In a Glass Darkly J. Sheridan Le Fanu (intellectual books to read .TXT) 📖

ago. I was thinking of Colonel Gaillarde, and I stopped the little waiter as he passed me.

“You said, I think, that Colonel Gaillarde was at the Belle Etoile for a week at one time.”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“Is he perfectly in his right mind?”

The waiter stared. “Perfectly, Monsieur.”

“Has he been suspected at any time of being out of his mind?”

“Never, Monsieur; he is a little noisy, but a very shrewd man.”

“What is a fellow to think?” I muttered, as I walked on.

I was soon within sight of the lights of the Belle Etoile. A carriage, with four horses, stood in the moonlight at the door, and a furious altercation was going on in the hall, in which the yell of Colonel Gaillarde out-topped all other sounds.

Most young men like, at least, to witness a row. But, intuitively, I felt that this would interest me in a very special manner. I had only fifty yards to run, when I found myself in the hall of the old inn. The principal actor in this strange drama was, indeed, the Colonel, who stood facing the old Count de St. Alyre, who, in his travelling costume, with his black silk scarf covering the lower part of his face, confronted him; he had evidently been intercepted in an endeavour to reach his carriage. A little in the rear of the Count stood the Countess, also in travelling costume, with her thick black veil down, and holding in her delicate fingers a white rose. You can’t conceive a more diabolical effigy of hate and fury than the Colonel; the knotted veins stood out on his forehead, his eyes were leaping from their sockets, he was grinding his teeth, and froth was on his lips. His sword was drawn, in his hand, and he accompanied his yelling denunciations with stamps upon the floor and flourishes of his weapon in the air.

The host of the Belle Etoile was talking to the Colonel in soothing terms utterly thrown away. Two waiters, pale with fear, stared uselessly from behind. The Colonel screamed, and thundered, and whirled his sword. “I was not sure of your red birds of prey; I could not believe you would have the audacity to travel on high roads, and to stop at honest inns, and lie under the same roof with honest men. You! you! both⁠—vampires, wolves, ghouls. Summon the gendarmes, I say. By St. Peter and all the devils, if either of you try to get out of that door I’ll take your heads off.”

For a moment I had stood aghast. Here was a situation! I walked up to the lady; she laid her hand wildly upon my arm. “Oh! Monsieur,” she whispered, in great agitation, “that dreadful madman! What are we to do? He won’t let us pass; he will kill my husband.”

“Fear nothing, Madame,” I answered, with romantic devotion, and stepping between the Count and Gaillarde, as he shrieked his invective, “Hold your tongue, and clear the way, you ruffian, you bully, you coward!” I roared.

A faint cry escaped the lady, which more than repaid the risk I ran, as the sword of the frantic soldier, after a moment’s astonished pause, flashed in the air to cut me down.

VII The White Rose

I was too quick for Colonel Gaillarde. As he raised his sword, reckless of all consequences but my condign punishment, and quite resolved to cleave me to the teeth, I struck him across the side of his head, with my heavy stick; and while he staggered back, I struck him another blow, nearly in the same place, that felled him to the floor, where he lay as if dead.

I did not care one of his own regimental buttons, whether he was dead or not; I was, at that moment, carried away by such a tumult of delightful and diabolical emotions!

I broke his sword under my foot, and flung the pieces across the street. The old Count de St. Alyre skipped nimbly without looking to the right or left, or thanking anybody, over the floor, out of the door, down the steps, and into his carriage. Instantly I was at the side of the beautiful Countess, thus left to shift for herself; I offered her my arm, which she took, and I led her to her carriage. She entered, and I shut the door. All this without a word.

I was about to ask if there were any commands with which she would honour me⁠—my hand was laid upon the lower edge of the window, which was open.

The lady’s hand was laid upon mine timidly and excitedly. Her lips almost touched my cheek as she whispered hurriedly.

“I may never see you more, and, oh! that I could forget you. Go⁠—farewell⁠—for God’s sake, go!”

I pressed her hand for a moment. She withdrew it, but tremblingly pressed into mine the rose which she had held in her fingers during the agitating scene she had just passed through.

All this took place while the Count was commanding, entreating, cursing his servants, tipsy, and out of the way during the crisis, my conscience afterwards insinuated, by my clever contrivance. They now mounted to their places with the agility of alarm. The postillions’ whips cracked, the horses scrambled into a trot, and away rolled the carriage, with its precious freightage, along the quaint main street, in the moonlight, toward Paris.

I stood on the pavement, till it was quite lost to eye and ear in the distance.

With a deep sigh, I then turned, my white rose folded in my handkerchief⁠—the little parting gage⁠—the

“Favour secret, sweet, and precious;”

which no mortal eye but hers and mine had seen conveyed to me.

The care of the host of the Belle Etoile, and his assistants, had raised the wounded hero of a hundred fights partly against the wall, and propped him at each side with portmanteaus and pillows, and poured a glass of brandy, which was duly placed to his account, into his big mouth, where, for the