclaimed Paul, loudly. "From the moment of the murder her image never left my sight. I have tried to shake it off at times, as one tries to shake off a nightmare; but I could not. And the image is there, hanging on the wall. As sure as I live, it is there; I know it as I should know your image after twenty years. It is she.. why, look, on her breast, that brooch set in a gold snake!.. a cameo, as I told you, and the snake's eyes.. two rubies!.. and the black lace scarf around the shoulders! It's she, I tell you, it's the woman I saw!"

A growing rage excited him to frenzy; and he shook his fist at the portrait of Hermine d'Andeville.

"Hush!" cried Élisabeth, under the torment of his words. "Hold your tongue! I won't allow you to."

She tried to put her hand on his mouth to compel him to silence. But Paul made a movement of repulsion, as though he were shrinking from his wife's touch; and the movement was so abrupt and so instinctive that she fell to the ground sobbing while he, incensed, exasperated by his sorrow and hatred, impelled by a sort of terrified hallucination that drove him back to the door, shouted:

"Look at her! Look at her wicked mouth, her pitiless eyes! She is thinking of the murder!.. I see her, I see her!.. She goes up to my father.. she leads him away.. she raises her arm.. and she kills him!.. Oh, the wretched, monstrous woman!."

He rushed from the room.

Paul spent the night in the park, running like a madman wherever the dark paths led him, or flinging himself, when tired out, on the grass and weeping, weeping endlessly.

Paul Delroze had known no suffering save from his memory of the murder, a chastened suffering which, nevertheless, at certain periods became acute until it smarted like a fresh wound. This time the pain was so great and so unexpected that, notwithstanding his usual self-mastery and his well-balanced mind, he utterly lost his head. His thoughts, his actions, his attitudes, the words which he yelled into the darkness were those of a man who has parted with his self-control.

One thought and one alone kept returning to his seething brain, in which his ideas and impressions whirled like leaves in the wind; one terrible thought:

"I know the woman who killed my father; and that woman's daughter is the woman whom I love."

Did he still love her? No doubt, he was desperately mourning a happiness which he knew to be shattered; but did he still love Élisabeth? Could he love Hermine d'Andeville's daughter?

When he went indoors at daybreak and passed Élisabeth's room, his heart beat no faster than before. His hatred of the murderess destroyed all else that might stir within him: love, affection, longing, or even the merest human pity.

The torpor into which he sank for a few hours relaxed his nerves a little, but did not change his mental attitude. Perhaps, on the contrary, and without even thinking about it, he was still more unwilling than before to meet Élisabeth. And yet he wanted to know, to ascertain, to gather all the essential particulars and to make quite certain before taking the resolve that would decide the great tragedy of his life in one way or another.

Above all, he must question Jérôme and his wife, whose evidence was of no small value, owing to the fact that they had known the Comtesse d'Andeville. Certain matters concerning the dates, for instance, might be cleared up forthwith.

He found them in their lodge, both of them greatly excited, Jérôme with a newspaper in his hand and Rosalie making gestures of dismay.

"It's settled, sir," cried Jérôme. "You can be sure of it: it's coming!"

"What?" asked Paul.

"Mobilization, sir, the call to arms. You'll see it does. I saw some gendarmes, friends of mine, and they told me. The posters are ready."

Paul remarked, absent-mindedly:

"The posters are always ready."

"Yes, but they're going to stick them up at once, you'll see, sir. Just look at the paper. Those swine – you'll forgive me, sir, but it's the only word for them – those swine want war. Austria would be willing to negotiate, but in the meantime the others have been mobilizing for several days. Proof is, they won't let you cross into their country any more. And worse: yesterday they destroyed a French railway station, not far from here, and pulled up the rails. Read it for yourself, sir!"

Paul skimmed through the stop-press telegrams, but, though he saw that they were serious, war seemed to him such an unlikely thing that he did not pay much attention to them.

"It'll be settled all right," he said. "That's just their way of talking, with their hand on the sword-hilt; but I can't believe."

"You're wrong, sir," Rosalie muttered.

He no longer listened, thinking only of the tragedy of his fate and casting about for the best means of obtaining the necessary replies from Jérôme. But he was not able to contain himself any longer and he broached the subject frankly:

"I daresay you know, Jérôme, that madame and I have been to the Comtesse d'Andeville's room."

The statement produced an extraordinary effect upon the keeper and his wife, as though it had been a sacrilege to enter that room so long kept locked, the mistress' room, as they called it among themselves.

"You don't mean that, sir!" Rosalie blurted out.

And Jérôme added:

"No, of course not, for I sent the only key of the padlock, a safety-key it was, to Monsieur le Comte."

"He gave it us yesterday morning," said Paul.

And, without troubling further about their amazement, he proceeded straightaway to put his questions:

"There is a portrait of the Comtesse d'Andeville between the two windows. When was it hung there?"

Jérôme did not reply at once. He thought for a moment, looked at his wife, and then said:

"Why, that's easily answered. It was when Monsieur le Comte sent all his furniture to the house.. before they moved in."

"When was that?"

Paul's agony was unendurable during the three or four seconds before the reply.

"Well?" he asked.

When the reply came at last it was decisive:

"Well, it was in the spring of 1898."

"Eighteen hundred and ninety-eight!"

Paul repeated the words in a dull voice: 1898 was the year of his father's murder!

Without stopping to reflect, with the coolness of an examining magistrate who does not swerve from the line which he has laid out, he asked:

"So the Comte and Comtesse d'Andeville arrived."

"Monsieur le Comte and Madame le Comtesse arrived at the castle on the 28th of August, 1898, and left for the south on the 24th of October."

Paul now knew the truth, for his father was murdered on the 19th of September. And all the circumstances which depended on that truth, which explained it in its main details or which proceeded from it at once appeared to him. He remembered that his father was on friendly terms with the Comte d'Andeville. He said to himself that his father, in the course of his journey in Alsace, must have learnt that his friend d'Andeville was living in Lorraine and must have contemplated paying him a surprise visit. He reckoned up the distance between Ornequin and Strasburg, a distance which corresponded with the time spent in the train. And he asked:

"How far is this from the frontier?"

"Three miles and three-quarters, sir."

"On the other side, at no great distance, there's a little German town, is there not?"

"Yes, sir, Èbrecourt."

"Is there a short-cut to the frontier?"

"Yes, sir, for about half-way: a path at the other end of the park."

"Through the woods?"

"Through Monsieur le Comte's woods."

"And in those woods."

To acquire total, absolute certainty, that certainty which comes not from an interpretation of the facts but from the facts themselves, which would stand out visible and palpable, all that he had to do was to put the last question: in those woods was not there a little chapel in the middle of a glade? Paul Delroze did not put the question. Perhaps he thought it too precise, perhaps he feared lest it should induce the gamekeeper to entertain thoughts and comparisons which the nature of the conversation was already sufficient to warrant. He merely asked: