George Sand - George Sand - The Collected Works (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 11)

“Tell me,” replied Marcasse, who was still pondering the matter, “did you notice Blaireau at the moment? What did Blaireau do?”

“I thought I saw Blaireau rush at the phantom at the moment when it disappeared; but I suppose I dreamt that like the rest.”

“Hum!” said the sergeant. “When I entered, Blaireau was wildly excited. He kept coming to you, sniffing, whining in his way, running to the bed, scratching the wall, coming to me, running to you. Strange, that! Astonishing, captain, astonishing, that!”

After a silence of a few moments:

“Devil don’t return!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “Dead never return; besides, why dead, John? Not dead! Still two Mauprats! Who knows? Where the devil? Dead don’t return; and my master—mad? Never. Ill? No.”

After this colloquy the sergeant went and fetched a light, drew his faithful sword from the scabbard, whistled Blaireau, and bravely seized the rope which served as a balustrade for the staircase, requesting me to remain below. Great as was my repugnance to entering the room again, I did not hesitate to follow Marcasse, in spite of his recommendation. Our first care was to examine the bed; but while we had been talking in the courtyard the servant had brought clean sheets, had made the bed, and was now smoothing the blankets.

“Who has been sleeping there?” asked Marcasse, with his usual caution.

“Nobody,” she replied, “except M. le Chevalier or M. l’Abbe Aubert, in the days when they used to come.”

“But yesterday, or to-day, I mean?” said Marcasse.

“Oh! yesterday and to-day, nobody, sir; for it is quite two years since M. le Chevalier came here; and as for M. l’Abbe, he never sleeps here, now that he comes alone. He arrives in the morning, has lunch with us, and goes back in the evening.”

“But the bed was disarranged,” said Marcasse, looking at her attentively.

“Oh, well! that may be, sir,” she replied. “I do not know how they left it the last time some one slept here; I did not pay any attention to that as I put on the sheets; all I know is that M. Bernard’s cloak was lying on the top.”

“My cloak?” I exclaimed. “It was left in the stable.”

“And mine, too,” said Marcasse. “I have just folded both together and put them on the corn-bin.”

“You must have had two, then,” replied the servant; “for I am sure I took one off the bed. It was a black cloak, not new.”

Mine, as a fact, was lined with red and trimmed with gold lace. Marcasse’s was light gray. It could not, therefore, have been one of our cloaks brought up for a moment by the man and then taken back to the stable.

“But, what did you do with it?” said the sergeant.

“My word, sir,” replied the fat girl, “I put it there, over the arm-chair. You must have taken it while I went to get a candle. I can’t see it now.”

We searched the room thoroughly; the cloak was not to be found. We pretended that we needed it, not denying that it was ours. The servant unmade the bed in our presence, and then went and asked the man what he had done with it. Nothing could be found either in the bed or in the room; the man had not been upstairs. All the farm-folk were in a state of excitement, fearing that some one might be accused of theft. We inquired if a stranger had not come to Roche-Mauprat, and if he was not still there. When we ascertained that these good people had neither housed or seen any one, we reassured them about the lost cloak by saying that Marcasse had accidentally folded it with the two others. Then we shut ourselves in the room, in order to explore it at our ease; for it was now almost evident that what I had seen was by no means a ghost, but John Mauprat himself, or a man very like him, whom I had mistaken for John.

Marcasse having aroused Blaireau by voice and gesture, watched all his movements.

“Set your mind at rest,” he said with pride; “the old dog has not forgotten his old trade. If there is a hole, a hole as big as your hand, have no fear. Now, old dog! Have no fear.”

Blaireau, indeed, after sniffing everywhere, persisted in scratching the wall where I had seen the apparition; he would start back every time his pointed nose came to a certain spot in the wainscotting; then, wagging his bushy tail with a satisfied air, he would return to his master as if to tell him to concentrate his attention on this spot. The sergeant then began to examine the wall and the woodwork; he tried to insinuate his sword into some crack; there was no sign of an opening. Still, a door might have been there, for the flowers carved on the woodwork would hide a skilfully constructed sliding panel. The essential thing was to find the spring that made this panel work; but that was impossible in spite of all the efforts we made for two long hours. In vain did we try to shake the panel; it gave forth the same sound as the others. They were all sonorous, showing that the wainscot was not in immediate contact with the masonry. Still, there might be a gap of only a few inches between them. At last Marcasse, perspiring profusely, stopped, and said to me:

“This is very stupid; if we searched all night we should not find a spring if there is none; and however hard we hammered, we could not break in the door if there happened to be big iron bars behind it, as I have sometimes seen in other old country-houses.”

“The axe might help us to find a passage,” I said, “if there is one; but why, simply because your dog scratches the wall, persist in believing that John Mauprat, or the man who resembles him, could not have come in and gone out by the door?”

“Come in, if you like,” replied Marcasse, “but gone out—no, on my honour! For, as the servant came down I was on the staircase brushing my boots. As soon as I heard something fall here, I rushed up quickly three stairs at a time, and found that it was you—like a corpse, stretched out on the floor, very ill; no one inside nor outside, on my honour!

“In that case, then, I must have dreamt of my fiend of an uncle, and the servant must have dreamt of the black cloak; for it is pretty certain that there is no secret door here; and even if there were one, and all the Mauprats, living and dead, knew the secret of it, what were that to us? Do we belong to the police that we should hunt out these wretched creatures? And if by chance we found them hidden somewhere, should we not help them to escape, rather than hand them over to justice? We are armed; we need not be afraid that they will assassinate us to-night; and if they amuse themselves by frightening us, my word, woe betide them! I have no eye for either relatives or friends when I am startled in my sleep. So come, let us attack the omelette that these good people my tenants are preparing for us; for if we continue knocking and scratching the walls they will think we are mad.”

Marcasse yielded from a sense of duty rather than from conviction. He seemed to attach great importance to the discovery of this mystery, and to be far from easy in his mind. He was unwilling to let me remain alone in the haunted room, and pretended that I might fall ill again and have a fit.

“Oh, this time,” I said, “I shall not play the coward. The cloak has cured me of my fear of ghosts; and I should not advise any one to meddle with me.”

The hildago was obliged to leave me alone. I loaded my pistols and put them on the table within reach of my hand; but these precautions were a pure waste of time; nothing disturbed the silence of the room, and the heavy red silk curtains, with their coat of arms at the corners in tarnished silver, were not stirred by the slightest breath. Marcasse returned and, delighted at finding me as cheerful as he had left me, began preparing our supper with as much care as if we had come to Roche-Mauprat for the sole purpose of making a good meal. He made jokes about the capon which was still singing on the spit, and about the wine which was so like a brush in the throat. His good humour increased when the tenant appeared, bringing a few bottles of excellent Madeira, which had been left with him by the chevalier, who liked to drink a glass or two before setting foot in the stirrup. In return we invited the worthy man to sup with us, as the least tedious way of discussing business matters.