As if in gentle protest the head moved slightly. "All's well, all's
well," the low voice said.
A pause, in which the cries of the wounded came through the smoke, and
then the dying man, feeling the approach of another convulsion, said:
"A cigarette, mon ami."
Blake Shorland put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it.
"And now a little wine," the fallen soldier added. The surgeon, who had
come again for a moment, nodded and said: "It may help."
Barre's native servant brought a bottle of champagne intended to be drunk
after the expected victory, but not in this fashion!
Shorland understood. This brave young soldier of a dispossessed family
wished to show no fear of pain, no lack of outward and physical courage
in the approaching and final shock. He must do something that was
conventional, natural, habitual, that would take his mind from the thing
itself. At heart he was right. The rest was a question of living like a
strong-nerved soldier to the last. The tobacco-smoke curled feebly from
his lips, and was swallowed up in the clouds of powder-smoke that circled
round them. With his head on his native servant's knee he watched
Shorland uncork the bottle and pour the wine into the surgeon's medicine-
glass. It was put in his fingers; he sipped it once and then drank it
all. "Again," he said.
Again it was filled. The cigarette was smoked nearly to the end.
Shorland must unburden his mind of one thought, and he said: "You took
what was meant for me, my friend."
"Ah, no, no! It was the fortune, we will say the good fortune. C'est
bien!" Then, "The wine, the wine," he said, and his fingers again
clasped those of Shorland tremblingly. He took the glass in his right
hand and lifted it. "God guard all at home, God keep France!" he said.
He was about to place the glass to his lips, when a tremor seized him,
and the glass fell from his hand. He fell back, his breath quick and
vanishing, his eyes closing, and a faint smile upon his lips. "It is
always the same with France," he said; "always the same." And he was
gone.
V
The French had bought their victory dear with the death of Alencon Barre,
their favourite officer. When they turned their backs upon a quelled
insurrection, there was a gap that not even French buoyancy could fill.
On the morning of the twenty-fifth they neared Noumea. Shorland thought
of all that day meant to Luke and Clare. He was helpless to alter the
course of events, to stay a terrible possibility.
"You can never trust a woman of Gabrielle's stamp," he said to himself,
as they rode along through valleys of ferns, grenadillas, and limes.
"They have no baseline of duty; they either rend themselves or rend
others, but rend they must, hearts and not garments. Henri Durien knows,
and she knows, and Alencon Barre knew, poor boy! But what Barre knew is
buried with him back there under the palms. Luke and Clare are to be
married to-morrow-God help them! And I can see them in their home, he
standing by the fireplace in his old way--it's winter there--and looking
down at Clare; and on the other side of the fireplace sits the sister of
the Woman in the Morgue, waiting for the happiest moment in the lives of
these two before her. And when it comes, as she did with the portrait,
as she did with him before, she will set her foot upon his face and then
on Clare's; only neither Luke nor Clare will live again after that
crucifixion." Then aloud: "Hello! what's that?--a messenger riding hard
to meet us! Smoke in the direction of Noumea and sound of firing!
What's that, doctor? Convicts revolted, made a break at the prison
and on the way to the quarries at the same moment! Of course--seized
the time when the post was weakest, helped by ticket-of-leave-men and
led by Henri Durien, Gaspard, and Gabrielle Rouget. Gabrielle Rouget,
eh! And this is the twenty-fifth! Yes, I will take Barre's horse,
captain, thank you; it is fresher than mine. Away we go! Egad, they're
at it, doctor! Hear the rifles!" Answering to the leader's cry of
"Forward, forward!" the detachment dashed into the streets of this
little Paris, which, after the fashion of its far-away mother, was
dipping its hands in Revolution. Outcast and criminal France were
arrayed against military France once more. A handful of guards in the
prison at Ile Nou were bravely holding in check a ruthless mob of
convicts; and a crowd of convicts in the street keeping back a determined
military force. Part of the newly-arrived reinforcements proceeded to
Ile Nou, part moved towards the barricade. Shorland went to the
barricade.
The convicts had the Cafe Voisin in their rear. As the reinforcements
joined the besieging party a cheer arose, and a sally was made upon the
barricade. It was a hail of fire meeting a slighter rain of fire--a cry
of coming victory cutting through a sullen roar of despair. The square
in which the convicts were massed was a trench of blood and bodies; but
they fought on. There was but one hope--to break out, to meet the
soldiers hand to hand and fight for passage to the friendly jungle and
to the sea, where they might trust to that Providence who appears to help
even the wicked sometimes. As Shorland looked upon the scene he thought
of Alencon Barre's words: "It is always the same with France, always the
same."
The fight grew fiercer, the soldiers pressed nearer. And now one clear
voice was heard above the din, "Forward, forward, my children!" and some
one sprang upon the outer barricade. It was the plotter of the revolt,
the leader, the manager of the "Underground Railway," the beloved of the
convicts--Gabrielle Rouget.
The sunlight glorified her flying hair and vivid dress-vivid with the
blood of the fallen. Her arms, her shoulders, her feet were bare; all
that she could spare from her body had gone to bind the wounds of her
desperate comrades. In her hands she held a carbine. As she stood for
an instant unmoving, the firing, as if by magic, ceased. She raised a
hand. "We will have the guillotine in Paris," she said; "but not the
hell of exile here."
Then Henri Durien, the convict, sprang up beside her; the man for whom
she had made a life's sacrifice--for whom she had come to this! His head
was bandaged and clotted with blood; his eyes shone with the fierceness
of an animal at bay. Close after him crowded the handful of his frenzied
compatriots in crime.
Then a rifle-crack was heard, and Henri Durieu fell at the feet of
Gabrielle. The wave on the barricade quivered, and then Gabrielle's
voice was heard crying, "Avenge him! Free yourselves, my children!
Death is better than prison!"
The wave fell in red turmoil on the breakers. And still Gabrielle stood
alone above the body of Henri Durien; but the carbine was fallen from her
hands. She stood as one awaiting death, her eyes upon the unmoving form
at her feet. The soldiers watched her, but no one fired. Her face was
white; but in the eyes there was a wild triumph. She wanted death now;
but these French soldiers had not the heart to kill her.
When she saw that, she leaned and thrust a hand into the bleeding bosom
of Henri Durien, and holding it aloft cried: "For this blood men must
die." Stooping again she seized the carbine and levelled it at the
officer in command. Before she could pull the trigger some one fired,
and she fell across the body of her lover. A moment afterwards Shorland
stood beside her. She was shot through the lungs.
He stooped over her. "Gabrielle, Gabrielle!" he said. "Yes, yes,
I know--I saw you. This is the twenty-fifth. He will be married
to-morrow-Luke. I owed it to him to die; I owed it to Henri to die this
way." She drew the scarred portrait of Luke Freeman from her bosom and
gave it over.
"His eyes made me," she said. "They haunted me.
"Well, it is all done. I am sorry, ah! Never tell him of this. I go
away--away--with Henri."
She closed her eyes and was still for a moment; so still that he thought
her dead. But she looked up at him again and said with her last breath:
"I am--the Woman in the Morgue--always--now!"