“I care not, I say. I say, strike at him openly, if you will, and see

him bristle through all his hulking shadow like a boar.”

“I will not. I will have it your way.”

“Well, if you like, give me the warrant to dismiss him, and appoint

this Léotade in his place--him or another; what concern is it to me?

Only I could so take him with mine art, he’d greet this chance as of a

release from bondage--construe it into his resignation offered and

accepted--abandon his following, leaving it to die of an atrophy, like

a body whose brain is withered.”

“If you could do this thing, and earn my lasting gratitude!--dispel

that darkness, and be like Moses honoured with burnt-offerings. I’ll

send thee on the warrant. In the meanwhile, take this in earnest of my

debt to thee.”

He threw a purse upon the floor--it struck weightily--and turned and

left the room with Mirobole. A minute later the door below had shut

upon them.

Bonito, with a loud snigger, touched a spring in the wall which acted

on the curtain of the alcove, folding it up and away; and, striding to

the tripod, took some hidden powder from beneath it, which he cast

into the pan. A glowing flame shot up immediately, lighting the whole

place, and he called out in ecstasy: “Cassandra, ma belle prêtresse,

ma petite!”

She came out from a little room hidden behind the further curtain, and

stood up motionless between their inky folds.

“We have won!” he cried boisterously: “we are partners in this

triumph! Ministers of Fate, what a triumph! Mine own nominee elected;

the other deposed and disgraced. Savoy is ours: we will cross the Alps

ere long. Rejoice with me, child! Thine enemy lies low--thou art

avenged.”

“Yes, I am avenged,” she answered dully.

He looked at her shrewdly.

“Art thou not satisfied?”

“You will not hurt him else, Bonito?”

“Why should I? He stood in my way; he will stand no longer. That is

enough for me.”

“But you will not hurt him?”

“Hurt him, hurt him? Thou art tenderer of him than of his doxy. Look

how you smile on while I bleed her--no pity there. And she’ll have to

bleed the more for this--we take new life of it--no bottom to our need

for funds. She’ll have to bleed again, I say, and make you fresh

sport. No tenderness there.”

“You will not hurt him?”

“Plague on the parrot! Why should I hurt him?”

“Swear it.”

“Why, I will. Let him go free, for me, to beggary. I swear it, there.”

“Remember that.”

She dropped the curtain, and was gone.

CHAPTER VI

He had done this thing for her--had stained his hands with blood to

keep hers clean--had darkened his own soul that her soul might shine

the purer for that shadow. What was her debt to him for this great

self-sacrifice? How could she pay it, and not condone his sin?

So we pass to Yolande and her mortal problem.

Poor child so straight in candour as she was, no compromise with facts

seemed possible to her nature. She must tell him all or nothing.

And if she told him all--revealed her knowledge of his crime--made

herself its accessory thereby? He’d answer, would he not, “That leaves

me no alternative. Sweet love, for sweet love’s sake, I must acquit

you of this shadow of complicity--give myself up, and vindicate your

spotless fame before the world”?

Would he not? She told herself he would; deafened her ears to her own

heart’s whispered treason; would admit no justification for it in the

evidences of a slandered character. Could one so un-self-reliant, so

irresolute, so much the whimpering prey to circumstance as

circumstance had seemed to paint her Louis, have braced himself to do

that deed? The deed was there to answer her--to answer, triumphantly

too, that by very reason of itself that saintly soul was convict of a

heroism of which its meek patience had once seemed incapable, and

which, in its revelation, had found the woman in her secretly exultant

over the angel. Was that so indeed? Had his fall from grace made him

dearer to her than ever his perfection could?

A dreadful thought, for which she paid to herself and God with

anguishes of penance. But she could not control it, nor lay its

unrighteous shadow. How could she, when father to it was the wish that

what it implied of manly strength in him would answer to her

confession of that dark knowledge, were she to make it, by an instant

surrender to the law?

She could not tell him, then; and, so, what other course? No mid-way

steering for this whole-hearted heroine--no hints, no tell-tale sighs,

no tearful looks askance to haunt him with half-truths; no lagging

partner snivelling unspoken resentment of her burden. She’d bear it

all and bravely, the weight, the heat and pressure of the day, and

cheer him, smiling, on to self-redemption. That be her mission--by

ways of healing grace to guide him to that summit he would never

attain alone. Man’s responsibility might be to the civil laws; but

woman’s was to love. For love he’d saved her; love should save him.

The rest was for his confessor.

Conceive this poor soul, then, with her monstrous self-imposed

burden--never to be put down--facing the steeps of life! If her feet

would sometimes falter, her eyes grow strained with agony beneath it,

her heart never admitted by one false beat a sense of disproportion in

their loads. To fend him from the truth, while hiding from him that

she knew it; to pay his debts to vile extortion, and suffer the stigma

of a parsimony which appeared to grudge him the means to realise their

compact of a boundless charity; worse, to suspect sometimes that he

guessed her knowledge of the truth, and was content to build upon her

loving hypocrisy his house of later peace, was content to let her live

the lie while he enjoyed its fruits--these things were the hardest of

her task.

Another grief she suffered; but that, she told herself, was in

heaven’s withholding of a greater. She was thankful for it--thankful

as a martyr, whom great pain has numbed from further feeling--thankful

that in all these years no child was born to them to bear the heritage

of its father’s sin. And while she praised heaven for its mercy, the

starved woman in her hungered for the milk of motherhood, and, fading

on that deprivation, made her task of youth a burden. Yet she must

bear that too, or pay the penalty to love estranged, since only the

gifts of motherhood could compensate for youth and beauty bartered

against them.

So she must be young and sweet in spite of ageing conscience; must

sing about her duties; must smile away those shadows in her husband’s

eyes which she sickened to think were the reflections of her own

enforced avarice, her waning beauty, her barrenness.

A sordid destiny for this child of lovely purity; this Yolande of the

white hands; this lily light of truth.

And to work out in what unnatural atmosphere--transplanted into what

lifeless soil?

She was the mistress of a Golgotha, an old dark windy necropolis,

whose massive gates her husband’s hands had closed for ever, shutting

her in to consort with its ghosts. In di Rocco had perished the last

of his name; in him, the old blotched trunk, his house’s life, slow

withering to its roots, had sunk for ever. The branches long were

leafless. To her, a stranger, had befallen the heritage of death.

She could have administered it, have justified heaven’s severe choice

of her as receiver in that estate such ages bankrupt in charity, have

wrung a sombre joy even from dispersing its evil accumulations, had

not Fate thus imposed upon her this awful seclusion, paralysing her

hands. As antique graveyards are sometimes made the sporting-grounds

for little feet, so had she once pictured to herself the joy of

budding life at play in these stony corridors and empty gardens,

redeeming them from the melancholy of great wrong. It was not to be;

and for the withholding of that lovely mercy she could only give

heaven praise--give it with weeping eyes in solitude, and, elsewhere,

with a bright countenance turned to her husband.

Did he find that inscrutable, nevertheless? Was he so far from sharing

her thankfulness for that grace denied as that he could visit upon

her--in those shades of altered intimacy, those reserves in

confidence, those nuances of alienation which only love can

detect--his secret disappointment? She prayed that it was not so;

prayed, also, that, in the enforced restraints she must put upon his

charities, his sweet and reasonable nature would look for no baser

motive than necessity. She was always frank with him as to the extent

of what she could command (exclusive of Bonito’s periodic drains upon

her, and those of her father, a creature scarcely less abominable),

and held all within those limits at his pleasure. Rather she should be

whispered for parsimony than that his generosity should suffer in its

name. He was so good, so bounteous, so utterly improvident for

himself. Though he would not claim one penny that was hers, there was

no question of his acting as her almoner. Indeed the money was no more

hers than his, but in trust to both of them for God’s good business.

She was, by heaven’s grace, but the acting paymaster; and so long as

she might bear the whole burden of that duty, she was content that he

should enjoy its credit. The question was one between her and love

alone; its very exclusiveness made its bliss.

Yet sometimes in her moods of desolation, when, for all her prayers

and self-reassurances, that sense of their estrangement would glow a

more definite gloom, and the problem of her double life smite sickly

on her heart, a dread doubt would arise in her as to the sureness of

her guidance of this afflicted soul. The physically blind are apt to

become the morally blind, intent only on their self-interests, some

people say, because of the consideration with which pity hedges

them--of the licence which it allows them for their infirmity. What,

then, if love in pity had so rallied this stricken life as to lead it

to regard itself as a persecuted thing--a thing privileged, through

its own helplessness, to presume on the self-sacrifices of others for

its sake? Louis’s apparent obtuseness to the meaning of the atonements

her sweet example exacted of him, his apparent ignorance of any

provocation to them caused by himself, filled her, when in these

moods, with amazement. Had he lost all sense of responsibility to his

own deed, in her voluntary acceptance of its consequences? That were

to assume that he guessed her part, and could justify it to himself on

the score of his own infirmity--an obliquity which surely could not be

held to vindicate her self-sacrifice before heaven. Yet sometimes the

assumption would arise, to hurt her cruelly--even to sting _her_ to a

momentary revolt. He _could_ not be really ignorant of her

burden--_must_ have surmised some coincidence between Bonito’s visit

and the instant restrictions she had been forced to put upon their

expenditure. His terror of the man’s presence on that day; his slow

and shaken convalescence from the date of it--these were evidences of

his knowledge hard to be discredited. And that, in the face of it, he

could expect of her a pledge of their full confidence; could imply a

reproach of her for her barrenness!--O, that were an addition to her

load beyond her human endurance. The mere shadow of its oppression

killed her heart--drove her in her agony to blow cold upon the little

chill which already spoke their differences. And then the reaction

would come.

He had done this thing for her; and she had accepted the burden of its

consequences. She had prayed, prayed that even as he had saved her out

of silence, so might she save him. And this was her heroism--to

deprecate his blindness as a wilful vileness.

Then, poor child, she would call herself a wicked traitor to her lord,

blame her own foul suspicions, and seek by loving demonstrations to

atone. Her wistful guiles to win his favour, her rehearsals for his

sake of that old forgotten part of tranquil innocence, her gratitude

for only half-thawed acknowledgments, were moving things to witness.

How could she dream her Louis guilty of this monstrous meanness--the

man who had dipped his hand in blood to keep hers white? His first

terror of that apparition had been real; he had afterwards accepted

her word for its being an illusion. He always trusted others’

assurances: that very weakness it was which made him so lovable. So

lovable, so lovable; and she had let her wicked heart condemn him!

Could he have recovered from the shock of that visitation so utterly

as he had, if he had seen in her the ever-present hostage for his

immunity from deadlier hauntings? Her whole protecting knowledge of

him was to answer; and it answered piercingly remorseful. No dear

soul, it said, had ever less power than Louis-Marie for affecting to

ignore the influences of a present depression. Yet Louis-Marie, the

terror once laid, had rallied--had even come to recover something of

the serenity of his earlier innocence. Why should he not, indeed? She

thought, with heart-felt joy, it spoke his peace made with God; and,

so justified of her burden, was more frenziedly determined than ever

to hide her bearing of it from him, while she smiled and smiled under

its load, impersonating out of torture her own untroubled youth. Alas!

blind Love--who yet perhaps deserves scant pity! For did he not put

out his own eyes!

Now she saw, and was rejoiced to see, as the months drew into years,

his soul relax upon an ancient sweet security; the spectre of his fear

grew less and less; his natural goodness mature into the full fruitage

of its blossoms’ promise. So peaceful did he grow, so seemingly

unvexed by apprehensions, so confident in his demands upon her charity

for others’ sake, she was sometimes moved to wonder if, after all, she

were not being made the victim of a hellish conspiracy--if he had

really committed the crime with which villainy had charged him. But as

often she recalled Bonito’s words--“Ask him, if you doubt me”--and

that she dared not do. The answer might destroy at a blow the whole

structure of his soul’s redemption, which her self-obliterating love

had patiently built up for him year by year. Fruitless all her

devotion then; useless that cementing of its bricks with her own

heart’s blood. He had come to be nearer heaven now than she, raised on

the altar of her sacrifice. She had lied to save him. Should she risk

his soul at the last to save her own?

Divinely steadfast to her purpose, she kept her way. Her sweet eyes

shone inspired to it. Though she were lost by holding to it, _he_

should win to harbour. What greater love could woman show? If God

would forgive her for that--concede her the mercy to creep into

heaven, lost in her dear saint’s shadow! For he was her saint

again--twice beatified through his fault. He had been guilty of his

one worldly lapse for her--had done outrage to his nature that hers

might suffer none. Was not such sin the prerogative of consecration?

So, with an unfading resolution, through days of exaltation and

depression, through drear heart-burnings and the agonies of

misunderstandings not to be explained, through poignant ecstasies and

thorns of non-fulfilment, she strove unfaltering--until, lo! there

came a time when all her struggles seemed in vain; when, bursting from

the thicket, her bleeding feet stood halted in an instant, not before

the dear meadows they had hoped, but at the base of a monstrous

God-veiling cliff.

That year, the heavens themselves had seemed to speak the omens of

disaster. From its opening they had poured down incessantly from sooty

reservoirs a torrent like the deluge. The season was an abnormally

mild one, if any such term could be applied to tempests of wind and

water, overwhelming, inexplicable. The ice in the mountains, cracking

and answering under the assault, boomed an unceasing cannonade; the

land slid down in continents; trees were tossed in flood-water, like

sprouts boiling in a saucepan. And to all this descending hubbub the

rising of a human tide seemed to leap sympathetic. The waters of

unrest were gathering force and volume; the dark hour of Savoy was

drawing near; the Prefect had hard ado to keep his feet.

Then at last came a period of respite, when the powers of darkness

seemed to sleep exhausted; and the sun came out, and the waters

sounded peaceably on the hills, and Spring opened its drowned eyes and

preened its draggled plumes.

One day, when all the land was glowing in a noontide rest, a servant

came to inform Madame Saint-Péray that his excellency the Prefect of

Faissigny craved the honour of a word with her alone. She opened her

eyes in amazement.

The Prefect! Impossible! The man could not have heard aright.

But the man was not mistaken. M. le Préfet, it would appear, had

foreseen this reluctance on Madama’s part to grant him that honour,

inasmuch as he had impressed very earnestly upon the messenger the

importance of an occasion which could thus excuse his presumption in

calling upon one with whom he was unacquainted.

Madama’s cheek flamed as she rose; her lips set tightly; she looked an

inch taller than her wont.

“Thank you, Benoît,” she said. “I will go down to him.”

CHAPTER VII

He bowed to her gravely as she entered. She responded with the

iciest salutation. Throughout their interview they both remained

standing.

He noticed, with dark ruth, how wan her face had grown, how sharpened

from its blunt youthful curves, how prematurely aged even--like a

late-blown lily, shrunk, in its first lovely opening, to a freezing

wind. The nearer thereby, the more pathetic, to his own barren

passion. He could claim his pallid kinship with this sorrow, as never

he might have done with insolent felicity. He was so changed by love,

he could have prized dead beauty in this woman above all the living

graces of her happier sisters. Had she waned like the moon, his arms

had lusted for the last shred of her.

His heart beat thickly. For whatever reason, he was to have speech

with her once more--was to reclaim her to some interest in his own. So

that that might be, he cared little how she wounded him.

“You asked to see me, Monsieur,” she said frigidly. “I am here. To

what importunate circumstance, may I ask, do I owe this--yes, this

insult, Monsieur, of your visit?”

She had hardly intended to be so explicit; but her indignation took

her, irresistibly and on the instant, off her feet. Cartouche slightly

shrugged his shoulders.

“Importunate, Madame?” he said. “You shall judge. I come as Prefect.

The insult is official.”

His eyes, fastened on her, feeding gluttonously after their long

abstinence, saw how she started slightly at his words--how she looked

at him in sudden fear. To whatever offensive motive she had thought to

attribute his visit, the possibility of its impersonal character had

evidently not occurred to her. He was become master by that

disillusionment; and would have been less than human not to have

recognised it--not to have held her frightened heart fluttering for

one moment in his hand. It was fierce ecstasy to feel it beat--to have

it own him lord of itself through terror--if only he might reassure it

in the end, and release it to fly away on wings of poignant gratitude!

She struggled for the self-composure to answer him after his kind.

“I have no right, then, Monsieur, to resent it. The law exacts its

privileges, however represented. You come, I am to understand, on

business. Business, Monsieur, demands the fewest words to be

effective.”

“That is perfectly true, Madame,” he said quietly. “This of mine,

though its processes have extended over years, is summed up in a

sentence. You are in the habit of sending, periodically, large sums of

money to one who is well known by me to be conspiring against the

Government.”

She stood as rigid as stone. Every atom of colour had fled from her

face. He longed to cry out on its moveless agony, “O, woman! on the

merit of my hopeless passion, believe in me, trust in me! I am here to

save, not ruin!” But he must strike deeper, before he could seek to

heal.

“This fact, Madame,” he said, “has been made known to me through the

ordinary secret channels of my office. It is indisputable. I do not

ask you to dispute it. I ask you simply, I give you the opportunity of

answering privately, a single question. Does M. Saint-Péray, who is

my friend, identify himself also with this movement? Is he, in short,

in your confidence in this matter of your supplying it with funds?”

She tottered towards him, holding out frenzied hands.

“O, no, Monsieur! O, no, no!”

He knew it all now; he had her at his mercy; for one moment this soft

cruel thing should yield herself to his will, its abject slave. He

lingered out the rapture, as one condemned to death might hang on the

lips of his soul’s love. His dark cheek flushed; he backed before her

approach, unresponsive.

“You reassure me, Madame,” he said coldly. “I had been concerned for

him, I own. It is enough that friendship has helped to exculpate,

where a closer relationship, it seems, had found its better interest

in deceiving. For the rest, you are doubtless prepared, for yourself,

with a sufficient answer to the law.”

“The law!”

She whispered it, aghast.

“As its representative, Madame,” he said, “I have no choice but to

demand one of you. You can refuse to give it, referring your defence

to a public occasion.” (He would not see how her anguish entreated

him.) “In that event, I make my bow, my apologies, and I withdraw. The

issue then is very simple. You will be called to account for your

subsidising of a dangerous conspirator against the State, and will

probably be put on your trial with him. As Prefect of this Province, I

can guarantee the case at least an impartial hearing. My presence,

Madame, does not insult the law, however offensive it may be to the

criminal.”

She hurried nearer to him--broke out, and down, in an instant.

“Before God, Monsieur! You must believe me--you must. I know nothing

of this man’s use of what he wrings from me; I am not his confederate,

but--”

He interrupted her, sharp and sudden,--

“But his victim.”

She cried: “O, Monsieur, Monsieur! O, my God!” and buried her face in

her hands.

Now at that his gluttonous moment passed. Henceforth his heart was

hers to sport with. It had only played the tyrant hitherto to nurse to

ecstasy its own compunction. He spoke in a strangely softened tone,--

“He is black-mailing you?”

“No!” she cried, looking up in quick miserable panic. “I have not said

it.”

He smiled slightly.

“No need to. Well, I suspected as much.”

She seemed to strive to speak; but nothing came from her.

“I say,” he repeated, “I suspected it. Do I not know this man of old,

his craft, his villainy--how he will go long ways about to reach an

end--traverse the world to stab an enemy in the back? Most to be

feared when most he feigns benevolence--Bonito--that old dreary

misanthrope to play the Benthamite! Why, I never doubted but that he

had his deep reasons for scheming to marry you to--I never doubted it,

I say, Madame; and here’s the proof. He was playing for hush-money.”

She stared at him, as if her very soul were paralysed.

“How he discovered the truth?” he continued--“by cunning or

coercion?--” He paused, questioning her at a venture with his eyes.

She made no answer; and he went on, shrugging his shoulders: “Like

enough ’twas he himself who laid the train--who first supplied the

insidious damning information to my friend, and--but it matters

little; he discovered it.”

He questioned her face again. Still she was silent.

“If I had guessed in time,” he said, in a deep passionate voice, “this

should never have been. It shall be no longer. Madame, I have twice

before offered you my services, and twice been rejected with scorn.

Once again I lay them at your feet. It was for this, in truth, I

sought you. I entreat you, do not refuse me.”

It was not in her nature to do justice to this man. So far as his

devotion touched her, it was to nothing but a sense of humiliation.

The thought uppermost in her mind was of his cognisance, not his

chivalry.

“You know?” she whispered. Her white lips could hardly frame the

words.

“I know,” he answered. “He had confessed to me before you married

him.”

An irrepressible moan came from her, pitiful, heart-rending. He broke

upon it passionately,--

“I told him, what I tell you now--that, on my soul, he had done right;

but that, having done what he had done, the prospect of his union with

you had become impossible. To me, though what I am, the thought was

horrible. Believe me, Madame--before God, believe that I had no

thought of myself in so urging him.”

She drew a little away. Her eyes were already freezing to him. But his

emotion made him blind.

“I am not to blame for what followed,” he hurried on. “The

villain--that same dog Bonito over-reached me. He took advantage of my

absence to practise on one--there I will not pain you with the record.

You know who came to you. She had been warned by me against abetting

him she nursed in any designs upon your ignorance. I do not blame

_him_. If you can do me any justice in your woman’s heart, you will

guess why. He staked his soul against a chance for which I would have

sacrificed a thousand heavens. But, with her--it was different. She

paid for her temerity with my curse.”

He ended, greatly agitated. His eyes were lowered before her. He did

not see the new abhorrence of him spring and flame in hers. He did not

see how the majesty of her womanhood rose to answer and reject him.

“You cursed her for my sake, Monsieur?” she said quietly.

“If you will have it so,” he answered low.

“And this, her suborner, her confederate;--you say he shall trouble me

no longer?”

“Not while I have hands to strike, and teeth to hold.”

She sprang away from him.

“That I have fallen to this!” she cried--“To be asked to approve

myself the instrument of that poor creature’s ruin! to applaud the

wicked deed and crown the doer of it with my gratitude! Would you

murder also for my sake--smear the feet you profess to worship with a

fellow-creature’s blood? O, go from me, go from me, Monsieur! you are

horrible in my sight. We take the burden of our sin--will atone for it

as heaven wills. Better a hundred cruel witnesses than one advocate

like you. She thought to save your soul, poor child, by winning it to

justice done to hers. ‘One marriage brings another’--those were her

pretty words--and so for your requital of her love. Love! O, I am

fouled in having heard you--humbled myself before you. Go--say--do

what you will, Monsieur. We refuse your help! Why will you for ever

impose your hateful favours on me?”

He listened to her, standing quite still and ghastly pale. Then he

bowed slightly, and walked to the door. Turning at it, he spoke,--

“I have made it my mission in life, Madame, to protect the shrine of

my devotion from sacrilegious hands. No scorn, no misconstruction, no

wounding hate will deter me from that purpose while I live. The idol

of it shall owe me, at least, that debt of fidelity. If she hungers

for the opportunity to retaliate, as debtors will, there is the

precedent of Lazarus in heaven to reassure her. I will be sure to call

to you for that drop of water, Madame.”

He opened the door, and was gone.

She stood quite motionless for minutes after he had left her; then

suddenly flung herself, exhausted, into a chair. No grace, no pity

towards him was in her heart. If they had been possible to its pure

narrow code, his parting words, in which she read a scoff at religion,

would have alienated them finally.

For hours she lay in wretched thought, half-hypnotised by misery. No

tender sprig of hope could ever again be hers. Her uttermost fears

were confirmed. He had confessed his guilt. The road stretched dark

and endless now before her.

The house was deadly quiet. She was quite alone, and very desolate.

Louis-Marie had gone into France, on business concerning his

patrimony, and would not be back for some days. She had not even God

to help her.

With dusk, as she still lay unstirring, came a quick step, which she

recognised, in the hall outside. She caught herself up, making some

effort towards composure, as it hurried towards the room in which she

sat; and the next instant young Balmat entered.

He shut the door upon the servant who had announced him. He was so

agitated, so breathless, that he could scarce stammer an apology for

his freedom. He came towards her, hat in hand, at an eager run. His

eyes were shining, his chest heaving in the prospect of some wonderful

announcement.

“_Mon Dieu!_ Madama, Madama,” he whispered excitedly: “What news!

Christ in heaven, what news!”

She rose, trembling. Her heart, she felt, could not bear much more.

“What is it, Jacques?” she said faintly.

Balmat, iron-nerved, made but a sorry Mercury.

“It is only,” he said, “that the Marquess your husband was

murdered--that is little--there was more than one of us had suspected

it--but by whom? God be praised for enlightening us--for vindicating

the innocent--it has all come out; and who do you think is the guilty

one? No other than M. le Préfet himself, who is lying at this moment

under arrest. Ah, ah! what have I blundered, great oaf! Madama,

Madama!”

* * * * * * * *

That same night an express was despatched by Madame Saint-Péray to

her husband in France, bidding him, for reasons of her own, not to

return until he heard further from her.

CHAPTER VIII

That sunny forenoon on which Dr Bonito (carrying the King’s

Commission in his pocket, and M. Léotade, whom he had taken up by the

way, on the seat of the chaise beside him) came posting down the

valley into Le Prieuré, found the whole village in a flutter of

excitement, which the apparent opportuneness of his arrival was

presently to inflame into a fervour.

Alighting at the doors of the Prefecture, and conning, acidly

sardonic, the perturbed faces which, gathered about him, sought to

reconcile this frowzy magnifico with an earlier familiar figure, he

was conscious of a moral agitation in the atmosphere, which at first

he was inclined to attribute to some shadow of the truth having run

before him. But in that he was wrong. The announcement of his mission,

when it was made, took the populace like a clap of wind at a street

corner. The village staggered in it; then rallied hurriedly to

appraise its significance. For the moment the fact was important only

in its relation to another more instant and insistent. The two

combined ran up the public temperature to fever-heat.

M. le Préfet, it appeared, was absent at the time--opportunely for M.

le Préfet, in the light of a certain amazing discovery. There were

those, indeed--a boon friend, a sympathising official or two--who

would have liked to urge, by secret message, upon M. le Préfet,

wherever he might be found, the wisdom of confirming his own absence,

practically and for ever. But no one knew where he was. For the

rest--M. Léotade being long identified with the popular movement, and

personally a local favourite--the change, _per se_, was accepted with

an easy resignation. Events, to be sure, had made such a change

problematically inevitable. The wonder was that it had come to occur

at the intensely psychologic moment. For how could a Prefect, shown

guilty, though on circumstantial evidence, of a startling crime, be

made to bring about his own arrest? The advent of the newcomers had

resolved that difficulty. Mr Trix was M. le Préfet no longer.

The story, as poured by agitated officialdom into the ears of Dr

Bonito and his _protégé_, was soon related. That very morning, it

appeared, a goatherd, emerging from the woods over against the

ice-fall of the Glacier of the Winds, had been halted petrified before

a sight, the like of which had surely never before astounded human

vision. For there, embedded in one of the toppling glassy pinnacles,

hung poised, before the very eyes of the man, a human body.

Dumbfoundered, he had presently taken out his spyglass, to inquire

more closely into this wonder--only to recoil aghast before the

revelation it brought him. The obscene thing, huddled in

semi-transparency, appeared squatting like a great toad. There was

something horribly unseemly in its attitude--an extravagant pose of

limb, which in a mass of its bulk was sickeningly abnormal. It might

have been an arm flung over its head, until one saw that it ended in a

boot. Its face, twisting from under anywhere, came very close to the

surface of the ice. It looked as if flattened against a window,

grinning out on the observer. As he, that observer, had brought its

features into focus, he had uttered a startled cry, and leapt back.

_The face was the face of Augias, Marquess di Rocco_.

There was no mistaking it, by anyone who had once been familiar with

its loathed enormity. The man had stood staring and trembling before

it, in a deadly fascination. Possibly it was due to the phenomenal

weather that the glacier had thus early yielded up its secret. At any

rate it had yielded it--the murder was out.

Yes, and literally murder, it appeared. The dead, slowly travelling

down through these years, had claimed at last to be his own damning

witness. Even while the onlooker gazed spell-bound, the great

ice-turret had tilted over, sunk, torn away, and, still holding to its

secret in the main, had gone shattering and waltzing down the slope

until it had brought upon against a heap of brash. Whereupon, seeing

it settled for the time, the peasant had girded up his terrified wits,

and pounded down into the village, half-demented with his news.

He had been heard with incredulity; his urgency had compelled his

listeners; in a little, half the village was trooping up the moraine.

One of the party, the place being pointed out to him, had descended

hurriedly upon the glacier to investigate. The venture was not without

peril; death was for ever thundering down in the wash of that icy

weir. But he had succeeded in reaching the spot in safety; and the

next moment a strange cry was carried from him to the watchers on the

moraine. Then they had seen him running furiously back to them.

Young Balmat it was. His face was death-ashy; there was an exultant

fury in his eyes; his breath hissed from his lungs.

“It is true,” he had gasped: “and he was murdered! The knife is still

sticking in him. _I know that knife well--it was M. le Préfet’s_.”

It was this news which had run down into Le Prieuré, carried by those

who were despatched thither for ropes. Within the next hour or two,

the block containing the body, like a hideous mass of spawn, had been

salvaged and drawn to the edge of the moraine. Then all, who had the

stomach to look, might satisfy themselves.

Even as the tale was ended into the ears of Dr Bonito and the other,

there came down the village street a hushed and solemn company bearing

its awful burden. Silence sowed itself before them, even as if Death

walked there, scattering his grain. They carried it to the Church, and

laid it on the stone floor of the vestry. There it rested alone, like

an infected thing shut away into quarantine. Not a soul would approach

it, when once it was delivered to the law.

And how did the law accept its trust? Sourly, as represented by Dr

Bonito. This ugly visitation, indeed, was the least agreeable to his

schemes. He saw on the instant how, were Cartouche to stand convicted

of the crime, his own hold on Madame Saint-Péray would be loosened

for ever. If, on the other hand, he were to reveal a certain secret,

of which likely only he and the deposed Prefect were cognisant, the

indictment of the actual murderer would end, only the more certainly,

his chances of extortion--perhaps, even, would be used to claim him as

an after accessory to the deed. He was in a villainous quandary, that

was the truth. This accursed accident had confounded all his plans.

And to increase his perplexity, the new Prefect--who once secure in

his promotion, was already showing an aggravating tendency towards

self-importance and independence--betrayed what he thought was an

unwarrantable officiousness in taking the matter promptly and

masterfully into his own hands. He had Jacques Balmat brought before

him at once.

“You have no doubt,” he demanded, “that this body, so astonishingly

brought to light, is the body of the late Marquess di Rocco?”

“No doubt whatever, Monsieur.”

“Nor that Monsignore met his death by foul means?”

“Not even he, Monsieur, could resist the full length of that blade. It

lies buried in him to the hilt.”

“And it is by that hilt that you identify it?”

“Precisely so, Monsieur.”

“How?”

“It was familiar to me of old, as to many others, in the hand of M.

Trix, Monsignore’s _protégé_. The haft was of jade, surmounted by a

golden rat’s head. It was Monsieur’s hunting-knife, well-known.”

“Granted that the knife was Monsieur’s, there remains the question of

a motive.”

“It is not for me to suggest one. Monsieur, at least, it is to be

believed, foresaw no advantage to himself in the event of his

_padrone’s_ marriage. It was whispered, indeed, that he had every

interest in preventing it. The two came to words, it was reported, on

the subject of a settlement--compensation--what you will. That was

just before Monsignore’s disappearance. M. Trix also had

disappeared--it would seem opportunely. I know nothing more than that.

I repeat only to Monsieur the common gossip.”

Gossip, to be sure; but quite reasonably damning. That evening,

Monsieur the ex-Prefect, returning unconcerned to the village, was

arrested in the street, and conveyed to the prison of the Belfry. He

had still friends; there had been voices timely to warn him; he had

laughed them away unheeding. Here, perhaps, was to end his part in

that pantomime of necessarianism which men played to the gods. He

hoped, in the transformation, that he would be found worthy to be made

a harlequin. But he was not sure, judged by his present fooling at

Fate’s hands, that he was not destined for pantaloon. He took his

deposition and the rest with an imperturbable coolness and good

humour.

And apart in the dark church lay the body of his father--a hideous

thing. Yet there was one, as inhuman though living, who, moved by a

sardonic curiosity, could be found to dare the terrors of that

mortuary. In the dead of the night Bonito, candle in hand, stood to

look upon the corpse. What he saw is not to be described. The ice had

preserved it as whole as when, seven years before, it had plunged into

the crevasse--as whole, but--It had enclosed as it had caught it--a

thing writhed and racked obscenely--a horrible thing like a

Guy-Fawkes. They had chipped its glassy prison away from the dead

form. In the warmer air, the frosty glaze remaining had already

melted, and the body lay in a pool. It looked as if it were struggling

to relax its contortions; to settle into the lines of an ancient

repose. Sometimes it actually moved. The terror of the suggestion woke

no responsive thrill in the watcher’s nerves. He was as stoic, as

callous as a Mongol--not unlike one, indeed, in feature and

temperament. He bent down, searching with his candle flame. Yes, there

was the rat’s head fastened into the shattered breast--gleaming on it,

like Death’s own order. There was even a stain of red about its teeth.

He stood up, frowning, grating his chin.

“The same,” he thought--“No doubt about it. What am I to do?”

The lines on his harsh face deepened.

“If I were to see her--bid her a last price, a great price, a fine

sufficing price against my keeping silence at the trial? Would she

agree--close--see him condemned unwinking--damn herself to _this_? Is

the venture worth? How now, di Rocco?”

The dead man seemed to nod up his head.

CHAPTER IX

“They had exchanged tokens. He had parted with this knife to your

husband. It is the damning link, to which I’ll swear. The Court is my

Court, and my testimony will be final. I hang your Louis,

Madame--twist a saintly neck to save a rake’s. Well, let it be. Women

have these _penchants_.”

His vile innuendoes passed her by. White, withered in the scorching

blast, the exaltation of her purpose kept her still erect, and

steadfast to the end on which she’d staked her soul. Herself, in that

foredoom, counted no longer for anything. She would save her love, her

saint, though all the dogs of hell combined to pull him down.

Dusk was trooping up from the valleys. The sun-lit distant peaks

budded from it like flower-spires in a fading paradise. As point by

point they misted into vapour, so eternal darkness seemed to claim her

to itself. In a little she would be quite alone. A child’s laugh,

coming up faintly from the road below, smote on her heart like a

death-cry. She started involuntarily; then stood stone-still. It was

fearful to see tears running down a stone face. But each syllable of

her voice, when she spoke, was as if carved and rounded.

“A worthless life; but innocent of this. He will not speak, you

think--reveal the truth?”

“Not unless _you_ bid him.”

“Ah!”

Even her loathing of that emphasis--of all that it implied--could

wring no more from her. He conned her pitilessly.

“But say that he did--a palpable subterfuge to escape the halter. I’ll

swear I saw the knife on him that very day.”

She hardly seemed to hear him.

“Worthless,” she continued lifelessly; “but I would not have him

suffer--not for--you say he may be saved, once sentenced--given the

means to escape?”

“I say I can procure one an order to visit him--no more. Appearances

must be kept. The Government still counts, though in Savoy. What then!

ropes are cheap; nights dark; the window of his prison is unbarred.

They reckon on a precipice to hold--safe enough, not counting helpful

friends--and lovers. Once over the border and in France, he’s

safe--may snap his fingers at us, so long as he stays there. Give me

what I ask, and you shall have the order.”

“O, not for me!”

“For whom, then, mistress? No, no--none else. I wash my hands of all

collusion. You entreat me for a friend--or better; my kind heart

yields. The permit shall be an open one--made out to bearer. I’ll

promise that much. Confederate with whom you will. I’m not to ask nor

know. Those are my terms. Take or leave.”

“My ruin.”

“Well, it’s a large sum, I confess--worth a saint’s ransom. If you

think not, you needn’t sign the covenant. It’s true your estate’s of a

constitution to heal itself of even such a wound; and there’s no heir

for you to nurse, or nurse it for. But please yourself.”

“Give me the paper.”

With a hand stone-steady she put her name to it.

“And here’s in acknowledgment for need--signed Léotade, and

countersigned,” said he, and held the order out to her.

She made no movement to take it; he threw it at her feet, and, without

any sign of triumph or emotion, left the house.

She heard the door clang on him. The sound seemed to snap some fibre

in her brain. Suddenly she was hurrying up and down, laughing,

weeping, imploring,--

“No, no, it was a jest--I have let myself be frightened by dreams--the

sky is all full of laughter at me. They don’t do these things--not to

the very young. O! little baby! Why didn’t you come?--my little unborn

child--I was too young to bear even a little child--too easily

deceived--it would have killed me, and I should have gone to heaven.

Such a jest!--heaven for me?--Children, children, don’t laugh! I heard

you down in the road--Look, though I’m not a mother, I can bear

secrets--monstrous, horrible things. Don’t come near me--I should cry

and cry to see your terror. I said, Don’t come near me--don’t--My God!

they are not children at all! Louis, Louis, save me! I did it all for

you!--Louis!--”

She struck blindly against the wall, and sank down moaning at its

foot.

CHAPTER X

The trial of Mr Trix, ex-Prefect of Faissigny, for the murder of his

patron, made a tremendous stir, not only locally, but throughout the

Cisalpine Kingdom of Victor-Amadeus. It was really a trial of strength

between the forces of revolt and those of reactionism--a tug of war

between Piedmont and Savoy, with the Alps for toe-line. But from the

first there was no doubt as to the issue. Wind, muscle, new blood,

self-confidence, were all in favour of the Savoyard champions, while

the acclamations of a whole nation, their neighbours and backers,

thundered in their ears. Opposed were the degenerates of an effete

_régime_; themselves not without a spitfire courage, but in physique

no match for this new vigorous young Demos--for this bristling force

suddenly sprung into life from seed of dead dragons’ teeth. To Savoy

this opportunity to assert its virtual independence came at the ripe

moment with the means to point the right moral. Cartouche offered

himself providentially for the rope with which to test the relative

haulage values of Progress and Conservatism. That was his obliging use

at the moment.

He was not personally unpopular, save with the Illuminati, and other

such fanatic extremists; and he was arraigned on a popular

charge--that of having destroyed an enemy of the people. But he stood

convicted of privilege--was an autocrat’s nominee--and the question at

issue was not one of popularity but of principle. The severe justice

of the people--now first coming into evidence--had to be vindicated;

prejudice and partiality and other dynastic prerogatives had to be

suppressed. Wherefore the matter was held to turn not so much on the

guilt or innocence of the prisoner, as on the necessity of making an

example of a King’s favourite. Liberty, Justice and Equality, as

representing in the bulk the new heresy of humanity, were unanimous in

demanding the sacrifice of this scapegoat to the sins of his class. He

was offered up, in the public esteem, long before he was sentenced.

And the worst of it for reactionism lay in the absence of an effective

retort. It could not move for the pardon of the prisoner, if

convicted, without appearing to hold him justified of the worst

offence against itself. On the other hand, to surrender him to

judgment by default, would be to admit the right of popular

jurisdiction. So it endeavoured to temporise, weakly, by citing the

parties in the case to appear before the Criminal Court of Turin;

whereupon le Prieuré answered by bringing the prisoner to immediate

trial, and sentencing him to be hanged incontinent in its own

market-square before the church.

So much for the political aspects of this _cause célèbre_. The

private and personal only ceased to be subordinate to them with the

certainty of the democratic victory. Then at last general interest

began to concentrate itself on the scapegoat.

He proved himself, in one way, to be a disappointing scapegoat--lent

himself to be done to death with scarcely a show of resistance. It

appeared as if he recognised his doom for a foregone conclusion, and

was determined to accept the clamour for his aristocratic blood as a

sign of an improving taste on the part of Jacques Bonhomme. He

signified his disgust of any rudeness directed at himself; but was

always ready to applaud, and retort on, the least essay of wit. During

the brief course of the trial, he always seemed more concerned for his

coat than his character, for his pose than his peril. Sometimes his

dark eyes would take eager stock of the gloating audience, as if they

sought among it the evidences of some sign or hope beyond their

expectations; but as often he would seem to rebuke their credulity

with a little laugh and shrug, and would recompose himself, with a

weary insouciance, to the fatigue of the business.

The little Court of the Prefecture was crammed on the fatal day. In

addition to clerks, advocates, public representatives of the

Government and private reporters for the King, so many idle visitors,

attracted by interest or curiosity, had latterly flocked into Le

Prieuré, that the accommodations of Justice were hard set to find

standing room for all. The place, indeed, was an inferno; but, luckily

for its unclean spirits, quick evidence against, and short shrift for,

the prisoner were timely in releasing them.

The leading interest, before the appearance of the accused, centred in

the _pièce de conviction_, which lay on a green baize-covered table

before the President. It had been necessary, for obvious reasons, to

withdraw the blade, seven years hidden, from the body of its victim.

That lay in the churchyard under consecrated ground; while a second

grave was already morally digging, in the unhallowed acre, for its

murderer. If the fact might be held, in any degree, to justify the

indifferent attitude of the defence, it was as certain that it

vindicated in all its impartiality the “severe justice of the people.”

Six foot of earth was as much the right of an aristocratic as of a

vulgar assassin.

In the meanwhile there was the gold rat to show his teeth, and the red

rust on the blade to suggest a horrible intimacy with the inner

processes of the crime. They must suffice for curiosity until the

appearance of the prisoner.

Monsieur the ex-Prefect, dished up at last to a ravenous company,

surveyed the Court as he had always been wont to survey it, with a

manner as from the chair rather than from the dock. He was perfectly

cool and self-collected--dressed as for a gala--white-handed and

sweet-scented--a fastidious macaroni--self-consciously _caviarre_ to

the general.

“Proceed, M. le Président,” he said. “I will venture to suggest to

you the values of a dramatic brevity. I am entirely at your

service--and the hangman’s.”

Dr Bonito, sitting slunk out of observation below the presidential

chair, watched, across the room, the effect of this entry and

rodomontade on a veiled female figure, which, standing among the

spectators, had from the first caught his attention. Dull-sighted to

all the world of beauty and sentiment, he was keen-eyed enough where

his own appetites were concerned. He had early marked down this figure

for his consideration, as a carrion-crow ogles a nesting rook. Its

presence in this place did not surprise him. He might have wondered

more if a case, so far-reaching in its sensational attractions, had

failed to produce this apparition among many less interested. His

curiosity was chiefly exercised as to its object in attending--whether

from lust of triumph over, or from an inalienable infatuation for, a

ruined betrayer. But he could gather nothing from its immovable

attitude.

The Court took Monsieur the ex-Prefect at his word. Its processes were

sharp, brief, and dramatic. By four o’clock in the afternoon it had

sentenced the excellent _petit-maître_ to his last dressing at the

hands of the executioner.

Balmat had testified staunchly to the ownership of the knife; and the

prisoner had applauded his evidence.

“Well spoken, Jacques. Thou art as upright a witness as a guide, Yes,

the knife was mine.”

He had been advised by the President, M. Léotade, to sheathe his

tongue.

“It is a weapon thou hast sharp reason to fear, Prefect,” he had

answered.

There was some recapitulation of former evidence, which it is

unnecessary to detail. Among others, the drunken rogue Target had been

called, and Margot, his daughter. To all, it may be supposed, the

drift of the inquiry was morally evident. They were summoned to

condemn the prisoner--not to acquit him. It was very curious. Bonito,

when it came to his turn, sniggered over the manner in which Fate had

accommodated itself to his scheme of a persuasive magic. He recalled

how he had engaged himself to put a spell on this man, so that he

should volunteer a loathing of his office. He had not aimed at the

moment at more than his deposition, which, so enforced, might have

entailed troublesome consequences. Now, whatever ensued, Cartouche

counted politically no longer. Whether he were hanged, or allowed to

escape, he had ceased from the running. The gods had played into their

oracle’s hands.

It was with a sense of this triumph upon him that he had risen to

clinch the prisoner’s condemnation. His evidence was necessarily the

most damning of all, turning as it did upon the question of motive.

Every thin measured word that drew from him pulled the knot tighter

about the foredoomed neck. He told of the prisoner’s anger over the

projected union; of his fruitless plans to betray his patron; of his

disinheritance and dismissal despite; of his suggestive words to

himself, when they had met later in Turin. Finally, he also swore to

the knife.

Cartouche, smiling, shook a finger at him rebukingly.

“I will meet thee on that issue some day, old comrade.”

He would speak nothing in his own defence.

He was proud to have deserved a thousand hangings at their hands, he

said. He was indifferent on what indictment that truth was brought

home to the world. For himself, he only regretted that he had left

unhung among his enemies so much intelligence as was able to formulate

a plausible reason for destroying him. They were not altogether such

fools as they had appeared. A little wisdom made revolution a

dangerous thing. He had foolishly hoped that he had eliminated the

last of it, since it had hidden itself so successfully from him. Now

he must congratulate that little on its taking him effectively,

unawares, behind his back. But he warned it to seek a cleverer

substitute for himself than M. Léotade.

M. Léotade in consequence had much pleasure in committing him

viciously to the gallows.

Bonito, when the sentence was pronounced, stood up to watch its effect

upon the veiled woman. She was nowhere to be seen. An hour later, the

ferment and excitement having locally subsided, and the precincts of

the Court been redelivered to quietude, he put the knife--which he had

begged and secured--into his pocket, parted amicably with his

colleagues, and set out on foot and alone for his lodgings. These, to

suit his secretiveness and his parsimony, no less than his democratic

unpretence--were in a little smithy on the Argentière road. He had

put up there on the occasion of his former visit. There were

conveniences about the establishment of Jean Loustalot, “Forgeron et

Vétérinaire.” For one thing, loafers were not tolerated in its

neighbourhood, for the reason that Jean--a suspicious saturnine man,

of few words and lowering aspect--could not endure that idleness

should borrow a lounging zest from his labours, as if he were a cursed

puppet-man. For another, he was a soaker, of the solitary unsocial

type, and, given the means, could always be persuaded--whenever his

room was to be preferred to his company--to withdraw into the little

dwelling-house at the rear of the smithy, and there drink himself

swiftly and silently into insensibility.

Anticipating, in the present instance, an occasion of the kind, Dr

Bonito provided himself, on his way out of the village, with a flask

of spirits, which he deposited with the knife in his pocket. He then

walked slowly on, with an air as of one who was loitering in the

expectancy of being joined by a comrade. It was, in fact, no

engagement with him, but a premonition having all the force of one.

And the event came to justify it; though later than he had looked for.

The encounter only happened when he was hard upon his destination.

Then instantly he was conscious that a figure was waiting for him in

the dusk of the road-side.

He paused a moment. Darkness like a precipitate was beginning to

settle down into the valley. From the distant village came an excited

bee-like murmur. Ahead of him, some fifty feet, a welter of shapeless

light, the ring and clang of an anvil, marked where the smithy stood

within a clump of trees. High up on the hill opposite twinkled the

lights of the Château di Rocco. He took it all in; squeezed his lips

between finger and thumb; and jerked himself suddenly forward. As he

passed the expectant figure, he addressed it,--

“Wait, while I get rid of Jack Smith. I will call to you in a little.”

He went on, and entered the forge; took the flask from his pocket;

held it up before the eyes of the panting Cyclops.

“I have a visitor, Jean. I want to be alone.”

The man, who had been softly manipulating the bellows, ceased of his

hold on the instant. The handle, the fire, his brow, all went down

together. With no more than a hoggish grunt, he seized the flask, and

disappeared. Bonito went to the door, and called softly.

The fire had fallen so low when she entered, that they were only

phantom darknesses to one another; but he kept a shrewd eye, for his

part, on the undulations of the gloom which was addressed to him. He

was the first to speak.

“So, you decided to follow, Priestess, and to satisfy yourself of the

reality of your vengeance. I had half looked for you, I confess. Your

presence in the Court did not surprise me.”

Her silence, something in the atmosphere of her regard, warned him to

be vigilant and watchful.

“It was strange,” he went on, “how circumstances rushed to complicate

my simpler purpose. Call it coincidence, if you will--’tis but another

term for Providence. I’ll show you why--show you good reason to be

grateful for the course that things have taken.”

“Do you know what I have in my hand?”

Her whisper came like a snake’s hiss through the darkness. It was his

turn to be silent.

“I have my finger on the trigger,” she said. “I give you a moment to

answer. Have you forgotten what you swore?”

“No.”

“Not to hurt him--and you have taken his life?”

“No, I say.”

“--As I am going to take yours.”

If soulless courage be a virtue, he could boast that one. He never

flinched before the crawling horror of that unseen death. His voice,

as he spoke, had not altered by a note, a tremor, from its accustomed

harshness. Yet, all the while, he was desperately enough calculating

his chances.

“That’s as you will,” he said. “Only I’d advise you hear me speak

first. All considered, I’ve done my best for you.”

She gave a little wrenching laugh.

“Well,” he said: “Will you listen?”

“I’ll listen,” she answered. “I can aim better, being silent.”

“Make sure of me then. His life stands behind mine. Ah! does that

shake you? Now, be reasonable, if you can. Was the glacier my

creature, and coincidence in my pay? I might never have opened my

lips, and they would have convicted your Cartouche a dozen times

without. The people cried for him.”

“You knew the truth.”

“What if I did! Do you bear in mind how for years we have made a

fortune out of its suppression?”

“I know how you have, dog.”

“I have kept you in comforts, Priestess--at least, I think, in

comforts. No more of those, if our parts were once confessed; but

straw and chains and rods, and a stone bed in Penitenza. The oracle

would fall with the priest. What will you do when you have killed me?”

“Go to her up there, and tear the truth out of her throat, or end her

too. He sha’n’t die unavenged--my God! do you hear me?”

“Melodrama, melodrama! Well, if you prefer it to the prose of

commonsense! But for that, he might be saved yet.”

He heard how her breath caught at the word; and his own found relief

in a little silent snigger.

“The truth?” he said. “She’d not yield it, to save a sinner at her

saint’s expense, though you dragged out her tongue with pincers--I

know the stubborn fool. But, grant she were to--what benefit to you,

when they hanged you for my murder?”

“My neck for his.”

“Melodrama, I say. I say there’s a better way for you. Why, look you,

I might have warned him, let him forestall his enemies, escape to

France; and so, a condemned outcast, he had been lost to you for ever.

Now you can save him--go with him, if you will, and win back his old

passion out of his new gratitude.”

“_I_ can--_I_? O, God! if I might!”

“I say you may. There, throw down your silly weapon. Our principles

confirmed, your fool’s life counts with us for little. I’ll give you

proof. I’ve already put it into the hands of her up there to deal with

it as she will.”

“_Her_? His life?”

“His life.”

“_You_ put it?”

“I.”

“She hates him.”

“Maybe. But she keeps a conscience.”

“What have--?”

“Why, can’t you understand that, the man convicted of the crime and

hanged for it, my draughts on her would be dishonoured--she were a

bank stopped payment. Fine reason, to be sure, for my seeking his

destruction. I calculated better--I calculated on her conscience, I

say--a perverse organ in a woman; but it stuck at his death, just

that. It served me to commute my pension, so to speak--to exchange her

the means to save him, once condemned, against a little bond--a

promissory note--it’s here.”

He tapped his breast significantly.

“To save him!” she repeated stupidly.

“Why,” he said, “I told her ropes were cheap, nights dark--that there

were no bars to his window; and I gave her an order made to bearer for

a private interview with him.”

“She’s got it now?”

“Unless she’s used it already.”

“If she has! You’ve ruined her, I suppose--thank God for that!”

“I did my best. But the soil’s fruitful. The forest will rise again

from its burning. If you’d be beforehand with her--claim his first

gratitude--!”

He stopped; a little swift rustle had passed him, and he was alone.

He listened a moment; uttered a small dry chuckle; and then bestirred

himself to get a light. He knew where the lamp hung on the wall, and

in a little had kindled it. Looking, well-satisfied, round and about

him, his eye caught the glint of a pistol lying on the forge. He took

up the weapon, and examined it curiously. It was primed and loaded.

She _had_ meant it, then? He had been a little sceptical; but now he

congratulated himself on his escape. He put the thing into his breast

pocket. It was better out of the way, in case of accidents. She might

return upon him, with God knew what fresh aberration in her brain.

The night air came in, chill and searching, at the open hatch of the

door. He blew the smouldering ashes on the forge into a glow, and

fetched a stool and sat down, leaning against the brickwork, to think

things pleasantly over. He had no fear of being disturbed from

without. Neighbourliness was the last thing encouraged by M.

Loustalot. The smithy was no rendezvous for gossips--least of all

after dark, when its remoteness and its master’s reputation made it a

spot anathema.

His thoughts pursued his visitor. He wondered if, her mission

accomplished, she would in truth succeed in winning back that errant

passion to herself. On the whole, he rather hoped she would. It would

serve to kill two birds for him with a single stone. She would keep

Cartouche away, and Cartouche her. Neither, once escaped, could afford

to return. That would be as it should be. He himself was in need of

her no longer--had wanted, in fact, only a convenient pretext for

dissolving their partnership. Here--his usual luck--that had offered

itself opportunely. The sum, for which he held the Saint-Péray’s

bond, was so large, that its investment would justify him in an

immediate retirement from business. He had no desire, at the same

time, to hamper it with the burden of a Sibylline pensioner. And

so--yes, he hoped the two would escape together, never to reappear in

Savoy. He had every confidence in their being permitted to. Even in a

democracy it was no good precedent to hang a Prefect; any more than it

was its good policy to alienate, at the outset of its campaign, by the

vindictive sacrifice of its first prisoner taken, the sympathies of

the temperate among reformers. He believed that Le Prieuré, in the

person of its new Prefect--though intentionally uninspired by

himself--saw this clearly, and would be satisfied with its moral

triumph, since, whatever the real facts, the execution would be given

a political complexion. He believed that, though the girl should carry

into the prison a rope ladder bound about her waist, its visible

presence on her would be winked at.

Winked at, forsooth! The thought tickled him. What a deal of winking

there had been here from first to last. The association of ideas

brought the knife to his mind, and he fetched it from his pocket and

examined it curiously. There had been nothing but a morbid sentiment

in his desire to secure it for himself. It gave him a gloating

pleasure now to finger the long blade, and to think how the smears of

its rust were the very dried essence of di Rocco’s heart. What secrets

it might speak, through its seven years’ intimacy with that corrupt

organ! “Wouldst thou not rejoice to utter them into mine--hard

in--fast in?” he croaked, grinning, and apostrophising the rat’s head,

as he held it out before him. “But there’s none to wield thee at the

last. Bonito--poor old scorned and wronged Bonito--stands the victor

and immortal!”

He had no taste for bed, in the present tingling poise of things; but

presently, lost in ineffable altitudes of star-dreaming, he dropped

into a doze where he sat, his head fallen back upon the forge.

* * * * * * * *

“Give me the order. You’ve not used it? Say you have, and I think I

shall kill you.”

“I’ve not used it--not yet.”

“Not yet? You beast without a heart! You kissed me once--on my

lips--I’d tear them weren’t they his! So you’d have let him die but

for me!”

In the melancholy half-light of the room the two women stood facing

one another. Here was tragedy in white and red--blood and spirit in

gripping combat. It was veritably, in its aspect, in its significance,

a struggle between life and death. The issue hung upon a word.

“O, my sister! I love too!”

It was death that spoke, flinging herself with a heartworn cry at the

other’s feet.

A poignant pause ensued; the body of hatred strained and trembled; a

cry issued from it; and, lo! out of the husk of the Pythoness, a

cracked and scaly mask, came the soul of Molly Bramble. And the next

instant the two poor creatures, as once before, were weeping and

rocking in one another’s arms. They mingled their tears and speech

incoherently.

“Poor soul! O, what a life! I deserve to be whipped, and more, for

having helped it to its misery. But, there! we each struck for our

own.”

“Did you help to it? Why not? he cursed you for my sake!--and I would

have let him die. No, no--I didn’t mean to; but to go to him--myself!”

“There,--I understand. You’ve always held by Providence, poor fond

simple thing!”

“Haven’t you? You’ve not changed in all these years--only to grow more

beautiful. O, sister! tell me you’ve been good!”

“I’ve never shamed my love--a bitter struggle not to. I’ll say no

more.”

“Take the order--quick. You may save him yet--his soul most of all.

When he hears--My God! You’ll betray my Louis!”

“Not us! What’s a sin or two charged falsely against my Cherry! He’s

known a’ many such; and laughed at them. I must get a rope.”

“It’s here--it’s waiting for you.”

“O, you dear woman!”

“--A thing of Spanish silk--as light as gossamer and as strong as a

cable--a hundred feet of it.”

“What it must have cost!”

“It will go round your waist, under your petticoats. Come, while I

fasten it. O, be quick! We mustn’t lose a minute. Leave it with him,

and come back to me. Tell him there’ll be a horse waiting ready

saddled for him in the road beyond the gate. You can join him later.”

“I’ll come back--never fear. I’ve that to tell you. That beast

Bonito--”

“You know him? O, my sick head--of course.”

“We’ll be even with him yet. There I’m all twittering to be gone.”

“Go, then, in God’s name. Let them, for pity’s sake, have no suspicion

of you. O, I doubt you can play a part!”

“Do you? Sweet innocent! There, I’ll not ask you for a kiss.”

“O, come to me, woman--woman! Love me; forgive me! We are one in our

despair.”

“Despair you--I won’t. It shall all come right.”

“Don’t leave me! Why don’t you go? Every second’s precious. There,

cover up your face--your sweet strong face. I shall be dead before you

return. Don’t speak when you do until I bid you. I shall know by your

looks how you have sped. There, it’s fastened. Make him turn his

back.”

CHAPTER XI

So, the end was near at last! And here, high up among the flying

winds and shadows, like old Stylites on his pillar, he stood poised to

take his flight. Not self-glorified like that grim evangel; but none

the less a martyr to his faith. A martyr, he! He could join in the mad

laughter evoked by that image--the laughter of damned spirits down in

the basement. It came reeling and echoing up the stairs to him--the

old Belfry stairs. To what would he descend those next?

There was a frightful humour in the prison nomenclature of his time

and country. Speranza, Purgatorio, Costanza, Pazienza, Penitenza--such

were the mocking names they gave their noisome cells, like eating

cubicles in a devil’s cook-house. They spelt a devouring cruelty. The

moral of them all was shattered nerves. They substituted filth and

misery for the old “first question,” and were scarcely, by design,

less demoralising. He who entered one of them had always this much

more than his trial to face--the weapons of his brain blunted against

self-defence. They were careful to dull and befoul the wits committed

to them.

Cartouche’s cell, by comparison with custom, was an angel’s loft--a

fitting hutch for pigeons, he told himself--wherefore, perhaps, it was

called Il Paradiso. There is always, at least, an advantage in having

the upper berth. It had once been actually the belfry of the tower,

though the holes where the great beams had entered into the walls were

now plugged with bricks. The old lights, too, across which the

luffer-boards had stretched, were all filled in save one. That gaped

unglazed and unbarred. He might escape by it if he would. The wall

below went down clean and precipitous seventy or more feet to the

pavement.

Yet--after his doom was pronounced--he was tempted more than once to

take the plunge--to jump and cheat the gallows. There was something,

perhaps, even a little characteristically attractive to him in the

thought. To trick his enemies out of their triumph--to despoil them of

their vulgar profits won of a gentleman, an ex-Prefect, a Court

favourite! There was a gambler’s whimsey in the reflection--always not

a little of the _chevalier d’industrie’s_ calculating recklessness in

his attitude towards his fellows. Towards all save one. She was his

saving faith. To her strict soul self-destruction was a deadly sin,

hopelessly damning. To leap would be to leap for ever out of her

thoughts, her prayers. He could not do it then. He’d wait and hang, to

win a place in her remorse. That was his only hold on her at last. It

even gave him an exquisite joy to believe he was secure of it--secure

in his utter abandonment by her to the fate from which she might have

saved him only at the uttermost cost to herself. He would not have it

otherwise--not be cheated of that place by any barren compromise of

hers. None could suffice him in this pass--only his life for her and

hers. He’d give it without a murmur.

For the rest, he told himself he did not much care. Life was a farce

without this Yolande--impossible with her. It was strange how his

thoughts clung about that one figure. It was only of a woman, bigoted

and foolish--not even now with beauty supreme in her to redeem the

lack of liberal qualities. And she could let him die upon a

falsehood--her piety was not proof against the last temptation. So

much the madder, truer lover she! He worshipped not her, perhaps, but

love in her. He worshipped her, at least--would die to save her.

What was his life worth! Sometimes, leaning looking from his window,

old dreams would come to him--a far back retrospect, like that which

opens out its vista to the drowning. He could see a little figure at

the end, leaping in green sunlight. It came dancing along, and jumped

into his breast. He wept, nursing it--nursing the little image of

himself. “If she could see me now!” he thought. And yet he was no

traitor to his father’s memory. The old dog had been kind to him.

“Sanctity and self-indulgence!” he sighed. “I could never tell the

decent way between. Only she might have taught me.”

His view commanded the market-square. He wondered when they were going

to begin. The people went their busy way below, seemingly unconcerned.

They looked squat things--ridiculously foreshortened--Lilliputians to

the giant he felt himself to be by contrast. Why should he let such

absurdities hang him? No matter, so he died for her.

Always she. The other’s claims he hated. She vexed him in the night

with her eternal weeping. Weeping, weeping, for an irremediable

sorrow? What use in this invertebrate lament? Let her come and save

him, if she wished to prove herself the nobler soul. Not that he would

concede her that triumph. But he loved deeds, not tears--would rather

that love defied than petitioned him. And so one night she came.

It was pitch dark without. He had been dozing on his pallet; but some

cessation in the sentries’ monotonous tramp across the landing, to and

fro, brought him wide awake. The door opened, and shut again.

Something was in the room. He listened curious.

“Cherry!” whispered a voice.

He was on his feet on the instant. The shock had half unnerved him. He

stood straining his eyes, his elbows crooked, his heart hammering.

“Who are you?” he muttered.

He heard her panting softly--weeping. Then he knew it was she. He made

a mad effort to compose himself--to stand up in the breach this sudden

ghost had torn in his defences. The voice sighed on,--

“O, love! don’t you know me? Cherry, I have come to save you.”

“Not you?”

He could not help his tone--would not, if he could.

She gave a little very bitter cry.

“Hush! speak low! She sent me.”

“Yolande?”

“Yes. O, my God!”

He felt for her, touched her in the darkness. His heart was on a

sudden kind and pitiful.

“Poor child! poor child! How did you hear--come--find the means? These

long years--I’ve no right to ask you of them.”

“No need to, neither. They find me what I always was--your woman.

Well, I’ve got a rope about me. Will you take it?”

“Not I.”

“O, O! Why not?”

“Owe my life to her whose life I’ve ruined.”

“_She_ found the rope, I say; and the pass to let me bring it to you

private--paid for it, too.”

“Paid? Whom?”

“Bonito. There!”

“Paid Bonito?”

“With a bond that just spells her ruin. He’s got it on him now.”

“I understand. Where is he?”

“At Loustalot the blacksmith’s. I left him there not two hours since.

I went to kill him, Cherry, for what he’d done to you; and, to save

his life, he sent me on to her. She’d only lain close a bit for lack

of such a messenger. And I’m to say there shall be a horse waiting for

you in the road by the gate.”

“Give me the rope.”

“Let me have your hand--only that. There, it’s on the floor. Put it

away somewhere till I’m gone.”

He obeyed, and groped his way back to her--felt for her poor face, and

took it in his hands. She stood quite passive.

“Molly, I’m not worth a thought.”

Only her low heart-rending sobs answered him.

“Thank God,” he said, “we cannot see one another’s faces--never shall

again.”

“Cherry!”

“Yes, call me that.”

“Cherry, mayn’t I hope? I’ve been good.”

“_I_ may not, Molly.”

“She told me to--to save your soul. Perhaps when you’re gone away, and

safe? I could wait until you changed to me.”

Her words wrung his heart. This child, so true and faithful to him to

the last! and his own immeasurable baseness to her--in thought and

deed alike! What could it matter now? Let love be still a casuist for

love’s sake.

He put his arms about her; set his lips upon her face, with some new

rehearsal of an ancient passion.

“Before God, Molly, if I live, I will marry you.”

* * * * * * * *

An hour later he stood at the window, waiting to descend. The rope was

in place; he had fastened it to a beam; deep mid-night slept upon the

village.

“She has done this thing for me,” he thought--“given the bond--risked

all to right her fault. What else or greater could she do? God make

her happy!”

CHAPTER XII

Bonito, startled out of dreams of immortality, returned to earth

with a shock. _Something--somebody had spoken to him!_

Even so--taken by surprise, his wits momentarily confounded--habitual

wariness kept him stone-still where he lay, his head dropped back upon

the forge, while he strove desperately to excogitate his right answer

to the situation. For the instant of his waking had been one with his

recognition of the voice--and of a flaw, moreover, in his own policy.

The consequences were facing him at once, and tremendously. He knew

that his life at this moment hung upon a word.

“Where is the bond, I say? Will you wait for me to cut it out of you?”

Still he made no answer. The sooty beams in the roof seemed to

undulate above his half-closed lids as the light pulsated in the

lantern. He thought he saw the pin-point eyes of innumerable spiders

watching him from their secret places. They affected him curiously; he

could not concentrate his thoughts while they held him so intently.

There were some means he possessed--he was certain of it--for retort

or self-defence, could he only recall them. But those eyes held him

from the effort. While he was still in a mortal struggle to escape

them, the voice spoke again, quick and damning.

“What use in this pretence? I know thee--never so wide awake. Thou

dog! O, thou ineffable dog! to wring it from her ruin! That once for

last was once too many. Down you go!”

Still he lay as silent as death, though a pulse of life--it was plain

enough--went shadowing up and down on his strained chest.

“Not?” said Cartouche horribly. “Do you know what’s here, Bonito?--the

pretty little jade and golden toy? What Providence dropped it at your

feet! It wakes strange thoughts in me to hold it in my hand again--the

throats it split, blood lapped--all honest sport so long as it was

mine. Will you not give me up the bond, lest her pure name put to it

be soiled? Well, then--no ‘law’ for you--not to be thought of where

she’s concerned. I’d come to kill you, beast--just my hands against

yours--and behold! you’ve given me a weapon!”

With a leap, like whalebone released, the figure was on its feet and

screaming: “Help! help! _à moi_, Loustalot! The prisoner--he’s

escaped--Help!”

A cry as useless as desperate. He himself had paralysed the drunkard’s

hand--had closed his ears. Even as he uttered it, he was

down--doomed--saw the blade whisked up--last in whose heart! A mortal

shudder seized him--and then all of a sudden he remembered. He tore

something from his breast. Even as the knife descended, a shock and

spatter of fire leapt from his hand, and Cartouche reeled and fell.

Not too late, perhaps, yet! Dropping the reeking pistol, he tried to

pluck the rat’s tooth from his throat. It held like a vice. Fumbling

with it feebly, and ever more feebly, his fingers relaxed, half rose

again to grip the agony, and so, poised mid-way, crooked and stiffened

slowly.

For a minute silence reigned on the fallen echoes of that tragedy.

Then the ex-Prefect stirred. He was bleeding horribly. The wound in

him was numb; only his every limb seemed faint with sickness. He

crawled to the dead thing, and with shaking hands searched it, and

quickly came upon what he sought. Rising, by a superhuman effort, and

supporting himself against the forge, he found her name and put his

stiff lips to it. They left a crimson wafer--his sign manual--“this is

my act and deed.” Some ashes yet smouldered on the hearth. He blew

them into a glow--the blood pumping from him, regularly, to each beat

of the bellows--and thrust the paper in, and saw it go in flame. Then,

tottering for the open door, he sunk down upon its threshold.

The lights of Di Rocco twinkled on the hill-side. They found him, sunk

against the lintel, with his dead eyes fixed upon them.

AFTERWARD

These shadows pass; yet to what possible redemption through that

blood? Had it not been said that “whoso sheddeth man’s, by man’s shall

his be shed.” It was not for that poor sinner to usurp the divine

prerogative. Those for whom he suffered must still expiate as they had

wrought.

Far on I see them moving--the devoted woman still shadowing the weak

man. The old order has passed away, and they with it. The Kingdom of

retaliation has risen on the Kingdom of despotism. Savoy is bound with

a red ribbon to the republic; its people shout for France; its rulers

are betrayed to her. One day these two go to the scaffold.

It is a last mercy that they are permitted to go together. So her

life’s purpose shall find its consummation. What sorrows, what

disenchantments have been hers in these years of her fading beauty, of

her hopelessness for herself, only God may know. They have never

affected her steadfast resolve. She has given herself to save her

saint for heaven.

Up to the very last her patient lips are shut to him on all that she

has done and suffered for his sake. His passage shall be bright and

confident. She kisses him and sends him to die before her.

Only then for the first time she seemed to realise what she had done.

He had passed in, and the gates were shut between them for ever. They

say that she dropped where she stood, and had to be carried under the

knife.

[The End]

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ foresworn/forsworn,

Goodbye/Good-bye, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add TOC.

Assorted punctuation corrections.

[Part I/Chapter V]

Change “to mend what you have helped to _marr_!” to _mar_.

[Part II/Chapter V]

“these delicate _nouances_ of taste and selection” to _nuances_.

[Part II/Chapter XII]

(“O, Louis! O, mon bien aimé! que les artifices...”) italicize French

text.

[Part III /Chapter IV]

“stood up against the rising _ride_, fearless before its roar” to

_tide_.

[Part III/Chapter V]

“Cassandra, ma belle _prêtesse_, ma petite!” to _prêtresse_ (French

for “priestess”).

[Part III/Chapter VI]

“those _nouances_ of alienation which only love” to _nuances_.

[End of Text]