Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/56

44 "Nothing, nothing whatsoever; but you, Madame, tell me what you see."

"Oh! I see, I see . . . but no, it cannot be."

"What do you see?"

"I see Monsieur de Chauvelin in Court dress, but pale and walking feebly; he passed yonder, yonder."

"Great God!"

"Without seeing me,—mark that; or if he did see me, without speaking,—which is stranger still."

"And now, do you see him still?"

"Yes, I see him still,"—and with finger and eyes the Marquise indicated the direction taken by the Marquis, whose form was all the time invisible to Père Delar.

"And whither is he going, Madame? "

"Towards the Château; there, he is passing the great oak; there, he is close by the stone bench. Oh! look, look! he is going straight towards the children; he steps round yonder clump of trees; he disappears. If the children are still where they were, they cannot help but see him."

Even as she spoke, a cry rang out that made Madame de Chauvelin tremble. The sound came from the two boys, and had a singularly mournful and solemn effect echoing through the spacious gloom. The Marquise nearly fainted and would have fallen, had not Father Delar caught her in his arms.

"Do you hear?" she faltered, "do you hear?"

"Yes," replied the Monk, "I did indeed hear a cry."

Next moment the Marquise saw, or rather became intuitively aware of without seeing, her two children running towards her. The patter of their feet, as they dashed breathlessly forward, could be heard on the gravel of the path.

"Mother, mother! did you see? " cried the elder lad, and the younger re-echoed the words.

"Oh! Madame, do not listen to what they say," called the Abbé, hurrying up behind them, breathless with the efforts he had made to overtake them.

"Well, children, what is it?" Madame de Chauvelin asked them. But the two boys, instead of answering, only pressed closer to her side.

"Come, tell me what happened," she said fondling their curly heads, "speak, speak!"

The two children looked at each other.

"You tell her," said the elder to the younger.

"No, you; you tell her."

"But, mother," said the older at last, "did you not see him the same as we did?"

"Dou you hear what he says. Father, do you hear?" cried the Marquise, raising her arms to heaven, then pressing the Monk's trembling hand between her icy palms.

"See him! see whom?" the latter asked with a shudder.

"Why, my father, of course," answered the younger child; " did you not see him, mother? Yet he came from your direction; he must have passed quite near you."

"Oh! how delightful," cried the elder, clapping his hands, " here is my father come back again!"

Madame de Chauvelin turned to the Abbé.

"Madame," said the latter in reply to her questioning look, "I can assure you my pupils are mistaken in thinking they saw Monsieur le Marquis, I was close by them, and I declare that no one ..."

"And I, Monsieur," said the elder boy, " I tell you I have just seen my father as plainly as I see you."

"Fie, fie, Monsieur l'Abbé! how sinful it is to tell lies!" cried the younger of the two lads.

"It is very, very strange," observed Père Delar. The Marquise only shook her head.

"They have not seen anything," the Tutor reiterated, "not anything at all."

"Wait!" was the Marquise's sole answer. Then turning to her two boys with the ineffably tender smile of a mother:

"You say," she questioned, "you saw your father?"

"Yes, we did," both answered with one voice.

"How was he dressed?"

"He wore his red Court coat, his blue riband, a white waistcoat embroidered with gold, velvet breeches to match the coat, and silk stockings. He had buckled shoes and carried his sword at his side."

While the elder thus described his father's costume, the younger kept nodding his head in sign of acquiescence, and all the time poor Madame de Chauvelin was pressing the Monk's hand with her own, which grew more and more icy cold