The burden cast, the released soul ran out and on, babbling,
half-delirious, growing in noise and volume, until, flowing to waste,
it sunk into the silence of exhaustion.
“I knew--as you all know now--what he intended, and where he was
going. I had been informed secretly, and I set out to waylay him.
Coming to the point from which he was to cross the glacier, I hid
among the stones; and presently I saw him approach. There were great
clouds, but a little starlight between--enough to make him sure. On
the slope of the moraine a drunken scoundrel, who carried a lantern,
veiled till then, rose to greet him. He was the other’s guide and
pander--and for whose undoing? O, my God! O, my God, Gaston! Think
what it meant--to me! to heaven! and heaven was the coward at the
last. It was all for me to do alone--prevent this horror, if I could
not persuade it. God sleeps, I think, when the riddles of mortal
wickedness get too much for Him: and then He wakes, and chastises weak
Nature for its false solutions. It is so easy to say This must not be,
and ignore the circumstances which will make _this_, and no other,
inevitable.
“I saw them meet, I say; and even then I could scarcely believe that
upon me, and me alone was thrust God’s responsibility to the maze He
had permitted. Yet I had no thought at the first, I swear, but to
prevail through gentleness. As I followed them down upon the ice, a
prayer was in my heart that, seeing itself discovered and exposed,
this sin would come to own itself--would at least deprecate my worst
suspicions of it, and, if for policy alone, go the practical way to
allay them. I did not know the man--no spark of decency or honour left
to leaven his vileness--a liar without shame. How I came upon him is
all a dream in my mind. I had pursued the light, now here, now gone,
but always rekindling somewhere in front; until in a moment it
stopped, and I had overtaken it. He was alone; had just, it seemed,
re-lighted the lantern, and was taking breath from the exertion, while
it rested near him on the snow. The other had disappeared, and we two
stood face to face and alone in the heart of that desolation. I don’t
know what I said to him, or he to me--things, on his part, monstrous
beyond speaking. His tongue lashed me like a flame--drove me to
madness. God should have torn it out; but God was sleeping. He would
scourge me, he said, before he crucified. For he meant to kill me for
my daring, and cast my body into a crevasse he pointed out hard by,
and whistle up my ghost to follow and witness to his filthy triumph.
He was a great man, a great power, a giant of strength and wickedness.
But, as he came at me, he slipped, as even a giant may, and I put my
knife into his heart.”
The voice, in the dark room, shrilled into a febrile transport; the
weak hand was re-playing its ecstatic deed. And the watcher sat
without a word or sign, and listened--listened.
“I heard his soul go from him like a hiss of fire--and then the storm
burst upon me. It flogged me in a moment into reason; I saw the
crevasse stretching at my feet; and I heaved him towards it, and heard
him go down. Knife and all he went; and after them I cast the lantern,
and then there was nothing more--only my love, my love’s safety, the
guerdon of my red hands.
“It was that one thought which saved me, while I cowered and let the
storm roll over. Then I returned by the way I had come. I don’t know
what guided my footsteps: I knew nothing more until I awoke in my bed
to light, and the blast of that mad memory.”
He paused a moment, while his soul seemed to fume on his lips: then
burst out once more:--
“A curse upon those who forced the deed upon me--who would have made
a wanton of my idol! They are to blame--they are to blame, not I! I
struck to keep God’s law immaculate--I was all alone, while He slept;
and I struck to vindicate His law. And He awoke, and damned me for my
deed--no palm of martyrdom; but torture, the endless torture of a
haunted wickedness--agues of sickness and terror--threats, menaces--a
guilty conscience. Am I guilty? O, Gaston! where is heaven? ... I lost
her that I might save her: her shrine was my heart, and I bloodied it.
What she had been to me, not you nor anyone can realise--saint,
sweetheart, loveliness--too divine for passion, and too passionate for
heaven--God’s earnest to me of immortal raptures. Why, I lived in
her--worshipped her. O, my God, my God, Gaston! If she was more to me
than heaven, was that a just rebuke to _me_ to make _her_ foul? ...
You all know now, I say, what I knew then. Put yourself in my
place--that man--filthy iniquity--no grace of truth or honour--a
ruttish beast. O! he was your friend, I know--forgive me--what a
friend! I had been stone till then--till it was whispered to me what
he designed--stone, with a heart of fire. Perhaps I had built a little
on the thought of that year’s respite--a year in which to hold him at
bay while we prayed and prayed for God to intervene. O, a cry to
stone!--no hope, no response. When I killed him, I plucked the dagger
from my own heart to plunge it into his. Was not that good, even
then--to send him to his account, saving his soul those last two
mortal sins? Tell me, Gaston, was it not good?”
“It was good and just, Louis--to lose her for ever that you might save
her for ever.”
The wild shape on the bed ceased its convulsive transports, while it
seemed to meditate the answer. Presently it spoke again, but feebly,
as if in a gathering exhaustion:--
“Yes, I have lost her for ever--you mean it, indeed, Gaston?”
“He was her husband, Louis. Will you confess to her? Could she marry
you if you did? Could you marry her if you did not? You did right, I
say. I take the burden of your conscience as a light one, and commit
you to rest.”
“Gaston!”
The poor wretch struggled to express his gratitude and relief. In the
midst, his voice trailed into incoherence, and ceased. Cartouche,
looking at him, saw that he had topped the crisis and was asleep.
* * * * * * * *
Self-composed, an exquisite _sans reproche_, carrying, sword-like, a
sort of sombre blitheness in his speech and mien, the Prefect of
Faissigny descended to his duties on the morning succeeding that
poignant interview. These were prefigured for him in the shape of a
waiting chaise and postillions, bespoken overnight, and attending now
in the street outside his windows; and, more intimately, in an early
bird of domesticity, who was busying herself with the preparation of
some worm-like sticks of bread, and the fastidiously-exacted
proportions of a cup of chocolate and coffee. He greeted her with a
half-remorseful, half-irritable allusion to her swollen eyes.
“My faith, girl! You look as if you had been fighting in your dreams,
and got the worst of it.”
She faced on him bravely.
“And so I have, and so I have--been fighting with my thoughts, and got
my punishment. Won’t you kiss them well, Cherry?”
“Put a blister to a blain, child! That would never do.”
She held up her sweet soft lips to him.
“Put it there, then, and show you’ve forgiven me.”
“Forgiven!” he cried cheerfully, and moved away. “I’ve nothing to
forgive but a rogue to our compact. Come, bustle, girl, bustle! I must
be off.”
She flushed, as if she had been stung; but she obeyed, entreating no
more.
“You must go, then?” she said presently--“for real and true, Cherry?”
He shrugged impatiently.
“Haven’t I told you that I’m to receive his keys of office to-morrow
from the old Prefect at Le Prieuré, and the _congés_ of his staff?
_Morituri me salutant_. Shall I be Cæsar and subject to an
apron-string? There are rogues waiting to be hung, and conscripts to
be plucked and dressed. Be quick, child, be quick, or di Rocco’s
murderer may escape me!”
“Cherry!” she cried out aghast--“was he murdered?”
He gave a curious violent laugh.
“The King says so: and the King can speak no lie. Come, I must go.”
She busied herself about his needs and comforts. Once she paused.
“When will you be back?”
“How can I tell!” he answered hurriedly. “What a drag on a restless
wheel! There! don’t cry. I shall come again, never fear. I shall--”
He was suddenly ready, and standing fixedly before her, his hat on his
head, a heavy cloak over his arm. His voice, his manner, had all at
once taken on a tone significant, forceful, imperious.
“I have a thing to say before I go--one last thing. Attend to it well.
M. Saint-Péray is asleep this morning. I think he is better now, and
will recover. But from this moment the treatment is to be changed--no
mending of an idyll any longer; no leading of him that way to hope and
sanity. What I set you to do I set you now to undo. The end we once
designed has become impossible. Do you understand? _They cannot ever
marry now_.”
“Why not?” Her voice was like a death-cry far away.
“She’s not for him, I say. Let that suffice. If he is weak--he may
be--be strong for him. He’ll thank you some day. For the rest, bear
what I say in mind--they must be kept apart at any price.”
He gazed at her earnestly a minute, pressed her hand, and was gone.
She did not follow him to the door. She stood as he had left her,
quite silent and motionless. A bee, a whiff of apples were blown in
together at the open window. The sing-song of a bell, high up and
distant somewhere, rippled in soft throbbings through her brain. A
crow cawed in the trees opposite. There was a chair near her, a plain
Windsor cottage chair, which Cartouche had bought at a sale to please
some whim of hers. She threw herself down at its feet, and prostrate,
as if praying, over the hard wood, fell into a convulsion of crying.
“O, mammy! Come and take your bad girl home to England!”