XCVII. La route de Belgique.
XCVII
The Road to Belgium.
A few moments after the scene of confusion produced in M. Danglars's salons by the unexpected appearance of the brigadier of gendarmes, and by the revelation that had followed it, the vast hôtel had emptied with a rapidity akin to that which would have been brought about by the announcement of a case of plague or cholera among the guests: in a few minutes, by every door, every staircase, every exit, each had hastened to withdraw, or rather to flee; for this was one of those circumstances in which one must not even attempt to offer those banal consolations which, in great catastrophes, make the best friends so importunate.
There remained in the banker's hôtel only Danglars, shut up in his study and making his deposition into the hands of the gendarme officer; Mme Danglars, terrified, in the boudoir we know; and Eugénie, who, with haughty eye and disdainful lip, had retired to her room with her inseparable companion, Mlle Louise d'Armilly.
As for the numerous servants, even more numerous that evening than usual, for, on account of the party, the ice-cream makers, cooks, and head waiters of the Café de Paris had been added to them, turning against their masters the anger of what they called their humiliation, they stood about in groups in the servants' hall, the kitchens, their rooms, caring very little for the service, which was moreover quite naturally interrupted.
Amid these various personages, trembling with diverse interests, only two deserve that we occupy ourselves with them: Mlle Eugénie Danglars and Mlle Louise d'Armilly.
The young fiancée, we have said, had withdrawn with haughty air, disdainful lip, and the step of an outraged queen, followed by her companion, paler and more moved than she.
On arriving in her room, Eugénie locked her door from within, while Louise fell upon a chair.
“Oh! my God, my God! the horrible thing,” said the young musician; “and who could have suspected it? M. Andrea Cavalcanti… a murderer… an escaped convict… a felon!”
An ironic smile curled Eugénie's lips.
“Truly, I was predestined,” said she. “I escape the Morcerf only to fall into the Cavalcanti!
“Oh! do not confound the one with the other, Eugénie.”
“Be silent; all men are scoundrels, and I am happy to be able to do more than hate them; now, I despise them.”
“What shall we do?” asked Louise.
“What we shall do?
“Yes.”
“But what we were to do in three days… depart.”
“Thus, although you are no longer marrying, you still wish to—?”
“Listen, Louise, I have in horror this life of the world, ordered, measured, regulated like our music paper. What I have always desired, ambitioned, willed, is the life of an artist, the free, independent life, where one answers to none but oneself, where one gives account to none but oneself. To remain, for what? so that within a month they try to marry me again; to whom? to M. Debray, perhaps, as was for a moment in question. No, Louise; no, the adventure of this evening shall be my excuse: I sought none, I asked for none; God sends me this one, it is welcome.”
“How strong and courageous you are!” said the blonde and frail young girl to her brunette companion.
“Did you not know me yet? Come, let us see, Louise, let us talk of all our affairs. The post-chaise—”
“Is happily bought these three days.”
“Have you had it brought to where we were to take it?”
“Yes.”
“Our passport?”
“Here it is!”
And Eugénie, with her habitual composure, unfolded a paper and read:
“M. Léon d'Armilly, aged twenty years, profession artist, black hair, black eyes, traveling with his sister.”
“Admirable! By whom did you procure this passport?”
“In going to ask M. de Monte-Cristo for letters to the directors of the theaters of Rome and Naples, I expressed to him my fears of traveling as a woman; he perfectly understood them, placed himself at my disposal to procure me a man's passport; and, two days after, I received this one, to which I added in my own hand: _Traveling with his sister._”
“Well,” said Eugénie gaily, “it remains only to make our trunks: we shall leave the evening of the signing of the contract, instead of leaving the evening of the wedding: that is all.”
“Reflect well, Eugénie.”
“Oh! all my reflections are made; I am weary of hearing nothing but renewals, end of months, rise, fall, Spanish funds, Haitian paper. Instead of that, Louise, do you understand the air, liberty, the song of birds, the plains of Lombardy, the canals of Venice, the palaces of Rome, the shore of Naples? How much do we possess, Louise?”
The young girl who was questioned drew from an inlaid secretary a small locked portfolio which she opened, and in which she counted twenty-three banknotes.
“Twenty-three thousand francs,” said she.
“And as much again at least in pearls, diamonds, and jewels,” said Eugénie. “We are rich. With forty-five thousand francs, we have enough to live like princesses for two years or decently for four.
“But before six months, you with your music, I with my voice, we shall have doubled our capital. Come, you take charge of the money, I take charge of the jewel-case; so that if one of us had the misfortune to lose her treasure, the other would always have hers. Now, the valise: let us hurry, the valise!”
“Wait,” said Louise, going to listen at Mme Danglars's door.
“What do you fear?”
“That we may be surprised.”
“The door is locked.”
“That we may be told to open it.”
“Let them say so if they will, we do not open.”
“You are a veritable amazon, Eugénie.”
And the two young girls set themselves, with prodigious activity, to heap into a trunk all the traveling objects of which they believed themselves to have need.
“There, now,” said Eugénie, “while I go change my costume, you fasten the trunk.”
Louise pressed with all the force of her small white hands upon the lid of the trunk.
“But I cannot,” said she, “I am not strong enough; fasten it, you.”
“Ah! that is just,” said Eugénie laughing, “I forgot that I am Hercules, and that you are but the pale Omphale.”
And the young girl, placing her knee on the trunk, stiffened her white and muscular arms until the two compartments of the valise were joined, and Mlle d'Armilly had passed the hook of the padlock between the two staples.
This operation terminated, Eugénie opened a commode of which she had the key upon her, and drew from it a traveling mantle of wadded violet silk.
“Here,” said she, “you see that I have thought of everything; with this mantle you will not be cold.”
“But you?”
“Oh! I never have cold, you know well; besides, with these men's clothes…”
“You are going to dress here?”
“Doubtless.”
“But will you have time?”
“Have not the least uneasiness, coward; all our people are occupied with the great affair. Besides, what is astonishing, when one thinks of the despair in which I must be, that I should have locked myself in, say?”
“No, it is true, you reassure me.”
“Come, help me.”
And from the same drawer from which she had taken the mantle she had just given to Mlle d'Armilly, and which the latter had already drawn over her shoulders, she drew a complete man's costume, from the boots to the frock-coat, with a supply of linen wherein there was nothing superfluous, but wherein was found the necessary.
Then, with a quickness which indicated that it was doubtless not the first time that, in play, she had donned the clothes of the other sex, Eugénie put on her boots, drew on a pair of trousers, crumpled her cravat, buttoned up to her neck a high waistcoat, and slipped on a frock-coat which outlined her slender and arched waist.
“Oh! it is very well! truly, it is very well,” said Louise, looking at her with admiration; “but these beautiful black hairs, these magnificent plaits which made all the women sigh with envy, will they hold under a man's hat such as that which I perceive there?”
“You shall see,” said Eugénie.
And seizing with her left hand the thick tress upon which her long fingers could scarcely close, she seized with her right hand a pair of long scissors, and soon the steel cried out amid the rich and splendid hair, which fell entire at the young girl's feet, thrown backward to isolate it from her frock-coat.
Then, the upper plait cut off, Eugénie passed to those of her temples, which she cut off successively, without letting escape the least regret: on the contrary, her eyes shone, more sparkling and more joyous than usual, beneath her eyebrows black as ebony.
“Oh! the magnificent hair!” said Louise with regret.
“Eh! am I not a hundred times better thus?” cried Eugénie, smoothing the scattered curls of her now wholly masculine coiffure, “and do you not find me more beautiful thus?”
“Oh! you are beautiful, beautiful always!” cried Louise. “Now, where are we going?”
“Why, to Brussels, if you will; it is the nearest frontier. We shall reach Brussels, Liège, Aix-la-Chapelle; we shall go up the Rhine as far as Strasbourg, we shall cross Switzerland and descend into Italy by the Saint-Gothard. Does that suit you?”
“But, yes.”
“What are you looking at?”
“I am looking at you. Truly, you are adorable thus; one would say you were carrying me off.”
“Eh, pardieu! one would be right.”
“Oh! I believe you swore, Eugénie?”
And the two young girls, whom anyone might have thought plunged in tears, the one for her own sake, the other through devotion to her friend, burst out laughing, while making disappear the most visible traces of the disorder which naturally had accompanied the preparations for their escape.
Then, having blown out their lights, with inquiring eye, ear on the watch, neck outstretched, the two fugitives opened the door of a dressing-room which gave onto a servants' staircase descending to the courtyard, Eugénie marching first, and supporting with one arm the valise which, by the opposite handle, Mlle d'Armilly could scarce lift with both hands.
The courtyard was empty. Midnight was striking.
The porter was still awake.
Eugénie approached very softly and saw the worthy Swiss who slept at the back of his lodge, stretched in his armchair.
She returned to Louise, took up again the trunk which she had for an instant set upon the ground, and both, following the shadow cast by the wall, gained the vaulted passage.
Eugénie made Louise hide in the angle of the door, in such a way that the porter, should he happen by chance to wake, might see but one person.
Then, offering herself to the full light of the lamp which illuminated the courtyard:
“The door!” she cried in her finest contralto voice, tapping on the pane.
The porter rose as Eugénie had foreseen, and even took a few steps to recognize the person going out; but seeing a young man who was impatiently switching his trousers with his cane, he opened at once.
Immediately Louise slipped like a snake through the half-open door, and lightly bounded outside. Eugénie, calm in appearance, though, in all probability, her heart counted more pulsations than in its habitual state, went out in her turn.
A porter passed; he was charged with the trunk, then the two young girls having indicated to him as the goal of their course the Rue de la Victoire and number 36 of that street, they walked behind the man, whose presence reassured Louise; as for Eugénie, she was strong as a Judith or a Delilah.
They arrived at the indicated number. Eugénie ordered the porter to set down the trunk, gave him some small coins, and, after having knocked at the shutter, sent him away.
This shutter at which Eugénie had knocked was that of a small linen-draper forewarned beforehand: she was not yet in bed, she opened.
“Mademoiselle,” said Eugénie, “have the concierge bring round the calèche from the coach-house, and send him to the Post House for horses. Here are five francs for the trouble we give him.”
“Truly,” said Louise, “I admire you, and I shall almost say that I respect you.”
The linen-draper looked on with astonishment; but as it was agreed there should be twenty louis for her, she made not the least observation.
A quarter of an hour later, the concierge returned bringing the postilion and the horses, which, in a trice, were harnessed to the carriage, upon which the concierge secured the trunk by means of a rope and a tourniquet.
“Here is the passport,” said the postilion; “which road do we take, our young gentleman?”
“The road to Fontainebleau,” answered Eugénie with an almost masculine voice.
“Well, what do you say, then?” asked Louise.
“I am throwing them off the scent,” said Eugénie; “this woman to whom we give twenty louis may betray us for forty: on the boulevard we shall take another direction.”
And the young girl sprang into the britzka arranged as an excellent sleeping-carriage, scarce touching the step.
“You are always right, Eugénie,” said the singing-mistress, taking her place beside her friend.
A quarter of an hour later, the postilion, set back on the right road, was clearing, with a crack of his whip, the gate of the Saint-Martin barrier.
“Ah!” said Louise, drawing breath, “so we are out of Paris!”
“Yes, my dear, and the abduction is fair and fully accomplished,” replied Eugénie.
“Yes, but without violence,” said Louise.
“I shall urge that as an extenuating circumstance,” replied Eugénie.
These words were lost in the noise made by the carriage rolling on the pavement of La Villette.
M. Danglars no longer had his daughter.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”