it was not till nearly three days afterwards that dorothy got the better of the physical torpor, aggravated by fever, which had overwhelmed her. the four boys gave a performance on the outskirts of nantes. montfaucon took the place of the directress in the leading rôle. it was a less taking spectacle; but in it the captain displayed such an animated comicality that the takings were good.
saint-quentin insisted that dorothy should take another two days' rest. what need was there to hurry? the village of roche-périac was at the most sixty-five miles from nantes so that there was no need for them to set out till six days before the time appointed.
she allowed herself to be ordered about by him, for she was still suffering from a profound lassitude as a result of so many ups and downs and such violent emotions. she thought a great deal about raoul davernoie, but in a spirit of angry revolt against the feeling of tenderness towards the young man with which those weeks of intimacy had inspired her. however little he might be connected with the drama in which the prince of argonne had met his death, he was none the less the son of the man who had assisted d'estreicher in the perpetration of the crime. how could she forget that? how could she forgive it?
the quiet pleasantness of the journey soothed the young girl. her ardent and happy nature got the better of painful memories and past fatigues. the nearer she drew to her goal, the more fully her strength of mind and body came back to her, her joy in life, her childlike gayety, and her resolve to bring the enterprise to a successful end.
"saint-quentin," she said, "we are advancing to the capture of the golden fleece. are you bearing in mind the solemn importance of the days that are passing? four days yet ... three days ... two days; and the golden fleece is ours. baron de saint-quentin, in a fortnight you will be dressed like a dandy."
"and you like a princess," replied saint-quentin, to whom this prospect of fortune, promising a less close intimacy with his great friend, did not seem to give any great pleasure.
she was strongly of the opinion that other trials awaited her, that there would still be obstacles to surmount and perhaps enemies to fight. but for the time being there was a respite and a truce. the first part of the drama was finished. other adventures were about to begin. curious and of a daring spirit, she smiled at the mysterious future which opened before her.
on the fourth day they crossed the vilaine, the right bank of which they were henceforth to follow, along the top of the slopes which run down to the river. it was a somewhat barren country, sparsely inhabited, over which they moved slowly under a scorching sun which overwhelmed one-eyed magpie.
at last, next day, the 11th of july, they saw on a sign-post:
roche-périac 12-1/2 miles
"we shall sleep there to-night," declared dorothy.
it was a painful stage of the journey.... the heat was suffocating. on the way they picked up a tramp who lay groaning on the dusty grass. a woman and a club-footed child were walking a hundred yards ahead of them without one-eyed magpie being able to catch them up.
dorothy and the four boys took it in turn to sit with the tramp in the caravan. he was a wretched old man, worn out by poverty, whose rags were only held together by pieces of string. in the middle of his bushy hair and unkempt beard his eyes, however, still had a certain glow, and when dorothy questioned him about the life he led, he confounded her by saying:
"one mustn't complain. my father, who was a traveling knife-grinder always said to me: 'hyacinth—that's my name—hyacinth, one isn't miserable while one's brave: fortune is in the firm heart.'"
dorothy concealed her amazement and said:
"that's not a weighty legacy. did he only leave you this secret?"
"yes," said the tramp quite simply. "that and a piece of advice: to go on the 12th of july every year, and wait in front of the church of roche-périac for somebody who will give me hundreds and thousands. i go there every year. i've never received anything but pennies. all the same, it keeps one going, that idea does. i shall be there to-morrow, as i was last year ... and as i shall be next."
the old man fell back upon his own thoughts. dorothy said no more. but an hour later she offered the shelter of the box to the woman and the club-footed child, whom they had at last overtaken. and questioning this woman, she learnt that she was a factory hand from paris who was going to the church of roche-périac that her child's foot might be healed.
"in my family," said the woman, "in my father's time and my grandfather's too, one always did the same thing when a child was ill, one took it on the 12th of july into the chapel of saint fortunat at roche-périac. it's a certain cure."
so, by these two other channels, the legend had passed to this woman of the people and this tramp, but a deformed legend, of which there only remained a few shreds of the truth: the church took the place of the château, saint fortunat of the fortune. only the day of the month mattered; there was no question of the year. there was no mention at all of the medal. and each was making a pilgrimage towards the place from which so many families had looked for miraculous aid.
that evening the caravan reached the village, and at once dorothy obtained information about the château de la roche-périac. the only château of that name that was known was some ruins six miles further on situated on the shore of the ocean on a small peninsula.
"we'll sleep here," said dorothy, "and we'll start early in the morning."
they did not start early in the morning. the caravan was drawn into a barn for the night; and soon after midnight saint-quentin was awakened by the pungent fumes of smoke and a crackling. he jumped up. the barn was on fire. he shouted and called for help. some peasants, passing along the high road by a happy chance, ran to his assistance.
it was quite time. they had barely dragged the caravan out of the barn when the roof fell in. dorothy and her comrades were uninjured. but one-eyed magpie half roasted, refused firmly to let himself be harnessed; the shafts chafed her burns. it was not till seven o'clock that the caravan tottered off, drawn by a wretched horse they had hired, and followed by one-eyed magpie. as they crossed the square in front of the church, they saw the woman and her child kneeling at the end of the porch, and the tramp on his quest. for them the adventure would go no further.
there were no further incidents. except saint-quentin on the box, they went to sleep in the caravan, leaning against one another. at half-past nine they stopped. they had come to a cottage dignified with the name of an inn, on the door of which they read "widow amoureux. lodging for man and beast." a few hundred yards away, at the bottom of a slope which ended in a low cliff, the little peninsula of périac stretched out into the ocean five promontories which looked like the five fingers of a hand. on their left was the mouth of the vilaine.
for the children it was the end of the expedition. they made a meal in a dimly lighted room, furnished with a zinc counter, in which coffee was served. then while castor and pollux fed one-eyed magpie, dorothy questioned the widow amoureux, a big, cheerful, talkative country-woman about the ruins of roche-périac.
"ah, you're going there too, are you, my dear?" the widow exclaimed.
"i'm not the first then?" said dorothy.
"goodness, no. there's already an old gentleman and his wife. i've seen the old gentleman before at this time of year. once he slept here. he's one of those who seek."
"who seek what?"
"who can tell? a treasure, according to what they say. the people about here don't believe in it. but people come from a long way off who hunt in the woods and turn over the stones."
"it's allowed then, is it?"
"why not? the island of périac—i call it an island because at high tide the road to it is covered—belongs to the monks of the monastery of sarzeau, a couple of leagues further on. it seems, indeed, that they're ready to sell the ruins and all the land. but who'd buy them? there's none of it cultivated; it's all wild."
"is there any other road to it but this?"
"yes, a stony road which starts at the cliff and runs into the road to vannes. but i tell you, my dear, it's a lost land—deserted. i don't see ten travelers a year—some shepherds, that's all."
at last at ten o'clock, the caravan was properly installed, and in spite of the entreaties of saint-quentin who would have liked to go with her and to whom she intrusted the children, dorothy, dressed in her prettiest frock and adorned with her most striking fichu, started on her campaign.
the great day had begun—the day of triumph or disappointment, of darkness or light. whichever it might be, for a girl like dorothy with her mind always alert and of an ever quivering sensitiveness, the moment was delightful. her imagination created a fantastic palace, bright with a thousand shining windows, people with good and bad genies, with prince charmings and beneficent fairies.
a light breeze blew from the sea and tempered the rays of the sun with its freshness. the further she advanced the more distinctly she saw the jagged contours of the five promontories and of the peninsula in which they were rooted in a mass of bushes and green rocks. the meager outline of a half demolished tower rose above the tops of the trees; and here and there among them one caught sight of the gray stones of a ruin.
but the slope became steeper. the vannes' road joined hers where it ran down a break in the cliff, and dorothy saw that the sea, very high up at the moment, almost bathed the foot of this cliff, covering with calm, shallow water the causeway to the peninsula.
on the top were standing, upright, the old gentleman and the lady of whom the widow amoureux had told her. dorothy was amazed to recognize raoul's grandfather and his old flame juliet assire. the old baron! juliet assire! how had they been able to get away from the manor, to escape from raoul, to make the journey, and reach the threshold of the ruins?
she came right up to them without their even seeming to notice her presence. their eyes were vague; and they were gazing in dull surprise at this sheet of water which hindered their progress.
dorothy was touched. two centuries of chimerical hopes had bequeathed to the old baron instructions so precise that they survived the extinction of his power to think. he had come here from a distance, in spite of terrible fatigues and super-human efforts to attain the goal, groping his way, in the dark, and accompanied by another creature, like himself, demented. and behold both of them stopped dead before a little water as before an obstacle there was no surmounting.
she said to him gently:
"will you follow me? it's a mere nothing to go through."
he raised his head and looked at her and did not reply. the woman also was silent. neither he nor she could understand. they were automata rather than living beings, urged on by an impulse which was outside them. they had come without knowing what they were doing; they had stopped and they would go back without knowing what they were doing.
there was no time to lose. dorothy did not insist. she pulled up her frock and pinned it between her legs. she took off her shoes and stockings and stepped into the water which was so shallow that her knees were not wet.
when she reached the further shore the old people had not budged. with a dumfounded air they still gazed at the unforeseen obstacle. in spite of herself, with a compassionate smile, she stretched out her arms towards them. the old baron again threw back his head. juliet assire was as still as a statue.
"good-bye," said dorothy, almost happy at their inaction and at being alone to prosecute the enterprise.
the approach to the peninsula of périac is made very narrow by two marshes, according to the widow amoureux reputed to be very dangerous, between which a narrow band of solid ground affords the only path. this path mounted a wooded ravine, which some faded writing on an old board described as "bad going" and came out to a plateau covered with gorse and heather. at the end of twenty minutes dorothy crossed the débris of part of the old wall which ran round the château.
she slackened her pace. at every step it seemed to her that she was penetrating into a more and more mysterious region in which time had accumulated more silence and more solitude. the trees hugged one another more closely. the shade of the brushwood was so thick that no flowers grew beneath it. who then had lived here formerly and planted these trees, some of which were of rare species and foreign origin?
the road split into three paths, goat-tracks, along which one had to walk in a stooping posture under the low branches. she chose at random the middle track of the three and passed through a series of small enclosures marked out by small walls of crumbling stone. under heavy draperies of ivy she saw rows of buildings. she did not doubt that her goal was close at hand, and her emotion was so great that she had to sit down like a pilgrim who is about to arrive in sight of the sacred spot towards which he has been advancing ever since his earliest days.
and of her inmost self she asked this question:
"suppose i have made a mistake? suppose all this means nothing at all? yes: in the little leather bag i have in my pocket, there is a medal, and on it the name of a château, and a given day in a given year. and here i am at the château at the appointed time; but all the same what is there to prove that my reasoning is sound, or that anything is going to happen? a hundred and fifty or two hundred years is a very long time, and any number of things may have happened to sweep away the combinations of which i believe i have caught a glimpse."
she rose. step by step she advanced slowly. a pavement of different-colored bricks, arranged in a design, covered the ground. the arch of an isolated gateway, quite bare, opened high above. she passed through it, and at once, at the end of a large court-yard, she saw—and it was all she did see—the face of a clock.
a glance at her watch showed her that it was half-past eleven. there was no one else in the ruins.
and truly it seemed as if there never could be any one else in this last corner of the world, whither chance could only bring ignorant wayfarers or shepherds in quest of pasturage for their flocks. indeed, there were only fragments of ruins, rather than actual ruins, covered with ivy and briers—here a porch, there a vault, further on a chimney-piece, further still the skeleton of a summer-house—alone, venerable witnesses to a time at which there had been a house, with a court-yard in front, wings on both sides, surrounded by a park. further off there stood, in groups or in fragments of avenues, fine old trees, chiefly oaks, wide-spreading, venerable, and majestic.
at one side of the court-yard, the shape of which she could make out by the position of the buildings which had crumbled to ruins, part of the front, still intact, and backed by a small hill of ruins, held, at the top of a very low first story, this clock which had escaped by a miracle man's ravages. across its face stretched its two big hands, the color of rust. most of the hours, engraved contrary to the usual custom in roman figures, were effaced. moss and wall-pellitory were growing between the gaping stones of the face. right at the bottom of it, under cover in a small niche, a bell awaited the stroke of the hammer.
a dead clock, whose heart had ceased to beat. dorothy had the impression that time had stopped there for centuries, suspended from these motionless hands, from that hammer which no longer struck, from that silent bell in its sheltering niche. then she espied underneath it, on a marble tablet, some scarcely legible letters, and mounting a pile of stones, she could decipher the words: in robore fortuna!
in robore fortuna! the beautiful and noble motto that one found everywhere, at roborey, at the manor, at the château de la roche-périac, and on the medal! was dorothy right then? were the instructions given by the medal still valid? and was it truly a meeting-place to which one was summoned, across time and space, in front of this dead clock?
she gained control of herself and said, laughing:
"a meeting-place to which i alone shall come."
so keen was this conviction of hers that she could hardly believe that those who, like herself, had been summoned would come. the formidable series of chances, thanks to which, little by little, she had come to the very heart of this enigmatic adventure, could not logically be repeated in the case of some other privileged being. the chain of tradition must have been broken in the other families, or have ended in fragments of the truth, as the instances of the tramp and the factory hand proved.
"no one will come," she repeated. "it is five and twenty to twelve. consequently——"
she did not finish the sentence. a sound came from the land side, a sound near at hand, distinct from those produced by the movements of the sea or the wind. she listened. it came with an even beat which grew more and more distinct.
"some peasant ... some wood-cutter," she thought.
no. it was something else. she made it out more clearly the nearer it came: it was the slow and measured step of a horse whose hoofs were striking the harder soil of the path. dorothy followed its progress through one after the other of the inclosures of the old estate, then along the brick pavement. a clicking of the tongue of a rider, urging on his mount, at intervals came to her ears.
her eyes fixed on the yawning arch dorothy waited almost shivering with curiosity.
and suddenly a horseman appeared. an odd-looking horseman, who looked so large on his little horse, that one was rather inclined to believe that he was advancing by means of those long legs which hung down so far, and pulling the horse along like a child's toy. his check suit, his knickerbockers, his thick woolen stockings, his clean-shaven face, the pipe between his teeth, his phlegmatic air, all proclaimed his english nationality.
on seeing dorothy he said to himself and without the slightest air of astonishment:
"oh."
and he would have continued his journey if he had not caught sight of the clock. he pulled in his horse.
to dismount he had only to stand on tip-toe and his horse slipped from under him. he knotted the bridle round a root, looked at his watch, and took up his position not far from the clock.
"here is a gentleman who doesn't waste words," thought dorothy. "an englishman for certain."
she presently discovered that he kept looking at her, but as one looks at a woman one finds pretty and not at all as one looks at a person with whom circumstances demand that one should converse. his pipe having gone out, he lit it again; and so they remained three or four minutes, close to one another, serious, without stirring. the breeze blew the smoke from his pipe towards her.
"it's too silly," said dorothy to herself. "for after all it's very likely that this taciturn gentleman and i have an appointment. upon my word, i'm going to introduce myself. under which name?"
this question threw her into a state of considerable embarrassment. ought she to introduce herself to him as princess of argonne or as dorothy the rope-dancer? the solemnity of the occasion called for a ceremonious presentation and the revelation of her rank. but on the other hand her variegated costume with its short skirt called for less pomp. decidedly "rope-dancer" sufficed.
these considerations, to the humor of which she was quite alive, had brought a smile to her face. the young man observed it. he smiled too. both of them opened their mouths, and they were about to speak at the same time when an incident stopped them on the verge of utterance. a man came out of the path into the court-yard, a pedestrian with a clean shaven face, very pale, one arm in a sling under a jacket much too large for him, and a russian soldier's cap.
the sight of the clock brought him also to a dead stop. perceiving dorothy and her companion, he smiled an expansive smile that opened his mouth from ear to ear, and took off his cap, uncovering a completely shaven head.
during this incident the sound of a motor had been throbbing away, at first at some distance. the explosions grew louder, and there burst, once more through the arch, into the court-yard a motor-cycle which went bumping over the uneven ground and stopped short. the motor-cyclist had caught sight of the clock.
quite young, of a well set-up, well-proportioned figure, tall, slim, and of a cheerful countenance, he was certainly, like the first-comer, of the anglo-saxon race. having propped up his motor-cycle, he walked towards dorothy, watch in hand as if he were on the point of saying:
"you will note that i am not late."
but he was interrupted by two more arrivals who came almost simultaneously. a second horseman came trotting briskly through the arch on a big, lean horse, and at the sight of the group gathered in front of the clock, drew rein sharply, saying in italian:
"gently—gently."
he had a fine profile and an amiable face, and when he had tied up his mount, he came forward hat in hand, as one about to pay his respects to a lady.
but, mounted on a donkey, appeared a fifth individual, from a different direction from any of the others. on the threshold of the court he pulled up in amazement, staring stupidly with wide-open eyes behind his spectacles.
"is it p-p-possible?" he stammered. "is it possible? they've come. the whole thing isn't a fairy-tale!"
he was quite sixty. dressed in a frock-coat, his head covered with a black straw hat, he wore whiskers and carried under his arm a leather satchel. he did not cease to reiterate in a flustered voice:
"they have come!... they have come to the rendezvous!... it's unbelievable!"
up to now dorothy had been silent in the face of the exclamations and arrivals of her companions. the need of explanations, of speech even, seemed to diminish in her the more they flocked round her. she became serious and grave. her thoughtful eyes expressed an intense emotion. each apparition seemed to her as tremendous an event as a miracle. like the gentleman in the frock-coat with the satchel, she murmured:
"is it possible? they have come to the rendezvous!"
she looked at her watch.
noon.
"listen," she said, stretching out her hand. "listen. the angelus is ringing somewhere ... at the village church...."
they uncovered their heads, and while they listened to the ringing of the bell, which came to them in irregular bursts, one would have said that they were waiting for the clock to start going and connect with the minute that was passing the thread of the minutes of long ago.
dorothy fell on her knees. her emotion was so deep that she was weeping.
