This lowering realization produced a burst of tears which at least had the advantage of easing her pent-up nervous state and making her begin to look a little on the bright side again. It was now twenty-four hours since she and Crawfurd had been captured. Eleonora would certainly have alerted Talleyrand, if not the police. The two of them would surely make some efforts to trace them, and Talleyrand knew where Pilar had sought refuge. But would it occur to him that her disappearance was in any way connected with that silent, unsmiling young woman whose sole concern seemed to be to keep out of trouble and procure herself powerful protection? He would be more likely to think that Crawfurd had over-estimated the influence of his friends in the prison service and that the two incautious visitors had been recognized, arrested and incarcerated in their turn. Since Marianne had returned to Paris illegally it would be somewhat awkward to go to Savary and ask for her, while any approach to Napoleon was at once ruled out of court by his recent unfriendly note to the Prince of Benevento. There remained Jolival. But he was not due back for days yet and, even supposing he were to set out in search of her the very instant he returned, how long might it be before he came on any trace of her? Finally, even if he did follow her tracks to Mortefontaine, how could he possibly hope to obtain permission to search the Queen of Spain's grounds? Pilar's plans had indeed been well laid and efficiently carried out.
The logic of this train of thought soon overcame Marianne's temporary optimism and she fell asleep at last in a mood of deep depression.
Several days passed in this way, all desperately dull and very much alike. Sanchez appeared regularly to perform his duties as attendant, but he remained only a few minutes and Marianne had no wish for him to stay longer. He seemed to have nothing to say for himself and when she tried to talk to him she elicited nothing beyond a few unintelligible mumbles. Neither Pilar nor her accomplices bothered to come near her, a fact which made the prisoner feel in a curious way both relieved and abandoned.
As time passed, hope declined also. There was no way for her to escape unaided and she could not count on any assistance from her gaoler. At the same time, the workings of her fevered brain brought her little by little to a curious mental state of fatalistic resignation. She felt as if she were already removed from the world of the living, and was very sure that before long Jason would be so also. Then, on the day when Pilar, triumphant under the widow's weeds which would swathe her from head to foot, came to tell her that Jason was dead, there would be nothing left for her but to goad the vindictive Spanish woman to such a pitch of fury that she would not delay Marianne's own death longer. Her only hope now, in her prison cell, was in a better life hereafter.
Yet in spite of everything, although she herself was not fully aware of it, Marianne's busy brain was hard at work. There was something about that loft which was not quite right, although it had taken her some time to realize what it was. In fact, that something was the size of the huge bales of hay, some of which still retained their osier bindings.
Contemplating first the bales and then the exiguous dimensions of the door through which Sanchez was in the habit of coming, it was borne in on Marianne that the hay could not possibly have entered the loft that way and that there must therefore be another way in, probably through a trap-door in the floor.
It was true that even if she were to succeed in finding the trap-door she would not be much nearer to gaining her freedom. She still had the chain to deal with and the distance was clearly far too great to jump. But the search for it did provide, if not a hope precisely, at least a way of occupying her time, and so she set about clearing the hay from the floor within the limits of her chain, moving it to a heap on one side and then shifting the heap when the first section explored showed no sign of an opening.
The task was a long and painful one which raised a great deal of dust and made her very tired, but on the third day Marianne found two very large hinges set in the woodwork: irrefutable proof that the trap-door existed.
It was almost time for Sanchez to pay his daily visit and so, hurriedly covering up her find, Marianne went and flung herself down in her usual place in the straw and pretended to be asleep. The Spaniard performed his tasks as usual and then withdrew. Marianne devoured a hunk of bread and a piece of meat, drank a mug of water and returned to her excavations. Gradually, the whole trap-door was revealed. It was certainly a very large one, which explained the size of the hay bales, but the prisoner was unable to suppress a groan of dismay when she saw that her chain was too short to allow her to clear it completely.
Bitterly disappointed by this discovery, she dropped down on her knees in the hay and cried with despair at all her wasted labour. It made no difference to know that her chain still held her fast to the beam. She had cherished absurd hopes of that trap-door. Well, she knew now that it was there, and at the same time that it was useless to her… Her back ached and her hands were grimed with dirt and rubbed raw with splinters but all the same she began at last, mechanically, to cover up the floor again. It was then she felt it, something hard that moved under her fingers.
After some frantic fumbling in the hay she drew out a long, thin piece of metal, sharpened to a point at one end, and stared at it as if she could not believe her eyes. It was the tine of a pitchfork, which must have broken off when the hay was being stacked and been thought not worth recovering. A tool beyond her wildest dreams.
Marianne shut her eyes and offered up a silent prayer of thankfulness. With this, it must surely be possible to get the better of the padlock, when she recalled that Pilar had been afraid of what she might do with a mere hairpin.
She was on the point of going to work with her metal picklock there and then but at that moment she heard footsteps on the other side of the partition wall. Sanchez was coming back, but this time he was not alone. Marianne heard, as usual, the sound of the bales of straw being dragged aside and, hurriedly recovering the trapdoor, turned to hide her new tool by burying it deeply in the hay. Then, to make doubly sure, she sat down on the place where she had hidden it and began nonchalantly chewing a straw, conscious of a beating heart and hoping that the joy she felt did not show too clearly on her face. It was Pilar who entered.
Jason's wife was dressed all in black, although there was nothing out of the ordinary in this since she invariably dressed so or, when she did permit herself a colour, always accompanied it with a sombre veil or other dark accessories. On this occasion, however, she was wearing a bonnet with a deep poke from which fell a veil of very fine Chantilly lace. She walked up to Marianne, who had not turned at her entrance:
'Well, my dear? How do you feel after so many days of reflection?'
Determined not to utter a word, Marianne did not stir. Pilar continued, as if the interview were the most natural thing in the world:
'I hope you have everything you require. You look well enough, to be sure, and Sanchez tells me that your behaviour is perfectly quiet. However, I felt it right to come and bid you farewell…'
This time, it took all Marianne's self-control to keep herself from betraying the least start of surprise. Pilar was going away? It might be good news. Was it possible, after all, that today was her lucky day? She continued to chew on her straw as coolly as if Pilar had not existed. All she wanted now was for the woman to go away and let her get on with her preparations for an escape which had suddenly come within the bounds of possibility. Pilar, however, seemed in no hurry. She was taking a jasmine-scented handkerchief from her reticule and holding it to her nose, as if the smell in the loft offended her.