CHAPTER XXV.
THE DUNGEON CHAMBER.
NO sooner did Vandemar hear the door of the dungeon chamber close behind him than there came a revulsion of feeling. The conviction forced itself strongly upon him that he was the victim of a plot which had been successful.
He looked about him, but could see nothing. Then he remembered that he had come quickly from a brightly lighted room into a dark one, and it was only natural that his vision should be affected. He must wait until his eyes accommodated themselves to the darkness. No, he would not wait. He would leave the place at once. He turned and retraced his steps, as he supposed, towards the door, but when he reached the wall he could not find it. He followed the seams between the stones with his fingers. The horizontal ones were much longer than those which ran perpendicularly, but they were all too short to indicate the presence of a door. Almost frenzied, he continued the search until his finger-nails were broken and torn by conflict with the rough stones. Still he kept on until the skin was torn from his finger-tips and they were covered with blood. Finally, his search was rewarded, for he came upon a seam which, beginning at the floor, extended higher than he could reach. To make sure, he sought for the hinges, but there were none. Then he remembered that he had read about dungeon doors which swung upon pivots. Perhaps, if he exerted all his strength, he might move it; but he soon desisted, nearly exhausted.
Perhaps she could hear his voice, so he called out:
“Vivienne! Vivienne!”
His voice echoed and re-echoed from the walls of the great room. Startled by the unaccustomed noise, several bats, as he supposed they were, flew back and forth, flapping their wings. The sound was not so unpleasant after all. It gave him satisfaction to know that in this dark and noisome dungeon even such unpleasant companions as bats could live. If they could survive, perhaps he could, until his friends rescued him. This thought went through his mind with the rapidity of lightning. He called the name Vivienne a dozen times, but there was no response. Then he beat upon the door with his clenched fists. The blows made no appreciable sound, but he experienced sharp thrills of pain from the concussion.
“Vivienne!” he cried, “give me my sword. If they come to kill me I am unarmed. Give me back my sword so that I may defend myself.”
He listened, but there was no sound excepting that produced by the flapping of the bats’ wings as they circled about the room. Then all his doubts came back.
“She is faithless! She would not kill me with my own sword when I offered it to her. No, that would have been too easy a death. Both she and her brother decided that my death by starvation would be more to their liking. It would be such a sweet revenge to know that I was dying by inches. Oh, Vivienne, why does God put such fiendish hearts into such angelic forms?”
Man, in his direst distress, always accommodates himself to circumstances and his environment. Thoroughly convinced that his duration of life depended wholly upon himself, and that he could hope for no outside assistance, Vandemar determined to make the best of his condition. Beginning at the door, he followed the wall until he came back to it. He learned that it was rectangular in shape, fully twice as long as it was wide. He proved this by pacing the two distances. Then he walked back and forth, covering the length of the room, groping with his hands in the hope of finding a chair or cot upon which he could rest, but there was no article of furniture in the room.
During his monotonous trips, he made an important discovery. In one corner of the dungeon, far above his reach, was a small window. He imagined that the moon must have been obscured when he entered the dungeon, for when its rays fell upon the window, he had discovered it—but, alas, there was no hope of escape, for it was closely barred. Even if he could wrench those bars from their fastenings, it would avail him nothing, for the dungeon was in the uppermost part of the tower, and he had no rope or other means of descending to the ground.
At last, faint with the loss of blood from his wounds, and overcome by exhaustion and despair, he threw himself upon the cold, damp stones, and was soon lost to consciousness.