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The Inn at the Red Oak

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Instantly he replied. "Claire! Is that you? What is it? I am here, above
you, on the roof."

"Ah, _mon Dieu_!" she exclaimed, as she looked up startled, and
discerned his form leaning over the eaves, "for the love of heaven, my
friend, open to me. I am in danger and I must tell you that which is of
great importance to you. _Mais vite, mon ami_. In ten minutes they will
return again."

It did not occur to Dan to doubt her. Careless of the risk, he rushed
back to the window, climbed in, and in a few seconds had opened the door
to the anxious woman without. She seemed physically exhausted as she
stepped into the warm bar. Taking her in his arms, he carried her to a
chair, and poured out a glass of wine, which she eagerly drank.

"It matters not what I have been doing," she murmured in reply to his
questions, "I have but little time to give you my warning. _Ecoute_.
Bonhomme and his men are gone only to carry back their dead and wounded,
and to bring cutlasses, and the two or three sailors who were left on the
schooner. I have followed them--God knows how--and heard something of
their plans. They will make an attack--now, in a moment--in two different
places. But these attacks will be shams,--is not that the word?--they
will mean nothing. It is the Oak Parlour that they desire to enter. At
the window of that so horrible room Bonhomme will try to make an entrance
without alarm while the others hold your attention at the front and back
of the Inn. Is it that you understand? It is necessary that you are
prepared for these sham attacks, but the great danger is Bonhomme. The
window in the Oak Parlour is not strong. They have information--recent
information--from the Marquis probably,--that it will not be difficult to
break in. One of you must conceal himself in the dark and shoot Bonhomme
when he enters; you must shoot and shoot to kill, then we will be safe.
I have no fear of Monsieur le Marquis. The others--they are brutes--but
they will flee. And they know nothing, they do this for money,--ah, _mon
Dieu_, for money which I have furnished!"

For a moment, torn between his love and his deep distrust of this woman,
poor Dan stood uncertainly. Suddenly he knelt at her side and clasped his
arms about her. "Claire, you are on our side? You swear it."

"Ah, _mon Dieu_! is it that I deserve this?" she exclaimed bitterly.
"Ah! I tell you truth," she cried. "You must believe me--Listen! Are
they come already?"

"No, no, there is nothing. But I trust you, I will go."

Suddenly she sprang to her feet. "Let me go with you. It is terrible to
me to enter again that room; but I desire to prove myself of honour.
_Allous, allous_!"

"Tom is there."

"Ah! send him here to the bar. But do you come, _mon ami_. See, I go with
you." She rose and forcing herself to the effort, led the way across the
bar and into the corridor of the north wing, as if to show him that in
sixteen years she had not forgotten.



CHAPTER XX

IN THE OAK PARLOUR


"You know the way?" Dan exclaimed as he caught up with her, and held open
the door that led into the old north wing.

"But so well," she replied, catching her breath. "Would to God that
I did not!"

"Ah!" he murmured, "I forgot that you have been here before."

They pressed on silently. At the turn of the corridor upon which the Oak
Parlour gave, they discerned Tom Pembroke, a weird figure, in the dim
light of the tallow dip upon the table, that cast fantastic shadows upon
the whitewashed walls.

As he recognized them, he sprang forward in astonishment. "Madame de la
Fontaine! Dan! What does this mean?" he cried.

"You know Madame?" Dan replied hastily and in evident confusion. "At
great risk she has come to warn us--she is our friend, understand.--She
has come to tell us how Bonhomme and his men will attack the Inn."

Tom listened to his explanation with unconcealed dismay. "Good heavens,
Dan!" he protested, "You trust this woman? You know she is in league with
these ruffians. Do you want us to fall into a trap?"

"No, no, Monsieur Pembroke," interrupted Madame de la Fontaine, "you must
listen to me. I understand your fear. But at last you can trust me. I
repent that which I have done. Ah, _mon Dieu_, with what bitterness! And
now I desire to do all that is possible to save you. You must trust me."

"I do not--I can not trust you," Tom cried sternly. "Don't go in there,
Dan. Don't I beg of you, trust this woman's word. It is a trick."

"Perhaps," said Dan grimly, "but go back. I take the responsibility. I
do trust her, I shall trust her--to death. There is no time to lose,
man. Go back!"

"What deviltry has bewitched you?" cried Tom passionately. "Already once
to-night you have risked our lives by your fool-hardiness,--for the sake
of this woman, eh? By gad, man, I begin to see. But I tell you now, I
refuse to be a victim to your madness."

"_Mais non_, Monsieur Pembroke," Claire cried again. "By all that is good
and holy, I swear to you, that that which I have said is true. You must
go. They will attack the bar and the kitchen. If those places are not
defended, there will be danger."

"At any rate," said Dan, "I am going into the Oak Parlour. If you refuse
to act with me, barricade the door between the bar and the north wing. If
need be, I shall fight alone. Only now we lose time, precious time."

Pembroke looked at him as if he had gone mad, then shrugging his
shoulders he turned back into the bar, whistling for Jesse and Ezra as
he did so.

For a moment, glancing after Tom's retreating figure, shaken to his soul
by conflicting emotions, Dan stood irresolute.

"But come," said Madame de la Fontaine, touching his arm. Again like the
weird genius of this strange night she led the way on down the shadowy
hall, and paused only when her hand rested upon the knob of the door into
the Oak Parlour. "It is here," she said simply.

As Dan reached her side, she opened the door. The light of the candle
down the hallway did not penetrate the gloom of the disused room. A musty
smell as of cold stagnant air came strong to their nostrils, and Dan
felt, as they crossed the threshold together, that he was entering a
place where no life had been for a long long time, a place full of dead
nameless horrors.

The woman by his side was trembling violently. He put his arm about her
to reassure her, and there shot through him a sensation of strange and
terrible joy to be with her alone in this darkness and danger. For the
moment he was exulting that for her sake he had risked his honour, that
for her sake now he was risking life itself. He bent his head to hers.

"No! no!--not here!" she whispered hoarsely, but yet clinging to him with
shaking hands. "It is so cold, so dark. I have fear," she murmured.

"It is like a tomb," he said.

"The tomb of my hopes, of my youth," she breathed softly.

"Shall I strike a light?"

"No, no,--no light, I implore you. _Ecoute_! What is it that I hear?"

"I hear nothing. It is the wind in the Red Oak outside."

"But listen!"

"It is an owl hooting."

Suddenly she drew her hand from his, and he could hear her moving swiftly
about. "All is as it used to be?" she asked.

"Precisely," he answered; "nothing has been changed."

"Here is the cabinet," she said, from across the room. "I can feel the
lion's head. It is opposite to the window and the moonlight will stream
in when the casement is opened, but if I crouch low I shall not be seen.
_Bien_! And you, _mon ami_? Tell me, is the old _escritoire_ still to the
left of the door?" Now she was back at his side once again.

"The _escritoire_?" he repeated.

"The little table where one writes. Ah! yes, it is here. See, behind
this, _mon ami_, shall you hide yourself. The moonlight will not reach
here--and it is so arranged that you will see plainly any one that
appears at the window. When the casement is opened, you will shoot, will
you not, and shoot to kill?"

"Yes, I will shoot," said Dan, his voice trembling.

"You promise me?" she cried in a tense whisper, as she grasped his arm
and held it tight in her grip.

"I tell you, yes."

"You must not fail."

"No. Shall I shoot at any one who opens?"

"Any one?--it will be Bonhomme,--no other."

Suddenly there came, from the front and the rear of the Inn, at the same
instant it seemed, the sharp staccato of a fusilade of pistol shots, and
the lumbering blows as of beams being thrust at distant doors.

"They are come!" she whispered, "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her
garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then
he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen
for his place of concealment. He knelt there motionless, a cocked pistol
clenched in his right hand. His breath seemed to have stopped, but his
heart was pounding as though it must burst through his breast. How could
he shoot down in cold blood a fellow man? The horror of it crowded out
all other impressions, sensations fears. He could fight, risk his life,
but to pull the trigger of that pistol when the casement should open
seemed to him an impossibility. He would wait, grapple with him, fight
as men should.

Suddenly a ray of moonlight fell across the dark floor. Dan, looking up,
seemed frozen by horror. The shutters had opened, the casement swung back
noiselessly, and there in the opening, sharply outlined against the
moonlight-flooded night, was the great black hulk of Captain Bonhomme.

For a moment he stood there irresolute, listening intently. Dan was
fascinated, motionless, held as in a vice by the horror of the thing.

Suddenly Bonhomme moved his head to one side as if to listen more
acutely. As he did so, the ray of moonlight fell upon the cabinet, fell
upon Claire de la Fontaine, upon something that she held in an
outstretched hand that gleamed.

"_Nom de Dieu_!" There was the flash and crack of a pistol, a sharp cry,
and the great figure fell back and sank out of sight.

With that Dan sprang forward, reckless of danger, and ran to the window.
He heard without the confused sounds as of persons scurrying to cover,
saw their forms dash across the moonlit courtyard, into the shadows of
the trees and outhouses. Beneath him on the floor of the gallery was
something horrible and still.

Almost instantly Claire de la Fontaine was by his side, and as
regardless of danger as he, she was calling sharply, calling men by their
names. Her hair had been loosened and fell over her shoulders in black
waves, her dark eyes flashed with excitement and passion, and her face,
strangely pale, in the silver moonlight, was set in stern harsh lines.
Even then this vision of her tragic beauty thrilled the man at her side.

But she was as unconscious of him as she was of her danger. With hand
uplifted she called by name the desperados, who had taken shelter in the
darkness and to those who now came running from front and rear where
their attacks had been unsuccessful.

Appalled, spell-bound by the vision, even as Dan was, they stopped, and
stood listening mutely to the torrent of words that she poured
forth,--vehement French of which Dan had no understanding.

At last, ending the frightful tension of the scene, two of the men came
forward, crept up to the lifeless body of Bonhomme, and grasping it by
head and feet, carried it away, across the courtyard, into the darkness
of the avenue of maples. One by one, still mysteriously silent, the
others of the gang followed, till at length the last one had disappeared
into the gloom. Weird silence fell once more upon the Inn.

It was only then that Madame de la Fontaine turned to Dan. "They will
come no more," she said in a strained unnatural voice. "We are saved,
safe.... I have proved, is it not so?--my honour, my love."

With the words she sank at his feet, just as Tom, candle in hand,
appeared in the doorway.



CHAPTER XXI

THE TREASURE


Owing doubtless to the death of Bonhomme and to the orders given in no
uncertain tones by Madame de la Fontaine, the bandits from the schooner
in the cove did not make a further effort to attack the Inn that night.
There was no rest, however, for Madame de la Fontaine, after her heroic
exploit in the Oak Parlour, had swooned completely away. They carried her
to the couch in Mrs. Frost's parlour, and, awkwardly enough, did what
could be done for her by men. It was over an hour before they succeeded
in restoring her to consciousness, and when they did so, she awoke to
delirium and fever. Distracted by anxiety and by their helplessness, at
the first streak of dawn, Dan started for town to get a doctor, and Ezra
Manners volunteered to go to the Red Farm and bring back Mrs. Frost,
Nancy, and the maids.

About six o'clock in the morning the women folk returned to the Inn. But
the briefest account of the attack was given them, though they were told
in no uncertain terms of Madame de la Fontaine's heroic action in coming
to warn them and of her courageous shot at the leader. Then Mrs. Frost
and Nancy turned all their attention to the sick woman, caring for her as
tenderly and devotedly as if she were their own. Half-an-hour later Dan
returned from Monday Port with the family doctor, a grave silent old
gentleman, in whose skill and discretion they trusted. After making an
examination of his patient, he nodded his head encouragingly; gave a few
directions to Mrs. Frost, and then left, promising to return later in the
morning with medicines and supplies.

At last, utterly worn out, the four men threw themselves on their beds
and slept from sheer exhaustion. The sun was high in the sky when they
came down stairs again and found Nancy waiting for them, and a smoking
breakfast ready on the table. After greeting them, she pointed to the
window, across the fields, almost bare of snow now and gleaming in the
morning sunlight, to the bright waters of the cove. "See!" she cried,
"the schooner has disappeared."

They both looked. "By Jove, it has!" exclaimed Tom, rushing to the other
side of the room, and peering out at the shipless sea. "Heigho! that's a
relief. Pray God we've seen the last of her. The Marquis gone, the
schooner gone,--we three together once more! Perhaps we shall begin to
live again. Ah!" he added more softly, glancing with sudden sympathy at
Dan's white drawn face, "I forgot the poor woman across the hall."

Dan turned aside to hide his emotion, for though a load of anxiety had
been lifted from his heart by the vanishing of _The Southern Cross_, he
was sick with fear for the issue of the illness that had stricken down
the woman he loved,--the woman who had proved her love for him by so
terrible and so tragic a deed.

As though aware that for the moment they were best left together alone,
Nancy slipped away into the kitchen.

"You love her, Dan?" asked Tom simply.

"Yes, Tom, with all my heart and soul. I staked my honour, my life, on
her sincerity. And how she has proved that we were right to trust her! It
can't be--she mustn't die--I couldn't bear it!"

"She'll be all right, old fellow, don't worry; trust to your mother and
Nance. It is only the shock of the terrible things she went through last
night. Come on, we must take something to eat. Here is Nancy back again."

There was no doubt of the fact, _The Southern Cross_ had sailed away,
vanished in the night as mysteriously as a week before she had appeared
in the Strathsey and found moorings in the Cove. They did not count on
the certainty of her not reappearing, however; and that night and for
many nights thereafter the Inn was securely barricaded and a watch was
kept, but neither then nor ever did _The Southern Cross_ spread her sails
in those waters again. She and her crew disappeared from their lives as
completely as from the seas that stretched around the coast of Deal.

Tom at once was for making a search in the Oak Parlour for the hidden
treasure, but for the time Dan had no heart for the undertaking. He urged
delay at least until Madame de la Fontaine had recovered; and as for
Nancy she would not hear of it.

"I can't bear to think of it,--of the trouble, the crime, the suffering
of which it has been the cause. When our poor lady recovers, she will
tell us all we need to know. I dread the Oak Parlour. I would not go into
that room for anything in the world. Nor, believe me, Tom, could Dan do
so now. You have guessed, haven't you, that he loves Madame de la
Fontaine?"

"Of course, dearest; poor fellow! he betrays his love by every word and
act. But good heaven, Nance, he couldn't marry her!"

"No--I don't know. I suppose not. But Dan will do as he will. To oppose
him now would only make him the more wretched."

"Does your mother know?"

"No, and it is best she should not. I don't think she has the faintest
suspicion."

"Well, I suppose we had better let things rest awhile;" Tom assented,
"but I swear I would like to get at the Oak Parlour and tear the secret
out of it."

"We must wait a bit, Tom dear. Let's just be glad now of what we
have and are."

And with that he drew her toward him and pressed for a definite answer to
the question which so deeply concerned their future.

"When Madame has recovered, when we know all and the mystery is solved,"
she replied; then she added inconsequently, "I wonder if we shall ever
hear of the old Marquis again."

"I wonder too," Tom exclaimed. "Though he has sailed away on _The
Southern Cross_, I doubt if he will willingly leave the treasure
behind him."

"That dreadful treasure, Tom," cried Nancy. "I wish to goodness that the
Marquis had it and might keep it always. We have each other."

The evening of the second day after the terrible night of the attack, as
Dan was entering the Inn from his work outside, he saw Madame de la
Fontaine standing on the gallery under the Red Oak. It was the dusk of a
mild pleasant day. She was clad still in her soft grey gown with furs
about her waists and neck, and a grey scarf over her head. But there was
something infinitely pathetic to him in the listlessness of her attitude,
in the expression of a deep and melancholy that had come into her face.

He stole swiftly to her side, and taking her hand in his pressed it to
his lips, with a gesture that was as reverent as it was tender. For a
moment something of the old brightness returned to her face as she bent
her clear gaze upon his bowed head.

"You love me, Dan?" she murmured.

"You know I love you," he whispered passionately.

"Yes, I believe that you do," she said simply. "I shall always be
thankful that I have won a good man's love." But suddenly she withdrew
her hand, as the door of the bar opened. "See, here is Mademoiselle
Nancy. She is coming for me: she is to be with me to-night. There is
much for me to do."

His heart surged within him; for he knew that in her simple words there
was the tragic note of farewell; but he could not speak, he could not
plead from that sad and broken woman for a passion that he knew but too
well she could never give. He knew that she would leave him on the
morrow, that his protests would be vain;--nay,--he would not even utter
them! With the gathering of the darkness about the old Inn, he felt that
the light in his heart was being obscured forever.

The evening passed, the night. Morning came, and Madame de la Fontaine,
accompanied by Nancy, left the Inn at the Red Oak for Coventry. There
remained to Dan of his brief and tragic passion but one letter, which Tom
handed to him that morning, and which, with despairing heart, he read and
re-read a hundred times.

"_Mon cher ami_:

"You would forgive that I do not know well how to express myself as I
desire, if you could read my heart. I bade you good-bye to-night under
the Red Oak, tree for me of such tragic and such beautiful memories. I
could not say farewell otherwise, dear friend, nor could you. We have
loved sincerely, have we not? We will remember that in days to come; you
will remember it even in the happier days to come that I pray God to
grant you. I know all that you would say, my friend, but it cannot be. I
must vanish from your life, be gone as completely as though I had never
entered it. I love you deeply, tenderly, but I could not be to you what I
know that now you wish. All the past forbids. The very tragedy that
proved to you that I was worthy of your trust forbids. It is my only
justification that I saved your lives, dear friend; but oh how bitterly I
ask pardon of God for what has been done! Then also, dearest friend, my
heart is no longer capable to bear passion, but only to feel great
tenderness. I could not say these things, and yet they must be written. I
cannot go with them unsaid. Certain other things must be told you in
justice to all.

"The story I told you on the schooner that day was largely truth. The
General Pointelle, who was at the Inn at the Red Oak in 1814, was in
reality the Maréchal de Boisdhyver, the father of your foster-sister
Nancy. She is truly Eloise de Boisdhyver. The Maréchal returned to France
to support the Emperor, as he wrote to madame your good mother; and he
fell, as I told you, on the field of Waterloo. Admitting the importance
of his mission, admitting my ambiguous relation to him (indefensible as
it was), to have left the child as he did was an act of kindness. In
truth the treasure concealed in the Oak Parlour is considerable, and it
was always my purpose to return, but the necessary directions for finding
it were not entrusted to me, but to the Marquis Marie-Anne, whom I didn't
meet until many years after Waterloo. Then I was induced by the
Marquis,--your old Marquis--to provide the money for the miserable
enterprise, of which we know the tragic result. From the first I was
uncertain about the method we adopted; and then soon after our arrival
here, from a hundred little indications, I became convinced that Bonhomme
was prepared to betray us, once we secured the treasure. As for the
Marquis, I suppose that he sailed away on the schooner. You need fear him
no longer. It was he, I am convinced, that conveyed to them the
information of the loosened casement in the Oak Parlour, and unwittingly
arranged for his own undoing and our salvation. At all events he will
have realized now that he has hopelessly lost the fight. As for the
treasure, by right it belongs to Eloise, who should not disdain to use
it. I enclose a transcription of the other half of the torn scrap of
paper, which will supplement the directions in your possession.

"And as for me, my friend, I shall seek a shelter in my own country apart
from the world in which I have lived so to little purpose and for the
most part so unhappily. Believe me, so it is best. My heart is too full
for me to express all that I feel for you.

"Dear, dear friend, do not render me the more unhappy to know that my
brief friendship with you shall have harmed your life. Your place is in
the world, to take part in the life of your own country, not, dear Dan,
to waste youth and energy in the fruitless desolation of this beautiful
Deal, not above all to grieve for a woman who was unworthy.

"I commend you to God, and I shall never forget you.

"CLAIRE DE LA FONTAINE."

It was with a heavy heart that Dan consented later in the morning to
Tom's proposal that they force at last the secret of the Oak Parlour. He
got the torn scrap of paper which he had found,--such ages ago it seemed,
though it was scarcely a week,--in the old cabinet, and gave it to Tom,
with the copy of the other half which Madame de la Fontaine had enclosed
in her letter of farewell. The copy in Madame de la Fontaine's
handwriting did not dovetail exactly into the jagged edges of the
original portion, so that it was some time before they could get it into
position for reading. But at last it was pasted together on a large bit
of cardboard, and Tom, with the aid of a dictionary, succeeded in making
a translation, which Dan took down.

"Learning of the attempt of my Emperor to regain his glorious throne, I
leave these hospitable shores to offer my sword to his cause. In case I
do not return, the person having instructions for the discovery of this
paper, which I tear in two parts, will find herein the necessary
directions for the finding of my hidden treasure. This treasure, bullion,
jewels, and coins, is concealed in a secret chamber in this Inn at the
Red Oak. This secret chamber will be entered from the Oak Parlour. The
hidden door is released by a spring beneath the hand of the lady in the
picture nearest the fireplace on the north side of the room. A panel
slides back revealing the entrance. Instructions as to the deposition of
the treasure will be found in the golden casket therewith.

"FRANÇOIS DE BOISDHYVER."

"Well?" said Tom, "the instructions are definite enough. Now we can put
them to the test. Let's get to work at once. Wait a second till I get
some wood, and well make a fire in the Oak Parlour." He filled his arms
with logs from the bin under the settle in the bar, while Dan got the key
for the north wing.

Soon they were at the end of the old hall. It was with an effort that Dan
brought himself to enter the room, for there flashed into his mind the
vision of the last time he was there,--the cold silver moonlight, the
dark burly form at the casement, the white drawn face of Claire de la
Fontaine, and then the sharp flash and crack of the pistol.

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