'Then,' said I, 'here are two matches in my grasp: be good enough to
draw one.'
_Now_ she was hit to the heart: I saw her eyes widen to the width of
horror, with a glassy stare: she had read of the drawing of lots in the
Bible: she knew that it meant death for me, or for her.
But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief
hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand. I
had fixed it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches,
then she should die; if the longer, then I should die.
She drew the shorter....
* * * * *
This was only what I should have expected: for I knew that God loved
her, and hated me.
But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her
executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after
she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon
her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would
not be so bad, after all.
With a sudden movement I snatched the revolver from my pocket: she did
not move, except her white lips, which, I think, whispered:
'_Not yet_....'
I stood with hanging arm, forefinger on trigger, looking at her. I saw
her glance once at the weapon, and then she fixed her eyes upwards upon
my face: and now that same smile, which had disappeared, was on her lips
again, meaning confidence, meaning disdain.
I waited for her to open her mouth to say something--to stop that
smile--that I might shoot her quick and sudden: and she would not,
knowing that I could not kill her while she was smiling; and suddenly,
all my pity and love for her changed into a strange resentment and rage
against her, for she was purposely making hard for me what I was doing
for her sake: and the bitter thought was in my mind: 'You are nothing to
me: if you want to die, you do your own killing; and I will do my own
killing.' And without one word to her, I strode away, and left her
there.
I see now that this whole drawing of lots was nothing more than a farce:
I never could have killed her, smiling, or no smiling: for to each thing
and man is given a certain strength: and a thing cannot be stronger than
its strength, strive as it may: it is so strong, and no stronger, and
there is an end of the matter.
I walked up to the Grand Bailli's _bureau_, a room about twenty-five
feet from the ground. By this time it was getting pretty dark, but I
could see, by peering, the face of a grandfather's-clock which I had
long since set going, and kept wound. It is on the north side of the
room, over the writing-desk opposite the oriels. It then pointed to
half-past six, and in order to fix some definite moment for the bitter
effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I then locked the door
which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and also the
stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of
air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at
the throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of
one oriel. Some minutes later, at twenty-five to seven, I lit two
candles on the desk, and sat to write to her, the pistol at my right
hand; but I had hardly begun, when I thought that I heard a sound at the
three-step door, which was only four feet to my left: a sound which
resembled a scraping of her slipper; I stole to the door, and crouched,
listening: but I could hear nothing further. I then returned to the
desk, and set to writing, giving her some last directions for her life,
telling her why I died, how I loved her, much better than my own soul,
begging her to love me always, and to live on to please me, but if she
_would_ die, then to be sure to die near me. Tears were pouring down my
face, when, turning, I saw her standing in a terrified pose hardly two
feet behind me. The absolute stealth which had brought and put her
there, unknown to me, was like miracle: for the ladder, whose top I saw
intruding into the open oriel, I knew well, having often seen it in a
room below, and its length was quite thirty feet, nor could its weight
be trifling: yet I had heard not one hint of its impact upon the window.
But there, at all events, she was, wan as a ghost.
Immediately, as my consciousness realised her, my hand instinctively
went out to secure the weapon: but she darted upon it, and was an
instant before me. I flew after her to wrench it away, but she flew,
too: and before I caught her, had thrown it cleanly through two rungs of
the ladder and the window. I dashed to the window, and after a hurried
peer thought that I saw it below at the foot of a rock; away I flew to
the stair-door, wrung open the lock, and down the stairs, three at a
time, I ran to recover it. I remember being rather surprised that she
did not follow, forgetting all about the ladder.
But with a horrid shock I was reminded of it the moment I reached the
bottom, before ever I had passed from the house: for I heard the report
of the weapon--that crack, my God! and crying out: 'Well, Lord, she has
died for me, then!' I tottered forward, and tumbled upon her, where she
lay under the incline of the ladder in her blood.
* * * * *
That night! what a night it was! of fingers shivering with haste, of
harum-scarum quests and searches, of groans, and piteous appeals to God.
For there were no surgical instruments, lint, anaesthetics, nor
antiseptics that I knew of in the Château; and though I knew of a house
in Montreux where I could find them, the distance was quite infinite,
and the time an eternity in which to leave her all alone, bleeding to
death; and, to my horror, I remembered that there was barely enough
petrol in the motor, and the store usually kept in the house exhausted.
However, I did it, leaving her there unconscious on her bed: but _how_ I
did it, and lived sane afterwards, that is another matter.
If I had not been a medical man, she must, I think, have died: for the
bullet had broken the left fifth rib, had been deflected, and I found
it buried in the upper part of the abdominal wall. I did not go from her
bed-side: I did not sleep, though I nodded and staggered: for all things
were nothing to me, but her: and for a frightfully long time she
remained comatose. While she was still in this state I took her to a
chalet beyond Villeneuve, three miles away on the mountain-side, a
homely, but very salubrious place which I knew, imbedded in verdures,
for I was desperate at her long collapse, and had hope in the higher
air. And there after three more days, she opened her eyes, and smiled
with me.
It was then that I said to myself: 'This is the noblest, sagest, and
also the most loveable, of the creatures whom God has made in heaven or
earth. She has won my life, and I will live.... But at least, to save
myself, I will put the broadest Ocean that there is between her and me:
for I wish to be a decent being, for the honour of my race, being the
last, and to turn out trumps ... though I do love my dear, God
knows....'
And thus, after only fifty-five days at the chalet, were we forced still
further Westward.
* * * * *
I wished her to remain at Chillon, intending, myself, to start for the
Americas, whence any sudden impulse to return to her could not be
easily accomplished: but she refused, saying that she would come with me
to the coast of France: and I could not say her no.
And at the coast, after thirteen days we arrived, three days before the
New Year, traversing France by steam, air, and petrol traction.
We came to Havre--infirm, infirm of will that I was: for in my deep
heart was the secret, hidden away from my own upper self, that, she
being at Havre, and I at Portsmouth, we could still speak together.
We came humming into the dark town of Havre in a four-seat motor-car
about ten in the evening of the 29th December: a raw bleak night, she,
it was clear, poor thing, bitterly cramped with cold. I had some
recollection of the place, for I had been there, and drove to the quays,
near which I stopped at the _Maire's_ large house, a palatial place
overlooking the sea, in which she slept, I occupying another near.
The next morning I was early astir, searched in the _mairie_ for a map
of the town, where I also found a _Bottin_: I could thus locate the
Telephone Exchange. In the _Maire's_ house, which I had fixed upon to be
her home, the telephone was set up in an alcove adjoining a very stately
_salon_ Louis Quinze; and though I knew that these little dry batteries
would not be run down in twenty odd years, yet, fearing any weakness, I
broke open the box, and substituted a new one from the Company's stores
two streets away, at the same time noting the exchange-number of the
instrument. This done, I went down among the ships by the wharves, and
fixed upon the first old green air-boat that seemed fairly sound, broke
open a near shop, procured some buckets of oil, and by three o'clock had
tested and prepared my ship. It was a dull and mournful day, drizzling,
chilly. I returned then to the _mairie_, where for the first time I saw
her, and she was heavy of heart that day: but when I broke the news that
she would be able to speak to me, every day, all day, first she was all
incredulous astonishment, then, for a moment, her eyes turned white to
Heaven, then she was skipping like a kid. We were together three
precious hours, examining the place, and returning with stores of
whatever she might require, till I saw darkness coming on, and we went
down to the ship.
And when those long-dead screws awoke and moved, bearing me toward the
Outer Basin, I saw her stand darkling, lonely, on the Quai through
heart-rending murk and drizzly inclemency: and oh my God, the gloomy
under-look of those red eyes, and the piteous out-push of that little
lip, and the hurried burying of that face! My heart broke, for I had not
given her even one little, last kiss, and she had been so good, quietly
acquiescing, like a good wife, not attempting to force her presence upon
me in the ship; and I left her there, all widowed, alone on the
Continent of Europe, watching after me: and I went out to the bleak and
dreary fields of the sea.
* * * * *
Arriving at Portsmouth the next morning, I made my residence in the
first house in which I found an instrument, a spacious dwelling facing
the Harbour Pier. I then hurried round to the Exchange, which is on the
Hard near the Docks, a large red building with facings of Cornish
moor-stone, a bank on the ground-floor, and the Exchange on the first.
Here I plugged her number on to mine, ran back, rang--and, to my great
thanksgiving, heard her speak. (This instrument, however, did not prove
satisfactory: I broke the box, and put in another battery, and still the
voice was muffled: finally, I furnished the middle room at the Exchange
with a truckle-bed, stores, and a few things, and here have taken up
residence.)
I believe that she lives and sleeps under the instrument, as I here
live and sleep, sleep and live, under it. My instrument is quite near
one of the harbour-windows, so that, hearing her, I can gaze out toward
her over the expanse of waters, yet see her not; and she, too, looking
over the sea toward me, can hear a voice from the azure depths of
nowhere, yet see me not.
* * * * *