“It is enough,” said the judge, with admirable intuition. He was by

this time so far sated with his feast of blood that a nicely balanced

“situation” was like an olive to his wine. He would not cheapen the

flavour by unduly extending it.

“The citoyenne Théroigne pronounces sentence,” he said. “I wash my

hands of the matter. Let the prisoner be enlarged.”

He took a gulp from a glass at his side, and bent to write in his

book. His guards laid hands on their victim. With a shriek, St Denys

tore himself free, and fell at the feet of the woman.

“Théroigne!” he cried, abasing himself before her--clutching at her

skirt, “don’t let them take me--me, that have lain in your arms!”

Grovelling on the floor, he turned his agonised face to the president.

“She did not denounce me, monsieur! your generosity misinterpreted her

motive.” (He caught again at the dress, writhing in his dreadful

shame.) “Say you did not mean it! Give me a little time to repent. I

have wronged you, Théroigne; but I never ceased to love you in my

heart. Give me time, in mercy, and I will explain. You have not seen.

You don’t know the foulness and the horror of it!--Théroigne!”

Looking up, he saw the stony impassibility of her face, and sank upon

the boards, moaning “Pardon--pardon!”

She stood gazing down upon this poor revealed baseness--this idol

self-deposed.

“Pardon!” she said at last, in a quiet, even passionless voice. “And

do you conceive, monsieur, the exorbitance of your demand? But I will

put the case to these citizens, and take their verdict.”

She raised her beautiful hard face, addressing the board--

“What price, messieurs, for an innocence ravished under pretext of a

union of free-wills--a union that was to be more indissoluble than

marriage, yet that lasted only a summer’s day? What price for a broken

contract when the shame threatened; for the dastardly desertion of a

wounded comrade; for the bitter desolation of a heart doubly widowed

and slandered through its trust? What price for the ruined honour of a

family, for the curse of a father? What price for exile from all the

peace of life; for--my God! what price for a faith, that was so

beautiful, destroyed; for a name that necessity has made infamous

amongst men?”

She paused, and a loud murmur from her listeners eddied through the

room. She caught at her skirt, seeking to release it from the clutch

of him that held it. It was doubtful if the dying wretch took in much

of the significance of her words. He crouched there, only whimpering

and swaying and entreating her half articulately.

“Thou wouldst always teach me the immortality of such a faith,” she

cried in quick passionateness, “whilst thou wert giving me to an

immortality of shame.”

Suddenly she threw her hands to her face.

“Oh me! oh me!” she wailed in a broken voice.

For the first time some core of anguish in Ned seemed to melt and weep

itself away.

“It is come at last,” his heart exulted. “She will pardon him.”

As swiftly as it had seized her the emotion fled. She held out her

open palms, as if in a devil’s blessing, above the prostrate man.

“They are soiled with blood!” she cried. “Let the victims, when my

name is execrated, testify against you, not me!”

She seemed to listen to the moaning entreaty that never ceased at her

feet. The president shifted in his chair and was restless with some

papers. This situation--it was interesting, tragic, spiced with

unexpected revelation; but the occasion, apart from it, was

peremptory; the killers were clamorous outside over the unaccountable

break in the programme.

“My honour,” cried Théroigne, “my early innocence, my faith and peace

of mind! If I name the return to me of these as the price of blood,

what is thy answer?”

His moaning rose only like a wind of despair. She drew herself erect

and turned to the judges.

“Messieurs--the price?”

The whole company seemed to spring to its feet. A roar went up from

it--and subsided.

“It is answered,” said the president. “Take M. St Denys away.”

There was a scurrying forward of men--a sudden stooping--a struggle.

Shriek after shriek came from the ground. Ned leapt into the fray like

a madman.

“To subscribe,” he screamed, “to the revengeful fury of a wanton! It

is not liberty or justice. Why, look at her, look at her. The beast

that would murder twenty innocents to secure the destruction of one

that had wounded her vanity. Gentlemen! to be so governed by a

harlot--to be----!”

He choked as he fought. There were savage hands at his throat.

“Do not harm him. I would not have him harmed.”

It was Théroigne that spoke. She stood apart, white and chill as a

figure of ice.

He spat curses at her, that mingled with the deadlier tumult. Monsieur

le président made his voice heard above the din.

“Eject this person, without hurt, from the rear of the prison.”

Seized, then, despite his frantic struggles; protesting; striving for

foothold; conscious always of the desperate outcry--faint, and

fainter--of the unhappy man he had sought to befriend, Ned felt

himself hurried along corridors, borne down steps and by way of

echoing dank vaults--thrust violently into a world of spacious

silence.

A door shut with a steely clang behind him. Before, stretched a

desolate waste tract of fields. The moon was at its full-flood light,

and the whole world seemed to float quietly on a sea of peace.

He threw himself, face-downwards, amongst the tufts of coarse grass,

and cried upon the flood to overwhelm him.

CHAPTER XIV.

At the end of November the young Viscount Murk was still a sojourner

in Paris. Always reserved and self-contained, he was become by then a

creature of wilful and habitual loneliness, with something, indeed, of

the moral dyspepsia that is induced of the morbid appetite that leads

one to feed upon one’s own heart. And when the heart is so inflamed of

love as to be sensitive to the least imaginary slight, assuredly the

dyspepsia, as in Ned’s case, shall be acute.

Men of few or no friendships have a very undivided passion to bestow

when at last the call comes to them. At the same time such are wont to

signalise the early stages of their complaint by a diffidence so

exaggerated as that, in the nature of nature, it must degenerate in

course into a desperately injured vanity. It is to be feared that, at

this period of his ailing, Ned was horribly big with a sense of

grievance generally against the social order, that seemed so

parsimonious of the favours (as represented by one only favour, in

fact) that his position entitled him to draw upon. What was the good,

in short, of being possessed of acres, a lordship, an agreeable

personality, if all could not procure him the single modest gift he

had ever asked of Fortune?

That was a sentiment for his bitterest moods. In his more reasonable,

he would acknowledge to himself, with a sorrowful rapture, that no

human desert could prove itself worthy of the Hebe-goddess at whose

pretty feet he had worshipped.

So he waited on and on--because irresolution, also, is a necessary

concomitant of extreme diffidence. He waited on, remote from his

natural state, constantly on the prick of flight, yet always fearing

to move, lest a vilely humorous destiny should take his sudden

decision for the point to a game of cross-purposes. He waited on,

shrinking ever more into his unwholesome self; avoiding

company--comradeship, even; but half-conscious of the screeching

barbaric world about him; hearing only distant echoes from the world

over-seas. Now and again it would occur to him--upon his receipt of

those periodic advices from his steward that made the almost sum of

his communications with a life that had grown curiously shadowy to

him--to put his own native instruments (in the person of this same

steward) to the use of ascertaining and reporting upon the movements

of Madame de Genlis and her charges. But always he was faced thereupon

by a score ghosts of apprehension--that such confidences might beget

familiarities vulgarising to the aloofness of his passion; that the

necessary interval that must elapse before he could procure a reply

must debar him from the independence of action that he still claimed,

without enjoying; most, that the coveted news itself, when it should

reach him, might do no better than confirm a haunting fear. And so he

dwelt on, passing at last, it seemed, into the very winter of his

discontent.

Shunning--since that September night of a tragedy that had stricken

him for the time being half-demented--personal intercourse with

any--even the gentle Vergniaud--whose precepts and practice of liberty

seemed so grotesquely irreconcilable, he lost something of his former

feeling of a moral participation in the scenes enacting about him. Of

the revengeful woman, with whose destinies a joyless fatality had

appeared to connect him, he had seen nothing since the hour of his

agonising experience at the Salpétrière--had heard only, with a

savage exultation, that her latest connection with the moderate party

was undermining her popularity with that more formidable class of

which the link-women on the prison steps had been prominent

representatives.

“She will be devoured by her own dogs,” he would think; and “God in

heaven!” he would cry in his soul, “to what an association with

cutthroats and queans has Providence thought fit to condemn me--me

whose heart burns always like a pure steadfast lamp before the shrine

of its divinity!”

* * * * * * * *

One bitter evening Ned found himself abroad in the streets--a mere

waif of destiny, hustled and jogged into the kennels by an arrogant

wind. The iciness of this dulled all his faculties, blinded him as he

struggled aimlessly on. “It must make the stones weep,” he thought,

“or why should my eyes fill with water!” The lamps slung across the

narrower gullies danced like boats at their moorings. The very shop

fronts seemed to flap their sign-boards, like hands, for warmth.

He had crossed the river and penetrated the Faubourg St Germain as far

as the Rue de Vaurigard. On his right, the sombre towers of the

Luxembourg reeled into the night; on his left, a starry quiver of

lamps shaped out the portico of the Théâtre-Français.

He was numb with cold. The glow and movement about the theatre drew

him--as they often did nowadays--to a bid for temporary

self-forgetfulness. He ran up the steps, entered a warm and lively

vestibule, and took a box ticket for the performance.

This, when he came to view it, opened with a one-act sketch--“_Allons,

ça va_!”--a very patriotic and warlike little piece. He had seen it

before, and it did not greatly interest him. He was, in fact, sitting

in the covert of his retreat watching rather the house than the

players, when all in a moment his heart bounded, and he shrank back

into the shadow of the wall-hangings. Opposite him he had seen a party

enter a screened box, a _loge grillée_--nothing very significant in

itself. But a minute later the grating had swung open,

revealing--Pamela.

She did not at first catch sight of him. She sat to the front of the

tier--she and the little pink-eyed daughter of Orleans. Her cheeks,

her hair, her eyes were all a soft glory under the radiance of the

lamps. He thought he had never seen her look so happy and so

beautiful.

There were figures, the indistinct forms of men, standing behind the

ladies; but these he could not identify.

A great sigh of ecstasy, half anguish, escaped him. He leaned forward,

and at that instant the girl raised her face and saw him.

Under the shock of recognition, he was conscious of nothing but that

he had bowed across the house--that he had immediately leaned back in

his seat, his pulses drumming, his eyes blinded with emotion.

When he dared to look again--the grille was closed.

A swerve of actual vertigo seemed to send him reeling. The next

moment, thinking--though, indeed, he had done, had looked, nothing to

attract observation--that his condition must be patent to the

audience, to the stage, he brought his reason by a huge effort under

command.

The grille was shut. The door of heaven had been slammed in his face.

Now, he must fight to ignore the fiends of wicked alarm that swarmed

about his brain. He would close all his avenues of

intelligence--render himself a thing mute and dumb, his faculties in

abeyance, until the moment of resolution should arrive. There might be

any explanation, other than one personal to himself, of the shutting

of the grating. Should he flog his reason for a wherefore, it would be

like brutally coercing an innocent witness. He must not, in the name

of sanity, allow his soul to be drawn into profitless speculations.

Upon the supreme ecstasy of knowing that here, after all these sick

months of waiting, was the period to be put at last to his

uncertainty, he must concentrate his thoughts, permitting none to side

issues.

He triumphed by sheer force of will--sitting out the end of the little

play. But the instant the curtain fell he rose to his feet, swept the

frost from his brain, and--without giving himself stay or pause in

which to think--left his box and made his way round to the opposite

side of the house. His head now seemed full of heat and light; he was

not conscious of his lower limbs.

Almost immediately he came upon two men stepping from the rear of a

box into the passage. One of these was the Duke of Orleans. The other

was a tallish young man, a little older than himself, of a fine

intelligent expression. Both gentlemen were dressed to the prevailing

taste in clothes that were something an ostentatious advertisement of

_bourgeoisie_. But the extravagance was vindicated in the younger of

the two by the mournful spirit of romance that seemed to inhabit

behind a pair of very soft grey eyes.

Ned addressed Egalité at once, and in a manner, unwittingly, almost

imperious; for in this tender present sensitiveness of his condition

he imagined he foreread in that person’s stony regard a repudiation of

his acquaintanceship, and he was desperate to preoccupy the situation.

He had not, indeed, forgotten the confidential words uttered by the

duke at the moment of their first and latest parting; and now his

heart went sick in the fear of what might be implied by Egalité’s

obvious intention to stultify, by avoidance of him, any significance

such confidence might have been held to express.

“I have the honour to reintroduce myself to monsieur le duc,” he said.

“I congratulate monsieur le duc upon the safe return of those, with

the delivery of a letter referring to whose movements in England I

some months ago had the pleasure to charge myself.”

The prince’s eyes opened and shut like an owl’s. His bilious face

seemed to deprecate a peevish derision it could not withhold.

“I do not recognise,” he began, looking through mere slits between

lids, “whom I have----” then suddenly he checked himself impatiently

and turned to his companion with a shrug of his shoulders.

“My lord,” he said, “let me make known to you M. le Vicomte Murk, who

once was good enough to constitute himself Hermes to your adorable

Pamela.”

Ned stood rigid under the shock of all that was implied in the

insolence. The duke’s young companion stepped forward and shook him by

the hand. Did this stranger know, or intuitively guess, something of

the silent tragedy that was enacting before him? His soft eyes were at

least full of generosity and sympathy.

“I know your lordship by name,” he said. “I am Lord Edward Fitzgerald;

and I am sure Pamela will like to thank you in person for your

disinterested service.”

Ned drew himself up, like a martial hero giving the signal for his own

execution.

“I will take my sentence from her lips,” he said to the kind eyes, and

passed into the box.

He was close to her at last--and for the last time. She turned to

glance at him, and instantly away again, with a pert tilt of her chin.

He saw her stealthily advance a hand in the shadow, and twitch her

companion by the skirt. The little lady gave a start.

“What is the matter, coquine?” she exclaimed. Then she saw Ned,

flushed pink, and dropped the gentleman a shy bow.

She was happy to renew monsieur’s acquaintance, she said. And had

monsieur been in Paris all these months since they last had the

pleasure of seeing him in “nôtre cher Bury”?

Yes, monsieur had been in Paris the whole time: that was to say, ever

since, in pursuit of monsieur le duc, he had left Belgium, whither, it

would appear, he had been despatched on a fool’s errand.

Mademoiselle gave a little deprecating shrug of her shoulders.

“And monsieur, no doubt, has justified us in our choice of a

messenger?” murmured Pamela, from ambush of the box curtains.

Ned turned upon the young voice. His tongue was dry; his very features

seemed stiffened into a mechanical expression of suffering.

“Yes,” he said. “I have been as great a fool as Uriah.”

The girl gave a little laugh. Probably she understood only the vague

inference. She drew aside the curtain and looked upon the house. Her

head budded from dusk into light, standing out like an angel’s seen in

a dream. The soft moulding of her face and neck was painted in dim

sweet eclipse--violet, where it intensified in the deeper curves. In

her shadowy hair--like a dryad’s curled by moonlight--a single

diamond--a very star of morning--burned. It was Ned’s fate--the common

irony of love--to find the prize figure never so desirable in his

sight as at the moment of its bestowal on another. His heart was sick

with a very hunger as he looked down on her.

“_O Dieu--quelle horreur_!” she exclaimed, referring to some one of

the audience. She tapped her foot, drew back her head, suppressed a

tiny yawn.

“What has become of Edward?” said she, as if she were unconscious that

their visitor were not withdrawn.

“It is my name,” said Ned.

She glanced at him disdainfully, with the ghost of an insolent laugh.

“You here still, monsieur? Will you please go and tell the fiddles to

begin?”

“And shall I dance to them to entertain you?” he said.

Her attitude robbed his passion even of a redeeming dignity. His

devotion seemed comparable with the sick devotion of a schoolboy

towards a holiday coquette.

“_Mon Dieu_!” she cried. “You would at least entertain us more than

now.”

The catgut gave its first screech as she spoke.

“I will go,” he said hurriedly; but he yet lingered out the final

anguish.

“Have I not already entertained you enough? And I have not yet

congratulated the prospective Lady Fitzgerald. And what shall I do

with the flower you gave me, Pamela, when I accepted madame’s service

because I loved you?”

For the first time she flushed angrily.

“You have no right to say it,” she cried. “And do you suppose I

constitute myself the fairy godmother to every little weed I bestow!”

Mademoiselle d’Orléans half rose from her seat.

“Nay,” said Pamela, gently coaxing her to resume it: “for monsieur

will see the wisdom, I am sure, of not further enlarging upon an error

of his own.”

He uttered a deep sigh.

“An error!” he said--“My God--yes, an error!”--and he bowed low and

left the box. The little kind royalty uttered a sob as he vanished.

And such was the manner of the end--no renunciation ennobled of

chivalry on his part; no compassion, no sympathy on hers. And he could

blame no one but himself. His imagination, it seemed, had clothed a

skeleton with flesh. Unlike dreaming Adam, he had awakened and found

his imagination a lie. He walked from the tawdry gates of his fool’s

paradise, and felt the wind rattle in his bones.

Outside, he found the two men withdrawn. He made his way into the

street, a strange numbness in his brain. It was like exaltation--the

mere mad ecstasy of self-obliteration. For the time it seemed to carry

him forward--a spirit disembodied, shorn of every instinct but that of

flight. The wind thrust at, the dust choked, the jumping lamps mocked

him. He paid no heed to a malice that was powerless any longer to

influence his movements.

Pressing forward aimlessly, he came out on the Pont Neuf. Few

passengers were now abroad; and these, butting with a sense of

personal grievance against the blast, took no notice of the

significant attitude of one who, upon such a night, could stop to

dwell upon the river. But presently a single pedestrian--a

woman--going by, uttered a stifled exclamation, checked herself, slunk

into the angle of a buttress, and stood watching him.

He was gazing upon the black swing of water below. Suddenly he rose,

returned a few paces the way he had come, and went down into the gloom

of the quay where it stooped under the bridge’s shadow. The woman

followed stealthily.

The wind had long ago taken his hat. He unbuttoned and flung open his

coat. She came swiftly to him and seized him by the arm. He turned

upon her--dragged himself free with a start of repulsion. His face

underwent a change--flashing into an expression of mad fury.

“Again!” he shrieked. “Why do you pursue and haunt me! I think you are

my genius for all devilry!”

For a moment it looked as if he would strike her--her, Théroigne. She

stood, where he had thrust her, without the shadow thrown by the

bridge, a dim glow falling upon her face from a far lamp above. Even

in this tumult of his rage he was conscious of an inexplicable new

meaning in her eyes. They were like caves of darkness alive with a

suggestive inner movement.

“I called to find you,” she said stilly, without emotion. “The

_citoyen propriétaire_ told me you were abroad--probably at the

theatre. I followed on the chance; and destiny, it seems, was my

guide.”

“Why did you call? Why did you follow?--we have nothing of a common

interest. I loathe you--do you hear! I curse the day on which you came

into my life!”

She never moved.

“Is it not our common interest,” she said, “to wish to die?”

He gasped, and stood staring at her.

“Ah!” she went on; “but I had heard, and wondered for the result. They

were betrothed no further back than yesterday; they are to be man and

wife in a few weeks. He is an impatient lover--this handsome chasseur.

In a few weeks she will lie in his arms--the pretty, loving babouine.”

He lifted his hand again with a furious gesture; and at that she cast

back the hooded cloak which she had held clutched about her face and

breast, and, coming swiftly to him, dared him with her brilliant eyes.

“Strike!” she cried; “it is what I ask. Only thou shalt strike thyself

through me. What! thou know’st now what it is to be trampled under by

the feet thou worship’dst! And thou shalt be haunted evermore by the

shadow of another man’s happiness. Strike, I say, and kill, like me,

thy spectre of unfulfilment with despair!”

She tore at her dress, baring her white bosom to him.

“Strike!” she cried again; then suddenly her hands dropped limp, and

she moaned to herself.

“I dare not think. I cannot sleep. He is always there, weeping and

imploring. But there is something between--a deep red pool, with an

under-motion. If I were to wade in--my God!” she cried--“I am afraid

even to die!”

She held up her hands to the man before her, as if in prayer.

“Take me with thee--there, into the water. I will not struggle, if

thou hold’st me tight. Thou wert his friend for a little while, and

thou also hast suffered. Thou wilt plead for me, monsieur, wilt thou

not?--thou wilt plead?”

Her voice broke in a shiver. For all its wretchedness, the heart of

her hearer was stricken anew.

“Thou Théroigne,” he said; “thou poor twice-abandoned fool. Wouldst

thou urge upon me that a first error is to be atoned by a second! Oh,

thou woman--not to understand how cheap that love must be held that

would disprove itself to spite its object!”

God knows what angel of light or darkness had been at his elbow a

moment earlier. Now, he put his hand into his breast as he spoke.

She looked at him, lost and wild.

“Thou didst not come to throw thyself into the river?” she muttered.

“No,” he said--“but only this.”

He cast it from him with the words--something he had taken from his

pocket--a little spiked and scented parcel, so ridiculous and so

tender. It had fulfilled its mission at last. That was “writ in

water.” And the poor cherished heels, stuck with a sprig of withered

geranium, went down to the sea--or, perhaps, into the maw of some

sentimental pike that would swallow it all, as we mortals swallow any

absurd love-story.

Now, if the action was inspired by a despairing man’s intuitive

altruism on behalf of a despairing harlot, we may not call it bathos.

Suddenly the woman broke into a shrill laugh.

“Was it an unfruitful token? Better thou and I!” she cried. “And so

thou still hold’st love inviolable?”

He answered with his eyes. She came quite close to him--looked up into

his face.

“That is well. Come with me, then, now the madness is past.”

“With you!” he exclaimed scornfully. All his repulsion of her was

returning before the reclaimed devil in her eyes.

“With me, murderess and courtesan. Oh! it is not for myself,” she

said. “It is for another--whose confession to me an hour ago sent me

to seek thee out--that I would carry thee.”

He stared, dumfounded, muttering “Another? what other?”

“One,” she said, “that hath pursued thee long months with bleeding

feet and a broken heart. One, that I came upon to-day, lost and

wandering in the cold streets, and that I, being no man, took home

with me and comforted.”

“What other?” he murmured again, but with a dreadful intuition of the

truth.

“Nay,” she said, “love hath not done with thee. Only thou must run

with the hare instead of hunting with the dogs.”

“What other?” he repeated dully.

“A saint, monsieur; yet one that, for all her chastity, hath caught

the infection of these liberal times.”

She gazed into his face piercingly.

“I swear I never guessed,” she murmured. “I swear I hold her the

dearer and the purer that she is revealed human in the end. The

handmaid of God! Ah! but so to testify to His choice by this long

discipline of her heart! And now, directing her in this pursuit of

thee, He ratifies the new licence; and she shall not be less the saint

because her passion is sanctified of a human love.”

“It is a vile blasphemy,” said the man. “You speak of Nicette

Legrand.”

She clapped her hands.

“But, yes,” she cried in shrill triumph; “I speak of Nicette Legrand,

whose heart, it seems, thou stolest--one of the common things that

thou, and such as thou, would use to the profit of an idle hour,

whilst thy honour was pledged elsewhere. But who enlists Love in his

service shall engage a parasite to devour him.”

“Nicette!” he only murmured once more.

“Take thy fill of her name,” said the girl scornfully. “I tell thee,

Love presumes upon his hire. Didst thou think he had discarded thee?

He shall prove a tyrant whom thou thought’st to make thy servant.”

He fell, suddenly, quite calm and cold.

“Well,” he said, “so Nicette is in Paris?”

She answered--

“In Paris--a month’s long journey, by rock and briar, for those poor,

patient feet. Oh,” she cried, “that I should ever have unwittingly

wronged her by seeking to convert this block--this stone--to my own

passionate uses!”

“And so she hath explained it to you?” he said, in the same even tone.

“Well, she is a liar, from first to last; and at least it is fitting

that a murderess should give sanctuary to a murderess.”

She stared at him, breathing softly.

“Am I to kill _you_?” she said.

He laughed without merriment.

“Listen to me, Théroigne. I never desired this woman, or gave her one

pretext for asserting that I did. If she says otherwise, she lies. If

she tells you that she left Méricourt to follow me, she lies. She has

fled because she has been discovered in a deception as vile, a crime

as inhuman, as any that have blackened the world since the race

began.”

She still stared at him, her lips moving, but she did not speak.

“I have been in Méricourt since you,” he went on, without a change of

intonation, “and I was witness to what I say. The bubble is burst--the

superstition, by this time, a black memory. The tree that she haunted,

she haunted because it contained in its hollow heart the dead body of

Baptiste, her little brother, whom she had murdered--morally, before

God, whom she had murdered, I say--out of her hatred of him. She

haunted the scene of her crime, and, when that was threatened with

detection, she invented the legend of the vision to cover it. But

retribution abided, and, when that threatened, she fled.”

For a moment silence fell between the two. The wind shrilled in their

ears; the hollow wash and sweep of the river came up to them.

“If it is true,” whispered Théroigne at last--“if it is true!”

“It is true.”

She seemed to gaze at without seeing him.

“So worn and so pitiful!” she muttered; “and I took her in, and clung

to her, and found my own religion justified in hers.”

Suddenly she was hurrying from him, speeding upwards towards the

bridge. He stood paralysed an instant; then sprang and overtook her,

walking by her side.

“Where are you going?” he cried.

“To hurl her into hell!” she shrieked, “if it is as you say.”

They drove on together, across the river, through the blown darkness.

Presently she stopped, and turned upon him once more.

“Why do you follow me?”

“To see that you do nothing that shall enable you before God to

testify against me.”

“Ah!” she cried, with a most bitter derision. “You are not desperate.

You have never loved, as I read it--as Nicette reads it. You have

never staked your soul against your heart. And this is what she hath

done for the sake of one little glimpse of her heaven--of seeing you

without being seen.”

“She sent you to tell me so?”

“You lie!” said the woman quietly. “I took her secret from her because

she was worn and despairing; and then she implored me only to show her

where she might, hidden, look upon you once again, and so die and rest

forgotten.”

She struck her palms together.

“And now--now!” she muttered.

She fled on her way. The man had some ado to keep up with her. He

went, indeed, at length, with loaded steps, on this wild, sorrowful

night. To love and lose, and to be so loved! It was a stab of poignant

anguish to his heart that what he had held so sacred in himself should

be claimed of a vileness with which he had no sentiment in common. But

this--surely this: the love that can exonerate even wickedness done

for its sake. The wretched woman loved him--perhaps with a love as

intrinsically pure as that he had given to Pamela. He groaned as he

sped on.

They crossed the quays, and hurried by the Place of the Three Marys. A

frowzy tricoteuse, coming from a wine-shop, recognised Théroigne, and

stood barring their path.

“_Ame traîtresse_! _Modératrice_!” cried the creature, in guttural

fury, and broke into a torrent of oaths.

The girl shrank against the wall, proffering no retort, her eyes wide

with fear. Ned took her arm, put the woman on one side, and they

scurried on their way, pursued by a blatter of expletives.

The wind cut into their faces with blades of ice as they turned into

the Rue de Rohan.

CHAPTER XV.

In front of the fire a girl lay on the floor asleep. She had placed

herself on her side, facing the glow and cuddled into it; but in the

relaxation of profound slumber her head had fallen back, so that the

light from a lamp on the wall illuminated her features. These looked

curiously, pathetically child-like under the seal of a rest so deep

that her bosom hardly rose and fell to accent it. Her lips were a

little parted; her cheeks a little hollow, and quite colourless. From

every ruffle of her hair--fine and pale golden as a rabbit’s fur--that

lay spilt about her head, to the toe-tips of her white bare feet (that

nestled into one another despite some inflammatory wounds that scarred

them as cruelly as if they had been bastinadoed), she was so almost

motionless as to seem like a figure in tinted porcelain--King

Cophetua’s beggar-maid, it might have been; for, indeed, her clothes

were very stained and ragged.

The door opened, and a woman came swiftly to her side and gazed down

upon her--a woman, under the fierce glow and lust of whose beauty she

seemed to shrink into the mere semblance of a doll thrown down by a

passionate child.

The woman looked, then suddenly fell upon her knees and stooped her

lips to the ear of the sleeper.

“Nicette,” she cried low, “Nicette!”

The girl on the floor started; then she stirred, moaned, put her hand

restlessly to her forehead, and again, with a sigh, dropped back into

the pit of slumber. But the moment of half-consciousness seemed to

have robbed her of the perfect weanling innocence. Now her

respirations came harder; every breath she exhaled proclaimed her

woman. Still, she dreamt happily; and a smile trembled on her lips.

Seeing it, Théroigne turned and beckoned to the man to come close. He

approached from the door and stood behind her, away from the sleeper’s

range of vision. The woman pointed down at the dreaming face.

“Dost thou still accuse it?”

“Awake--yes,” he said.

She frowned, and again bent to call into the girl’s ear.

“Nicette! where is thy brother Baptiste?”

A shadow, like that of a cloud that ruffles water, went over the quiet

face. The regular breathing hitched and wavered; some broken soft

ejaculations came from the lips. Suddenly the lids flickered--the eyes

opened, unspeculative for a moment, then snatching the soul of them

from unearthly sweet pastures, in whose fragrance it had lovelily

nested. Still they were full of the glamour of holiday, remote in

their vision, coy of things material.

“Théroigne!” she murmured, happy and confident, her half-recovered

self only the core of a little atmosphere of the most loving warmth of

emotion and feeling.

The woman bent and lifted the other--up, into her arms.

“Didst thou hear me call?” she said caressingly. “And what wert thou

dreaming of, dearest?”

“Great God!” thought Ned, “is this Théroigne, in actual truth, a

fiend!”

“Dreaming!” said the girl softly; “of what am I always dreaming,

Théroigne?”

“Of what, indeed! Of things lost and longed for? Perhaps, sometimes of

the little poor brother that was murdered and hidden in a tree?”

A voice shrieked at her back.

“Damnation seize thee!”

She let fall her burden and, scrambling to her feet, turned upon the

voice.

“What, then!”

“So wanton!” cried Ned--“so wanton and so cruel!”

His fury leapt in a moment, like a boiling spring. He could not have

explained or controlled it--could not even have traced its source to a

deep incorruptible chivalry that was instinctive to _his_ sex and

beyond the understanding of the other.

“Cruel?” she exclaimed madly. “And am I not thy delegate--thy

informer?”

“Not, so to take advantage, like a cursed _mouchard_, of this poor

drugged wretch!” he cried. “Why, God in heaven! are _you_ so much less

foul----?”

“You devil!” she cut in--“you dog! Didst thou not thyself, a minute

ago, slander her behind her back?”

“I accused her openly,” cried Ned--“as I accuse her now!”

A stifled scream of agony answered him. He looked into a corner of the

room, whence, from shadow, the sound had come. The

dreamer--momentarily half stupefied by her fall--had risen, while they

raged, and stood shrunk into an angle of the wall.

Théroigne leapt upon her--seized her by a wrist.

“Look!” she screeched, “upon him that thou wouldst give thy life to

see, not being seen; to prevail with whom thou wouldst sacrifice thy

honour and thy fame with heaven. Hear him now--how he regards thy

devotion. Tell him--tell me, rather--he lies. Tell me thou art not a

murderess; and I will crush the slander back upon him till it tears

like a splintered rib into his heart!”

She stood quivering--glaring--worrying the arm she held.

“Speak!” she panted brokenly, “and leave the rest to me.”

A moment’s silence succeeded the terrible outcry.

“It is true what he says,” then whispered Nicette. “I murdered

Baptiste.”

Théroigne dropped the wrist she clutched, and swung back heavily

against the wall.

“My God!” she muttered, “my God!”

Then she mastered herself faintly, like a weary creature.

“It was my last hope--the queen, the gentle mother. To justify,

through her handmaid, the passion of woman for man. It is ended. There

is no good in the world--no truth--no virtue. Oh, my heart, my heart!”

She caught herself from the cry, in a rally of quiet fury; pointed to

the door, her arm extended along the wall.

“You have killed my faith,” she said.

Her gesture was crowningly significant. Without a word, the girl stole

fearfully from her shadowy covert--hurried across the room--passed

from it, and was gone.

* * * * * * * *

Into the street she fled, ran a few paces, stopped, and looked wildly

about her. Snow had begun to fall. The wind whipped her thin tattered

skirts about her ankles. In all the mad night there was no beacon

towards which she might make, for the little lightening of her

despair. She glanced once about her; then crouched, with a dying moan,

upon a doorstep.

Her face was buried in her hands when, an instant later, Ned silently

came upon her. He stood, looking down.

Once, earlier in the evening, he had thought “She” (not the wretched

girl at his feet) “might have dismissed me as effectually by gentler

methods.” Yet, had he, for his part, shown more compassion towards

this unhappy outcast--stained though she was--who lay here so

committed to his mercy?

He bent suddenly, and put his hand upon her shoulder. She did not even

start now, but she uncoiled herself, with a shiver, and gazed up at

him, without recognition, it seemed.

“What do you intend to do?” he said. “Where will you go?”

She only shook her head weakly and amazedly.

He stepped back, looked up into a blinding gloom of darkness and

spinning flakes. The patterns these wrought seemed the very moral of

Heaven’s enactments--hieroglyphics drawn upon a slate of night. He was

not theologian enough to interpret them. For him--with a sense of

being enclosed and shut down within a very confined vault of human

suffering (with God, maybe, walking serene and unwitting high up on

the sunny lifts of ether above the earth)--the issues of life were

become brutally restricted. He had had aspirations. They had been

crushed under by the heavy night that had dropped upon his world. Now,

in a moment, he could feel only that he was alone with a woman who

loved him without one thought of the meaning of the hieroglyphics;

that it lay with him, unsupported, to direct the destinies of two

souls--his own and another’s--that Fortune had isolated in tragic

companionship.

And contrasted with the human piteousness of this other--this soul

that had claimed him in the darkness into which his own had

fallen--how did not the shibboleth of convention suddenly confess

itself a ridiculous fetish of strings and patches--a block for a

fashion-plate?

He had no plan of conduct at last but to drift--and, if by way of

sunny pastures, so much the less troubled would he be.

His heart was moved to a dull aching passion in this first realising

of its emancipation from a wounding thrall.

“Get up!” he cried violently. “Do you hear? Get up, and come with me!”

He turned away, and going a few paces, looked round to see if she were

following. Ay, like a dog. She had risen and jumped to his order

before it was well issued.

He strode on, the fall already making a soft cold mat to his feet. It

was no great distance to his rooms; the Rue St Honoré was near

deserted, and he went down it swiftly. Once again only he turned to

see that the girl was not lagging. Then he cursed himself and came to

a stop under a lamp. She was hobbling towards him as fast as her

bleeding feet would permit her. He had never given a thought to

this--that she had been driven half naked into the night. As she came

up, she dumbly begged of him with a little pathetic smile, timid and

conciliatory, not to be angry with her for halting. He saw a trickle

of blood flow into the white carpet where she waited.

Now he stood to the struggle between his pride and his humanity. She

was slight and thinly clad. He might have carried her in his arms the

little remaining distance. But a hard devil rasped his heart--that

particular Belial that tempts consciences to very wanton

self-mutilations.

“I had not thought,” he said coldly. “I should have been more

considerate. I will walk slowly the rest of the way.”

“I hardly feel it--indeed, monsieur, indeed,” she answered, brokenly

and eagerly. “I will come faster.”

He went on again, and she crept behind him. Arrived at last at his

door, he rapped on it, and stood away, signing to her to enter.

The citizen Theophilus, although he was a good patriot, bowed the

gentleman and his companion into the sadly lit hall with a conscious

elaboration of the _bel air_. He was at different times cook and

_concierge_, and always proprietor--a man of admirable tact. Now he

smiled, and informed monsieur the Englishman that there was a grateful

hot fire in his room; that the night was a disgrace to Paris; that a

steaming potage could be served to the citoyenne in a moment, did

monsieur desire it.

He did not shrug his shoulders, or appear to notice the bare raw feet

set upon the mat, or anything strange in this apparition of a dazed

young woman standing there with the snow in her hair. That was his

delicacy. For the rest, reputations were not marred nowadays by any

refusal to subscribe to such old-fashioned codes of propriety as were

only practised, if at all, in the prisons, where the remnants of a

social hypocrisy awaited consignment to the rag-tearing machine in the

Place Louis XV. Citizen Theophilus would have as little thought of

bestowing a suggestive wink on the mating of a couple of swallows as

on the foregathering of a young man and maid under his eaves.

“I will do myself the honour,” he said, “to conduct monsieur’s dear

young friend to monsieur’s apartments.”

He skipped up the stairs in advance, candle in hand, like an _ignis

fatuus_. He was a little man--always dancingly restless--with a lean

face, and iron-grey corkscrew curls that he would keep well oiled, as

though they were the actual springs of his movements.

Arrived in Ned’s apartments (they were in one suite, sitting- and

bed-rooms, with a folding-door between), he lit the candles, poked the

logs into a blaze, and stood for orders.

“The potage, monsieur?”

Ned transmitted the inquiry with a look.

“No, pray, monsieur--not for me,” murmured the girl.

“Very well,” said Ned frigidly. “It will not be needed, my

Théophile.”

The landlord protested, bowed, and flirted himself from the room. The

two were left alone.

Ned walked to the window, lifted the blind a moment, and looked out

upon the dumb white whirling of the snow. Then suddenly he spoke over

his shoulder--

“Go and warm yourself at the fire.”

She crept to the hearth immediately and sat herself before the glow,

putting out to it her stiff frozen hands in token of obedience.

He took to pacing up and down the room, not removing from his

shoulders the thick redingote in which he was wrapped. Presently he

came and stood near her, his elbow resting upon the mantel-shelf.

“I want you to listen to me,” he said.

She uttered no sound, but only looked up at him, pathetically pliant

to his will. Her prince, for all her sins, had come to her with the

glass slipper. Would her poor swollen foot ever go into it? Her blue

eyes, like a child’s, sought his pity and forgiveness.

But he was resolute to blind his heart to the appeal.

“An hour ago,” he said--slowly, as if weighing his every word to

himself--“I could not have done this. The interval has proved a

fruitful one to us both.”

She clasped her hands as she gazed at him; a film seemed to come over

her eyes. She murmured in a tranced, half-fearful voice. The warmth it

seemed had drugged her brain.

“What happened! It was misty and shining. But, to be with you!--yes,

thou art here, and the fire, and Nicette. That was always in the deep

heart of my visions.”

He took no notice of her half-audible wanderings.

“I would not have you suppose,” he went on tonelessly, steadily, “that

I shall allow any conversion by you of this accident into opportunity.

I brought you to shelter for only the reason that I decline to burden

myself with any shadow of compunction for what share my duty forced me

to take in your punishment. For the rest, we remain, as always, wide

poles apart.”

In the pause he made she dropped her head--crept a little nearer to

him--crouched at his feet. Not to be haunted by the wistful eyes, by

the look, like a dog’s, that was so full of the silent struggle to

comprehend, made his task easier.

“You may stop here,” he said, “until I am able to procure you other

quarters, and the means, if possible, to a living. That will not be

later than to-morrow, I hope. For to-night, at least, you are to sleep

in my room yonder, and I will make shift to lie out here. Do you

understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Very well,” he said, “but I saddle the agreement with one fixed

condition. As long as you remain here--whether it is for one day, or

two, or more--you are to hold no communication with me--are never to

speak to me, unless I first address you.”

She rose to her knees, clasping her hands again to him. Her hair was

fallen over her cheeks; she looked a very small forlorn subject for

extreme measures.

“I shall be near you,” she said, half-choking.

He took her arm and motioned her to her feet.

“It is understood, then. You had better go to bed now and rest and

recover and get warm.”

He put a candle into her hand, led her to the door of the bedroom,

thrust her gently within, and clicked the latch upon her. Then he went

and stood over the fire.

What had he done? What was he doing? Even as he had spoken, making his

condition, he had known that that was a wild absurdity, impossible of

fulfilment. What had moved him to it but a sudden recrudescence of

that self-mutilating spirit? He had had no deliberate thought to goad

a willing jade, or to return, in kind, to love, the humiliation he had

suffered from it. Yet he knew that he was doing so, and it was a

perilous lust to indulge.

His heart was full of ache, his brain of phantoms. These were

reflected, coming and going, in the still red logs of the fire. They

represented, in a thousand aspects, the three ghosts that would haunt

his life for evermore. All women--all fair and fateful shapes; and, of

the three, the vilest, because she had figured for the purest, was the

one that had come to claim him at the last. It was a fierce satire

upon the lesson of ennobling ideals.

Pamela, and Théroigne, and Nicette. He felt it no sacrilege now to

name this trinity in a breath. Indeed, which alone of the three had

made it her sport to coquet with hearts, holding their suffering as

nothing to the gratification of her vanity? Not either of those

peasant girls of Méricourt--whose passionate blood would always

rather flame to the ecstasy of pursuit than to the selfish rapture of

being hunted for the sake of their own beautiful skins.

His thoughts swerved from one figure to another. This Lord Edward

Fitzgerald--how had he come to usurp the very throne of desire? He

knew a little of him by repute--had heard of the ardent young soldier

and apostle of the new liberty, melancholy and something wild,

breathing the spirit of romance. He had no grudge against him, at

least. And what of Mr Sheridan, whose influence alone he had

apprehended? Ghosts they were to him now. What profit was it to seek

to analyse their bodiless significance?

Sweeping and shadowy, the smoke of all such phantoms reeled up the

chimney. Only one face remained with him.

He glanced at the bedroom door, lay down on the rug before the fire,

and, wrapping his cloak about his haggard face, committed himself to

the hopelessness of slumber.

CHAPTER XVI.

The citizen Theophilus was at points of discussion with a rather

dissipated-looking phantom of respectability that had descended upon

him at an extremely early hour.

“Let the citizen--and, moreover, monsieur the Englishman--rest

assured,” he said, “that I accept his commission with a high sense of

the compliment implied. But it is not specific: _oh, mon Dieu Jésus_!

that is all I complain--it is not specific.”

“In what way?”

“For example, there is, for consideration, the toilette of Vesta, as

well as that of Aurora.”

“Why, deuce take it, man; you don’t suppose I expect the girl to go to

bed in her petticoats, if that’s what you mean?”

“_C’est bien, monsieur. Je sais la carte du pays_.” (He bridged his

fingers, tapping the tips together to accent every item.) “I am to

procure, then, the citoyenne a wardrobe, plain in character and of

modest proportions. It is for the reason that the citoyenne may

possess such attire as will not militate against her chance of

obtaining respectable employment. Scrupulously so, monsieur. This

wardrobe is to be for both day and night. Also, scrupulously so.

Moreover, it is to be of the limitations that will not tend to

encourage the idea of a prolonged sojourn in a present sanctuary,

offered (I have monsieur’s word for it) on grounds of the most

disinterested platonism. Finally, so long as mademoiselle remains

under monsieur’s protection--I crave one thousand pardons!--under

monsieur’s guardianship--she is to receive every ordinary

consideration as to service and meals.”

He flourished his hands outwards, and bowed, his curls bobbing like

wood shavings.

“I shall have the honour to punctually acquit myself of these

commissions. Monsieur need give himself no further concern in the

matter.”

“You are a treasure, my Théophile,” said Ned; and he stepped out into

the morning.

It was very cold and bright and beautiful, for wind and cloud had

dropped behind the horizon. The pavements, the roofs, the steeples

were wrapped in white that looked as soft as swan’s-down. The whole

city, it seemed, had put on its furs against the opening frost.

Ned stepped, without sound, over the flags. The hour was still so

early that hardly a soul was abroad. His tired eyes felt the

restfulness of the rounded beds of snow; his throat took in the

stinging wine of the morning in grateful draughts. He had had but a

little troubled sleep, and his wits seemed plugged and his brain sore.

He wanted to think. He wanted to understand why it was that his

thoughts--that should have been all of the tragic quenching of a flame

that had for so long been his beacon in waste places--were unable to

rescue themselves from a weary toing-and-froing before the closed door

of his own bedroom. He wanted to understand, and he could not. Only it

dully presented itself to him as a monstrous thing that the later

image should dominate his mind. If he could recover but a little

clearness of moral vision, he was sure he would see what a foul wrong

to his own loyal heart he was being led into committing.

So he tried to reason--in the lack, as he felt, of reason itself. And

still the cold air would not cleanse his brain of the impurity; and

still the figure that haunted him as he walked was not Pamela’s.

Then he whispered aloud--as if to see whether spoken words would not

prevail with him: “She is a murderess. I have given her scarcely a

thought but of loathing. And now--because of a specious dumb

appeal--Damnation! For all she has gone through, she is as sound of

wind and limb as a pagan Circe--a perfect animal still. I think she

cannot suffer without a soul.”

He strode on more rapidly.

“I must find her another lodging--at once, without delay.”

Walking preoccupied, unregarding his direction, he had made down one

of the side streets that led into the Place Louis XV. Suddenly the

sound of shrill jolly voices startled him. He looked up in amazement,

to see close before him something, the fact of whose existence he had

hitherto most shrinkingly ignored. Sanson and his satellites were

engaged in washing down the guillotine. They were as voluble as grooms

over a carriage--and, indeed, the machine had its wheels and shafts

and splashboard--even its luggage-basket--all complete.

Now, committed involuntarily to view of it, Ned inspected the horrible

engine with some curiosity.

“Hullo, then, my jackadandy!” cried one of the grooms boisterously.

“Art thou seeking a barber?”

“No,” said Ned; “but the answer to a riddle.”

The man fondled a beam, grimacing.

“It is all one,” said he. “Here is the oracle.”

“I believe it is,” said Ned; “only I am not yet sure of the question;”

and he turned away.

He breakfasted at a _café_, made a particular little purchase to

which he was whimsically attracted, and returned about mid-day to his

chambers.

They struck very cold and quiet. There did not seem a sound in the

house. He entered his sitting-room and closed the door. The girl was

crouched in her old place upon the rug. She looked up at him mutely as

he went by her, without a word, to the fire.

He let a minute pass while he warmed himself. Then he said, not

turning his head--

“You want to speak to me?”

“Oh yes, yes!” she answered at once and eagerly; “to thank you for

these.”

“The clothes? You needn’t thank me. It was my own interests I

consulted in giving them to you. Your rags would have been no

recommendation to a possible employer.”

“An employer?--monsieur--an employer?”

“Certainly. Did you imagine I intended to keep you on here

indefinitely?”

She made no reply.

“Have you breakfasted?” he said.

She answered “Yes” gratefully, in a low voice.

He twisted about then, and regarded her. The wise Theophilus had, he

saw, acquitted himself sensibly of his order. The girl was clothed

freshly and simply. Her own instinctive niceness of touch, her

kitten-like cleanliness, had ministered daintily to the result.

The young man’s brain swam for a moment. He could have thought he was

back again in the lodge at Méricourt, the unsullied, fragrant

presentment of a little jelly-loving Madonna charming the luminous

shade of the dairy in which she sat; the sun, blazing upon the garden

phloxes without, touching this his natural child’s head softly with a

single beam.

In the same moment he dashed his hand, so to speak, upon the

struggling fancy. He would not have it rise further to confront him.

It was undeserved of its subject at the least. The promise it had once

suggested had never been vindicated, and he would insist upon that now

as an actual aggravation of the girl’s demerits, seeing that, at this

late hour of her practical punishment for a wickedness confessed, she

could still so far look her old self as to inspire--and demoralise--a

certain emotion of regard. Even the very hollows in her cheeks seemed

filled since yesterday; and she wore her new shoes and stockings

without a hint of their discomforting her wounded feet.

Was it then that a constitution could be so flawless as to be

debarred, by ignorance of suffering, from suffering’s prerogative of

moral exaltation--that the nerves of emotion inherited from the nerves

of physical feeling? If it were so, it were idle in this case to be

considerate of the former.

He put his hand into his coat pocket and, producing a small parcel,

held it out to her.

“You have breakfasted,” he said; “but doubtless you will yet have an

appetite for this?”

She took it from him wonderingly. If he had designed it as a grimly

ironical test of her disposition, he had reason to be discomfited by

her reception of the pleasantry.

She glanced at the superscription--it was a little box of guava

jelly,--then suddenly let the packet fall, and threw herself on her

face upon the rug.

She lay so long and so still without sound or movement that presently

he grew uneasy.

“Get up!” he cried at last, touching her--and hating himself for doing

so--with his foot.

She stirred--rose to a sitting posture. Her eyes had a dazed, stunned

look in them.

“Nicette!” he exclaimed, a little troubled by the fixity of her gaze.

He saw then that she was gulping, as though trying to speak.

“What is it?” he asked, mutinous against the gentler spirit that was

possessing him. He had to bend his head to hear her.

“While they lived--it was always he--that received--the praise, the

tit-bit, the love.”

“Who received?”

“Baptiste.”

He drew himself up with an astonished expression. What answer was to

make here--what course pursue with a soul so inadequate? She spoke of

her parents, it seemed; was pleading their favouritism in vindication

of her crime. It was a confession of moral obliquity so ingenuous as

to baffle argument. For the first time a shock of conscious pity for a

thing so handicapped in the pursuit of the living principle shook him.

He bent down, seized the box of sweetmeat, and flung it into the fire.

The girl gave a strange little cry, and gazed up at him, her mouth

breathless, her eyes glazed with the floating of sudden tears.

“What now?” said Ned.

Her voice broke in a quick sob.

“I thought there was no hope or forgiveness, that you meant to hate me

for evermore.”

He turned away. How could he be other than moved and stricken? She had

not, after all, so much sought to extenuate her crime as to plead for

herself against the hatred she had thought his act was meant to

express.

There was silence for a time; then he sat down in a chair apart from

her, and spoke, gazing into the fire.

“How can you think it mine either to hate or to forgive? How--” (he

struck his hand to his forehead--turned upon her in utter

desperation). “Nicette! do you _ever_ feel remorse for your deed?”

“I dare not think of it,” she whispered. Then suddenly she cried out,

“I think the people of my dreams are often more real than the living

about me. They come and go, sweet or terrible. Was it one of them left

Baptiste to die in the tree! Oh, monsieur, monsieur! if I could learn

it--that I was not guilty of his death! Or if I could die myself and

atone!”

She buried her face in her hands.

“Now,” thought Ned, “shall I tell her the truth--that, practically,

she is not guilty?”

“No,” muttered the little Belial voice in his ear; “what value lies in

the practical significance? The moral is the truth. Besides, are you

so sure that her imagination is not at this moment calculating its

probable effects on you? Think of her consummate and enduring art in

affecting a character, in playing a part.”

The frost of scepticism nipped his pretty burgeon of pity. He hardened

his heart and drew back again.

“Die!” he said, with a little caustic laugh; “well, for one of your

imagination, it should be easy in these days to devise a quite lawful

means of introduction to Monsieur Sanson.”

She glanced up at him quickly, with a look of agony; then drooped her

head and said no more. A second long silence fell between them. But

by-and-by Ned found himself restlessly driven to open upon her again.

“What happened after I had left you that time?”

She seemed to wake to his voice, shuddering out of some scaring dream.

“My God! they sought for me; they burned my lodge; they killed my poor

_génisse_. They would have crucified me like the thieves; but I hid,

and escaped in the night.”

She paused. “Go on,” he said.

“I fled into the woods. There, when I was lost and near starving, I

fell, by God’s blessing, upon the Cagots who had once before visited

our parts. They were returned, making their way towards Paris because

of the cry of equality. They had lost their child; it had been hunted

by boys, and had died of the ill-treatment. They were alone, those

two, and they took me in and fed me; and by-and-by, when it was safe

for me to move, I went with them on their journey to the great city.”

“Great God!” cried Ned, striking in in sheer amazement. “And these

were they upon whom you allowed suspicion of the murder to rest, whom

the merest chance saved from suffering the consequences of a crime of

which you alone were guilty!”

“But, monsieur--oh, monsieur, I knew, when the cry rose, that they

were gone from the neighbourhood. And, indeed, they are always so

execrated that it could make no difference.”

Ned sank back in his chair.

“Well?” he said, with a veritable groan.

“I went with them; and we were long, long by the way; and on the way

the woman also died. I think it was of nothing less than starvation.

Then the man and I came on alone to Paris, and Théroigne met us, and

took me from him.”

“And the woman died of want, and it never occurred to you that you

were a burden on those whom you had--oh, God, how to unravel this

warp! Hold your tongue, Nicette! Let there be silence between us, in

pity’s name!”

She shrunk down as if she had been struck. Her confidences, it seemed,

were of no avail to move him.

But presently he spoke again--

“Why, last night--when I accused you before the woman, your

friend--did you not give me the lie? She would have taken your word

before mine.”

And she answered, in the very voice of desolation--

“Because, if I had lied, I should have lost you.”

He leapt to his feet.

“I cannot breathe or think!” he cried. “I must leave you--I must go

out!”

As he hurried from the room, she dragged herself to his empty chair,

and threw her arms about it with a moan of agony.

* * * * * * * *

All day he wandered through the streets, and only returned home when

darkness had closed many hours upon the city. “She will be in bed by

now,” he thought.

The firelight made a glow about the room, revealing it untenanted. He

sat himself down before the hearth, feeling utterly weary and

vanquished. He had done nothing, planned nothing as to the girl’s

removal. His brain seemed incapable of concentrated thought.

“I should have lost you--should have lost you.” The cry had been drawn

into his very veins. It adapted itself to his pulses--to the knocking

of his heart. What was to be the answer?

This, it seemed--a white figure that stole from the bedroom--crept

into the firelight--crouched down on the floor beside him and took his

unresisting hand. He felt the tremulous clutch, and dared not move. He

felt his hand kissed, pressed against warm, bare flesh--felt a hot

trickle lace it.

The paroxysm of emotion ceased, and then suddenly she spoke,

whispering--

“It can never be?”

“Never,” he said low.

He knew, through the utmost conviction of his stricken soul, that it

was all wrong and impossible--that he _must_ answer as he had done.

He felt a quiver pass through her frame. She spoke again in a moment.

“My sin--I know it--holds us apart. I have not atoned, and, until I

have, it holds us apart. Do you think, monsieur, Baptiste has forgiven

me?”

“I think he has, Nicette.”

“But you cannot--not yet, though I love you so dearly. Perhaps I

should not love you so well if you could. Yet it seems a strange thing

to me why you helped me at all.”

He half rose from his chair; but she gently detained him, and he sank

down again.

“You must go back to bed, Nicette. We will talk it all over

to-morrow.”

“To-morrow?” she said. “Shall we be any nearer one another to-morrow?”

He shook his head. A very little sigh escaped her.

“You will be kind and generous to me, I know; but you will give me no

moment again such as this I have stolen. And I have stolen your bed

too, monsieur; but you must take it from me now, and lie in the warm

nest I have made for you--it is such a little of myself, it will not

matter to you--and _I_ will sleep here before the fire.”

He got now resolutely to his feet.

“Nicette, it is folly. You must return to bed, I tell you. I am going

out again for the night. To-morrow, I say, we will try to settle

matters for the best.”

She clung to him yet as he moved, letting him even pull her a step

forward on her knees.

“One thing--just one last thing. I shall like you to know, when I am

gone--some day, when I am gone--that I died a maid.”

Her face, in the shadow, was turned up to him. The firelight made an

aureole of her hair. He could feel her whole body heaving against his

hand.

“Will you kiss me once?” she said.

He was conscious of a choking in his throat, and beat down the emotion

fiercely.

“No,” he muttered; “it would imply something that must not be.”

She sank back away from him. Without another word he turned and left

her.

In the street the frost snapped at him like the very watchdog of

desolation. He huddled his cloak about him with a shudder as he faced

it.

“It is for the best,” he thought. “To be away--from the terror of my

own weakness! Any _auberge_ will serve for the night.”

He strode a few paces, crunching over the snow, and stopped.

“I might, at least, have quitted her of the worst of her remorse. It

would have been a little return for such love--my God, such love!”

Should he go back at once and tell her that she was guiltless of the

little brother’s actual death?

“Fool!” whispered Belial, still reasoning with him. “Does her love for

you alter the moral? And will you, an emotional bearer of forgiveness,

escape so easily a second time? The warm nest in the bed, fool!”

He turned, and refaced the chill emptiness of the night.

“I must not,” he thought. “She shall know the truth to-morrow.”

CHAPTER XVII.

The morrow--that is always, by some alchemistic process, to convert

the drossy problems of the night into liquid gold--greeted Ned with

leaden untransmutable skies, that were only too representative of the

irresolvable heaviness of his own thoughts. He looked out of his grimy

window of the little tavern on which he had quartered himself, and saw

the yellow of an almost substantial atmosphere sandwiched between a

sagged grey welkin and a world of livid snow; and he saw no prospect,

in that before him, of any illumination of his dull perplexity.

He dressed, breakfasted, and presently went out into the streets. The

desire to postpone that hour of inevitable struggle with an allurement

which, he dreaded, in his present condition of emotional bewilderment,

he would be unable to resist, drove him to take a rambling course to

his lodgings.

He had gone down to the Quay of the Thuilleries, and was turning into

the gardens, when his attention was drawn to a man who rose from a

bench at the moment, and greeted him with a timid ejaculation of

delight.

He stopped, somewhat impatiently--started, stared, and uttered an

exclamation in his turn. For, in the ragged, large-boned stranger, who

was looking at him from eyes that held the very spirit of patient

deprecation, he recognised all at once the poor pariah of a long-past

experience--the Cagot whom he had befriended in the woods of

Méricourt.

He held out his hand in a sudden rush of emotion. The man advanced,

bent down, and touched it reverently.

“Monsieur!” murmured the poor creature, “it is the sunshine breaking.”

Ned regarded him with infinite humble pity. The thought of the charity

so large; of the humanity so rare and so remote from that proclaimed

in the windy casuistries of liberators, who would use its name rather

as a war-cry than as a message of peace; the thought of how this

outcast, reflecting in his selfless chivalry the very altruism of the

Man of Sorrow, had recently helped and protected a member of the race

that had made him so, was like a cool breath on his troubled brain.

“I think it is--I hope it is,” he said gently.

He put his hand on the shoulder of the gaunt figure. The man was

buttoned against the bitter cold into the mere scarecrow of a jacket.

His feet were bare and scarred with blood; his cheeks, his flesh

wherever seen--and that was in more places than custom

prescribes--were fallen in upon a frame accordant with the strong soul

that inhabited there.

“And so,” said Ned, “you are alone at last in the world.”

The man looked up, an expression of wonder on his face.

“How did monsieur know? _Aïe_, it is true! I am alone. We were on our

way hither in quest of the new liberty; and God, pitying her weary

feet, gave it her when but half the journey was done.”

“And the little child? Oh, my friend--perhaps she heard the little

child crying for her in the night?”

“It is true, monsieur. But they will never be able to play birds’-fly

or shadow-buff in the moonlight up there without me. The rogue and the

little mother! And I hear them talking all the night through,

wondering when I shall come.”

“And you do not complain?”

“Why should I complain? They are so safe at last. Think what it would

have meant to them had God called me first.”

“Yes, yes. And--what is your name? You have never told me your name.”

“It is Laurent, monsieur. One is enough for us Cagots.”

“Laurent; what has become of the woman you brought, of your charity,

to Paris?”

“Merciful God! Monsieur is a wizard. Indeed, she found her reward in

the meeting with an old friend, who took her away from me.”

“Her reward!”

“Ah, monsieur! She was an angel of light to the dying mother. She

prayed with and she sang to her; and sometimes she would, with her

voice, earn a silver livre by the way--enough, in the end, to buy the

little place of rest in the churchyard.”

“Laurent, you are starved and frozen. Laurent--do you hear? I also am

alone in the world. You shall come with me, and be my servant and

companion; and we will travel, always travel; until at last, wayworn

and tired, we shall come back, we, too, to the little place of rest.”

He turned, greatly moved, through the gate into the gardens.

“Come!” he whispered--then he checked himself, and faced suddenly on

the astonished Cagot.

“Tell me!” he cried. “What would the Cagot think of him that wilfully

withheld her soul’s cure from a poor shameful woman that loved him?”

“That he feared--that he feared, monsieur.”

“Feared what?”

“To discharge his enemy from her thrall.”

“I said she loved him.”

“Yes, women love their oppressors; but it is a love that in its hour

of retaliation will ask a return in kindness for every blow given.

What shall be the fate of the man, then, when he kisses each bruise?”

Ned dwelt on the patient face in some astonishment.

“Philosopher,” he said, “wilt thou take service with me?”

“Monsieur takes my breath away. It is too wonderful to be true.”

“The truth, I think, Laurent, is always wonderful. Come--hurry thou!

I, at least, will profit by this lesson to go and tell it.”

“And to kiss the bruises, monsieur?”

Ned did not answer, but turned once more and entered the gardens, the

Cagot following at his heels.

A clamour of voices that had come distantly wafted to them as they

passed through the gate took volume with every step they advanced.

Suddenly, breaking from a little park of trees into one of the long,

snow-covered walks that enfiladed the gardens east and west, the cause

of the tumult was revealed to them in the vision of a dozen or so

infuriate tricoteuses, priestesses of St Antoine, who were hurrying in

their direction, driving a single woman, like a scapegoat, in their

front.

At first Ned, distinguishing nothing definitely, saw only exemplified

in this throng of vicious wives, with its rabble of inhuman brats

hooting and pervading it, one of those exacerbated paroxysms of the

mania of Fraternity that were of such frequent occurrence nowadays as

to confound the very heart of autonomy. But, as the horde came into

focus, and he paused to gather the import of its vehemence--all in a

moment the truth leapt upon him, and he uttered a cry and sprang into

the road.

For he had recognised, in the subject of all this raging ferment, no

less a person than the erst-Amazon, Théroigne herself.

Her black hair floated loose; her eyes were alight with shame and

terror; her bodice hung in strips from her waist. She hurried towards

him, maddening and moaning, and, as she ran, the harpies scourged her

bare shoulders with the leathern belts they had torn from their

waists.

He rushed to intercept her flight. She saw--tried to evade him; then

instantly she leapt to recognition, clutched, and fell prone at his

feet.

He stood over her, while she shrieked and wailed incoherently; he

warded off the rain of lashes, receiving much of it on his own arms

and body.

“Beasts!” he yelled; “how has she deserved this infernal treatment?”

The air blattered with their imprecations.

“The traitress! the reactionary! the _putain_ of Brissot!”

The thongs whistled; the mob circumgyrated; the uproar waxed

murderous. In the heat and menace of it a sudden new ally appeared in

the midst.

“Courage, master!” he cried; and seizing off his ragged jacket, he

flung it over the victim’s bleeding shoulders, and turned upon the

rabble.

“See here!” he shouted, and struck his left breast with his hand.

Upon the echo the nearest of the pack fell away, shouldering into the

throng behind them.

“The duck’s foot!” went up a shriek: “it is a Cagot--a Cagot!”

Ned, in his fury, could actually laugh.

“It is a brother, sisters of the confraternity!” he cried.

They were baffled only for the moment. If they dared not touch, they

could fling. There were heavy stones in plenty under the snow. They

were already stooping to gather them, when a fresh diversion occurred.

A patrol of the national guard broke into the rabble and disintegrated

it.

At once arose a clamour of demands, retorts and counter-retorts,

shrieking denunciations. Ned awaited the issue in perfect coolness.

Suddenly a couple of _gens-d’armes_ approached and collared him.

“You arrest me, messieurs?”

“Certainly, citizen.”

“But I am an Englishman, and have done nothing but help a woman in

distress.”

“That is well, then. It will serve thee, no doubt, before the

commissary.”

“What commissary?”

“We are of the section of the _Croix Blanche_. Forward, citizen!”

He was marched off to a volley of execrations. The Cagot was driven,

in likewise, amidst pointing bayonets. A party of soldiers then lifted

the prostrate woman, surrounded and urged her forward. She went,

babbling and dancing. She was the virgin to whom the vision of

Méricourt had been vouchsafed. She was the Mother of God herself. The

guard chuckled coarse jests over her ravings; the mob surrounded all,

going with them and spitting fury at the accursed.

Ned resigned himself to the inevitable. Only it distressed him,

whenever he thought of it, to picture the lonely figure in his

chambers awaiting its reprieve. The moment he was released he must

hurry to it and acquit it of its trouble.

Once he called over his shoulder to the Cagot, “Thou shalt not lack a

new coat, and without a badge, presently. Courage, my friend! Remember

that thou art reborn into the year one of liberty and equality, sacred

and indivisible.”

“Hold thy tongue!” growled a sergeant.

“I have spoken,” said the Englishman.

Their progress, by way of the Quays, and so round, by the Place de

Grève, into the Rue St Antoine, made small stir amongst the few

passengers abroad in the bitter weather. They were hurried, traversing

a medley of little streets, into one--the Rue Pavée--very gloomy and

noisome; and from this they were suddenly wheeled, leaving the crowd

stranded without, into the courtyard of a sinister dark building--the

Hôtel de la Force.

Ned’s heart sickened before the recent associations of the place.

Involuntarily he drew back.

“Up, then!” cried the sergeant, shouldering him on. “It is sometimes

safer to enter than to leave here.”

He pulled himself together and mounted a flight of steps leading to a

narrow door. The woman passed in before him--passed there and then out

of his life. He never saw her again. From that hour, to the day of her

death twenty years later, she raved and rotted in a maniac’s cell. She

had become, indeed, Mater Tenebrarum. Blood-guilt and vanity had

undermined a reason that was already shaken, before the humiliation of

that public chastisement came to finally overthrow it. She died in the

Salpétrière--in the very prison that had witnessed the triumph of

her vengeance. And the spirit of her victim, blown in the moonlit

nights against the bars of her cell, might cling to them like a bat,

and peer in, and take its evil rapture of the retribution that had

consigned her to that one haunted spot out of all the haunted city.

Ned--carried into a dusky vestibule, and thence into a little side

office where he must await, under guard, the commissary’s

pleasure--was ushered, after no great interval, into the presence of

that tremendous functionary. He found him a young man--rather a

revolutionary _blondin_--military and fastidious, with a nose as

high-bridged as the fifth proposition in Euclid, and an under-jaw like

a griffin’s. He was seated in an elbow-chair in the front of his men.

The Cagot, under care of a turnkey, stood before and well away from

him; and between him and the Cagot a soldier held out a burning

pastile on the point of a bayonet. He made a little gesture to the

new-comer, almost as if he were kissing his finger-tips, and addressed

him at once in a lisping voice.

“Your name, if you please?”

Ned satisfied him.

“Citizen Edward Murk,” he said, waving away the superfluous title with

a scented hand, “thou art accused of interfering with the processes of

the law and inciting to a riot.”

Ned exploded immediately.

“The law, monsieur! But I interfered in vindication of it.”

“How, then? Didst thou not oppose thyself to the people’s will?”

“To their violence, rather.”

“It was their will, nevertheless; and the people’s will is the law.

Therefore thou opposedst the law.”

“It is a new law, that, monsieur.”

“Truly. It dates from the year one.”

“Of Fraternity? And what has the law one of Fraternity to say to my

servant here?”

He indicated the dazed Laurent. The commissary lifted his passionless

eyebrows.

“This man is, I understand, a Cagot--(another pastile, Benoît)--a

Cagot, sir; and yet he will venture into the public ways, gloveless

and without shoes.”

“Thus poisoning what he touches, you will say. Monsieur, it is a

superstition. This year one is surely no better than other years the

first--than other opening pages to our periodic new ledgers of

reform--if we carry forward into it a tyrannical superstition.”

“What has that to do with the matter? This is a man----”

“It is indeed, monsieur,” answered Ned sharply. He was growing

impatient of this meaningless arraignment. He had other and more

important business to attend to. He looked into the vacuous young

face.

“Is not this all inapplicable?” he said. “I tell monsieur that the man

is my servant; that we saw a woman suffering ill-treatment; that we

went to her assistance humanely and without violence. We are guilty of

no assault, no resistance to or outrage against any law, either of the

year one or of the year one thousand and one; and I must ask monsieur

to discharge us on the simple facts of the case.”

He took, it is to be acknowledged, the wrong way with a fool.

“I know nothing of the year one thousand and one,” said the officer,

with feeble irony. “It was before my time.”

“Doubtless,” snapped in Ned, “monsieur was born yesterday.”

The commissary, supporting his right elbow with his left hand, sank

back in his chair, pinched his callow throat into a bag, and closed

his eyes.

“The simple facts,” he said--as if reasoning with himself, as the one

most needing the lesson of reason--“are that you have defied the

authority of the plebiscite.”

“Good heavens!” cried Ned.

The officer coming upright again, his lids, in the act, seemed to open

mechanically, like those of a doll.

“I must tell you plainly,” he said, “that, to my mind, your

interference was questionable and suspicious.”

“Believe me, sir,” said Ned politely, “that, in quoting your own mind,

you use an empty argument.”

“You state,” continued the commissary, “that this man is your servant.

Who ever heard of a respectable person taking a Cagot for a servant!”

There rose murmured acclamations from the bystanders. This was the

first really apposite thing uttered by the officer. He seemed greatly

stimulated by the applause, and moved thereby to clinch a fine

situation.

“I shall remand you,” he said quite briskly, “for inquiries to be made

into the truth of your statements.”

Ned stared, then burst out in a fury--

“It is monstrous, monsieur; it is ridiculous! You have only to listen

a moment to what I say--to accept my references to a dozen of the

first standing in the city, to assure yourself of my identity.”

The commissary waved his hand. Obedient to the gesture, a couple of

Guards closed upon their captive.

“I take nothing from you,” he said. “In accepting your references I

might constitute myself a receiver of stolen goods.”

It was an inspiration. He looked up, with a gasp, into the faces of

those about him, to read in their expressions if it were possible that

he himself could have said this thing. It was true he had. There must

be no anticlimax.

“Take the prisoner away!” he said, smilingly self-conscious, as if he

were ordering a table to be cleared for a fresh surprise-course.

Ned, protesting, threatening, fulminating, was forced from the room,

hurried down a passage, and thrust into a little dark chamber that led

therefrom. The sound of a key grating in its lock fell disagreeably

upon his ears. Only a thin wash of light reached him from a single

barred window high up under the ceiling. A couple of crippled

chairs--together, it might be said, with an almost palpable smell of

drains--formed the only furniture of the room. The wall-paper moulted

its gaudy dyes, or hung in strips from the plaster; the floor was

littered with perished rags of parchment. Evidently the closet had

been at one time some office connected with the prison records--a

dreary mad reflection to any one remembering to what recent use those

records had been put.

Ned sank down upon one of the chairs, and, for the moment, looked

about him quite stunned and aghast.

* * * * * * * *

Up and down, up and down, by the hour together. The morning had drawn

to noon, the noon to evening; and still he was confined, with only an

indefinite prospect of release. It was hideous, it was outrageous; yet

the humour of it all might have buoyed him up against the moment of

his liberation, had not his soul--in its present condition,

introspective and self-torturing--so writhed in exquisite anguish over

a never-ceasing fear, or foreboding, of _something_--some vague

disaster that, it seemed to him, his prolonged absence from home must

precipitate. To this something he would, or could, give no name; but

his thoughts circled round the shadow of it, feigning a self-assurance

that there was no core of significance therein to terrify them--yet

terrified nevertheless.

At the first he had flattered himself that mid-day, or thereabouts,

would bring him his deliverance. The whole incident was so

preposterous that, under the burden of his more private affairs, he

would not consider it seriously. But, as the morning passed, and the

chill dark day drew on, his anger and anxiety increased upon him to

such an extent that he might hardly restrain himself from giving them

childish expression in a furious onslaught on the panels of his door.

He refrained, however, and, listening at the keyhole instead, was

presently aware of the regular tramp of a sentry in the passage.

By-and-by, when the footsteps came opposite him, he kicked out and

hailed--

“Hullo, there!”

The man stopped.

“_Qu’as-tu_?” he growled. “_Ne t’emporte pas, citoyen_.”

“My temper!” shouted Ned; “but I shall likely lose my senses if I am

left longer without food.”

“As to that,” said the sentry--and broke off and retreated.

In a very little while the key turned once more, and a jailer entered

with a platter of uninviting scraps.

“Take the filth away!” cried Ned furiously. “Thou canst procure me

something fit to eat, I suppose?”

“Surely, for the paying, citizen.”

“Go, then!”

He commissioned the man, and then must drag out another half-hour,

awaiting the fellow’s reappearance. At length the latter returned,

bearing a basket containing a cold fowl, bread, and a bottle of red

wine.

“Now, monsieur jaquemart,” said Ned, as he tackled the provender, “how

long is permitted to this farce in the playing?”

“I do not understand you.”

“Why, a joke is a joke; but I would have you go and explain to our

pleasant commissary, of the Section Croix Blanche, that brevity is the

soul of wit.”

“Again, I do not understand.”

Ned wagged his finger at the man.

“I have submitted to this outrage very patiently; but, I warn you,

there will be reprisals by-and-by.”

“That is all one to me.”

“Wilt thou take a message from me to the commissary?”

“He has left the prison these many hours.”

“And, when to return?”

The jailer shrugged his shoulders.

“Perhaps to-morrow--at any time, or not at all.”

Ned jumped to his feet, upsetting the basket.

“What!” he shrieked. Then, in a moment, realising the practical fact

of his isolation--realising all that was implied by it--he fell upon

his agitation and smothered it.

“My friend,” he said, “wilt thou convey a letter for me?”

“That depends.”

“Naturally. See, then” (he fetched out a pencil; tore a square from

the white paper that lined his basket of provisions)--“I write to the

citizen Vergniaud--dating my _billet_, ‘_Prison of La Force_’--these

words: ‘_I am detained here on a ridiculous charge. In the name of

sanity, come at once and release me--Murk_.’ I put the paper in your

hands; as I will put a _louis-d’or_ when you stand before me with the

answer.”

The jailer’s eyes twinkled. Said he--

“I go off duty after the ‘Evening Gazette’ is issued. The citizen may

depend upon me.”

Ned groaned.

“Well,” he said, “what can’t be cured must be endured. But, the

earlier the respite, the more generous my acknowledgment.”

He was locked in again; the sentry resumed his tramp; the little

window under the ceiling dusked like a drowsing eyelid.

Presently, drugged by utter weariness of brain and nerve, he dozed on

one of the rickety chairs, and woke to the glare of a candle, and the

presence of his friendly jailer in the room.

“Behold my despatch, citizen!”

He seized the scrap of paper (that bearing his own message), and read,

scribbled on the back of it, “I fly to the succour of my dear friend

the very moment I may quit myself of a little present business of

urgency.”

“Here are thy vails,” said Ned, in a tone of glad relief; “and leave

me the candle, my friend. I shall not need it long.”

* * * * * * * *

Up and down--up and down. The shape of the window under the ceiling

became intimate to the desolate character of the room, rather than to

that segment of the free sky without which it had once appropriated to

itself. It was like a regard turned inwards--an eye glazing in the

trance of self-inquisition; and as such it was illustrative of the

vision of the tormented soul it imprisoned from light.

Up and down. The candle had long guttered and fallen upon itself; his

only ray of comfort from the outer world came in a stretched thread of

lamp-shine under the door. Dark night had crept upon him, with the

screak and thunder of slamming oak and iron, and an increased emotion,

rather than a sense, of muffled deep confinement; and still the

respite delayed, and must now delay, he was sick to think, until the

morrow.

For, at last the voices of introspection, that all day he had striven,

yet feared, to interpret, were become soul-audible sounds in the

tenseness of black silence; and at last his brain was clearing,

throwing truth, like a precipitate, into his heart.

How in two days had the flood of destiny burst, obliterating all his

ancient landmarks! He was carried down like a dead thing. Should he

drift, then?--or, if not, where strand and crawl ashore, a fragment of

human wreck? “I clutch and stop myself,” he thought; “scramble out;

lie half blind upon a little island of rest. The flood still washes my

feet; but I will not yield to it. Then slowly it subsides; the old

beautiful landmarks reveal themselves--soiled and stained, perhaps;

but, they are dear to me, and I would not have my retrospect without

them.”

He paced wildly to and fro again.

“I have been in the flood. What madness has it wrought in me!”

“Pamela!” he whispered aloud in great emotion--“Pamela!”

Yet his soul--though he believed it steadfast to its allegiance

through all the numbing thunder of the race on which it had been

borne--was rent by conflicting devils; for must not his sympathies at

least extend to one who nursed a hopeless passion?

“Oh!” he groaned in his heart, “if, upon my release, I could only find

her gone, on her own initiative, out of my life!”

“And so to leave you a heritage of everlasting remorse,” the fiends

would cry.

One moment he would be the brutal tyrant, another the slave to his own

nature of kindness. He was, indeed, in a pitiable state of

indetermination. And always, marking off the crawling hours, that

sense of inner foreboding pattered loud or soft like the ticking of a

death-watch.

Pamela and Théroigne and Nicette! Vanity and vanity and vanity. And

one Love had claimed, and one the hell of passion, and one----

He threw himself upon the floor, blaspheming, hugging himself in the

ecstasy of this protracted torment.

At last, completely worn out, he fell asleep.

He awoke, having slumbered, despite the hardness of his couch, far

into the morning. He could only recollect himself and his

circumstances with a mastering effort. Sitting up, he saw his jailer

standing by a little table that he had brought into the room.

“What is that for?” he said.

“The citizen’s meals.”

“Meals! Good God! And has not the commissary yet touched his acme of

folly? Has not M. Vergniaud yet called to effect my release?”

The man shook his head.

“Where did you overtake him?” said Ned desperately. “What was he doing

that was so urgent when you delivered to him my note?”

“He was conducting the actress Simon-Candeille to the theatre. I heard

madame engage him to a _p’tit-souper_ when the play was over.”

Ned turned away, sick at heart; then flashed round upon the man again

in a fury.

“The beast! the philosophic egoist! Thou must carry him another

message from me.”

“Truly, when I can,” said the jailer.

It must be when he could. In the meantime the distracted captive was

faced by the prospect of fresh long hours of cold, gloom, and anxiety.

Again the morning dawdled on to mid-day, to the desolate turn from

noon. His lunch was brought in by a stranger turnkey, taciturn and

unapproachable. Ned let him go without a commission. His agitation

could not stomach food.

At last, when, about four o’clock in the afternoon, he was feeling

that, unless soon relieved, he must pay with his reason for that

little act of humane interference, steps sounded coming hurriedly down

the corridor, the key turned in the lock, the door was flung open, and

there entered the room--the young lord, Pamela’s betrothed.

He was full of quick manliness and pity.

“My dear lord!” he cried--“my dear lord!”

He took Ned’s hand; wrung it with hard, sympathetic fervour.

“I was with Vergniaud and Tommy Paine last night, after your note had

been received by the minister. It is the vilest piece of official

insolence! Vergniaud will make hell about it; I will make hell. He was

frantically engaged at the time, and begged me to represent him in

this release of his dear friend. A certain lady was deeply concerned

this morning to hear about it. She would drive me down by-and-by on

the way to her dressmaker. I have come the moment I was able; have

made inquiries, learnt the truth, procured the release of your

servant, and given these scoundrels a foretaste of what they are to

expect.”

He was amazingly frank and cordial. For a moment Ned was stupefied

from any thought of response. He looked into the handsome, intelligent

face, and a dull realisation of his own inefficiency as a suitor

possessed him. “Would this romantic Fortunatus,” might have been his

fancy, “have ever committed himself to a situation so ridiculous as

this of mine?” His lordship was of the soldierly type, very upright

and spruce. He wore at his neck a kerchief of the green that was later

to bring him into trouble. And the unhappy prisoner, for a contrast,

was haggard, unshorn, unkempt--his coat dusted with litter from the

floor.

“I can’t find words to thank you,” muttered Ned at last.

“Faith,” cried the other cheerily, “ye’ve scattered your vocabulary, I

shouldn’t wonder. Come, then, to the rogues at the gate, and I’ll help

ye out with a loan.”

Ned drew back from the proffered grasp.

“No,” he said--“no!”

Then he passed his hand before his eyes.

“Your lordship must excuse me. This suspense--it hath driven me half

mad. I am just a caged rat, flying the instant the spring is raised.

Mistress Pamela, and my prompt, affectionate Vergniaud! Their

disinterested consideration for me--and yours, my lord, yours--they

touch me to the quick. I have such friends--Madame Simon-Candeille,

possibly, among the number. But I am at the last stage of anxiety and

agitation. I have no thought for the moment but to escape, and alone.

I beg your lordship to forgive my apparent discourtesy, and to let me

pass. God knows, it may be too late even now.”

The other, looking very much surprised and offended, bowed and drew

away.

“As your lordship pleases,” said he.

And at that, Ned, without another word, his face as stiff as a mask,

staggered past him, hurried out into the corridor, sped down it, and

made unaccosted for the street.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Snow, soft, dazzling, bewildering, was again falling in the streets

as Ned, a spectre of desperation, hurried along them. The city was all

one strung movement of flakes--cloud materialising, phantoms blocking

the widest and the least avenues of hope. The soulless persistency of

them numbed his heart, blinded his eyes. He stumbled as he went,

feeling like one who, in a nightmare, frantically strives forward

without advancing.

Pamela, and Théroigne, and Nicette! The one on the way to her

dressmaker’s; the one buried--naked, and buried alive; the third----!

He moaned as he struggled onward. People passing him looked back with

eyes askew in butting heads, and grimaced, and went on their way with

pharisaic self-congratulations.

At length, uttering a breathing sigh of relief, he stood before the

door of his lodgings, paused a moment, mounted the steps, and entered.

Instantly he knew, before a word had been spoken, that he was come

upon the _something_, the _real presence_ of the dread that had

haunted him so long. It was in the atmosphere--behind him, overhead,

to one side or the other--never confronting him--a ghost, sibilant

with babble, diabolic with tickling laughter. He went up the stairs,

swiftly, panic-stricken, and so, softly, into his sitting-room. It was

quiet as death; yet a bodiless rustle, he could have thought, preceded

him as he passed into the room beyond. All there was neat, formal,

accustomed. Only a little heap of girl’s clothes lay on the bed--a

neatly disposed small pile of stuffs and linen, with a pair of buckled

shoes at the top.

He gasped, as if he had been struck over the heart. There was

something here so intimate to the story of a pitifully misdirected

life. The shoes seemed to have taken the shape of the feet that had

pursued him so far and at last, it seemed, so despairingly. The

linen--he bent and pressed his cheek to it. It was fragrant--as was

everything personal to Nicette--but it was cold. How long had she been

gone? He had his wish, then. She had taken the initiative. He was free

to nurse his memories unvexed of a regard so misplaced. He could raise

his head and stand acquitted before his ancient ideals.

He drooped his head, rather. He was weak and overwrought. The strain

upon him during the last three days had been so extreme that perhaps

his moral vision was impaired.

A sound coming from the adjoining room startled him. Was it she

returned? He winked down fiercely something that had gathered

unaccountably in his eyes, cleared his throat, and strode forth.

The landlord, Theophilus--that was all. But the little man’s face was

smock-white, his curls hung limp, his eye-places were grey with fear.

He had closed the door behind him.

“Monsieur!” he whispered. “My God, where hast thou been?”

“What is the matter?”

“Monsieur’s young friend! Has he not heard of her?”

“Well; she is gone, I suppose?”

“Ay--_mon Dieu Jésus_!--to the guillotine.”

Ned fell back. There seemed to rise a roaring in his ears.

“Hush!” he said--“listen! They are shrieking for her. I must go!”

His face was ghastly. But the thundering voice sank and ceased, and he

knew that he had been dreaming.

“What was that you said, my Théophile?” he asked, with a little

insane chuckle over his own fancifulness.

“It was yesterday morning, monsieur. You had gone out the previous

night, and had not returned. I heard her leave the house after

breakfast. I looked forth. Pitiful Mother! she was clad in the rags of

her arrival. Her feet were bare. They budded from the snow, the very

frosted flowers of a too-trustful spring. She stood a moment, then

went off. _Hélas_! it was not for me to speak, but----”

“Well?” said Ned, in a gripping voice of iron. He was himself again,

but with death at his heart.

“I can speak only from the evidence. In the afternoon I looked into

the Salle de la Liberté, as I sometimes will, to hear the cases that

were on. There was a little excitement about a girl who had been

seized that morning in one of the passages of the Palais de Justice

with a long knife in her hand. She had made no secret of the fact that

it was her intention to assassinate one or other of the judges as they

came forth at mid-day. She was brought in for trial while I was there.

I swear--my God, monsieur! I swear I had no shadowy thought of the

truth. It was monsieur’s young friend. I shrank into an angle of the

court, in agony lest she should see and endeavour to implicate me.”

“Thou needst not have feared, I think--thou needst not have feared.”

“Monsieur, she made no defence. ‘_Vive la tyrannie_!’ she cried, ‘I

love the aristocrats!’ (Ah, praise to heaven, monsieur, that she put

it in the plural!) ‘I would sooner be spurned by one,’ she said, ‘than

exalted by an upstart chicaneur.’ That was a stroke at the Public

Accuser. ‘Maybe thou shalt be exalted, nevertheless,’ said he, ‘to a

prominent place. And which of us was it, lover of aristocrats, that

thou design’dst to murder?’ ‘What needs to specify?’ she cried. ‘When

one wants to die, any poisonous snake will serve for one to handle!’”

A little terrible groan broke from the listener.

“Monsieur--monsieur!” cried Théophile in emotion. “But they condemned

her--they condemned her. Oh, the poor child! And she revealed nothing;

refused to answer any questions as to her associates, her place of

abode, her manner of life. To-day she was to be taken to the scaffold.

If she has kept silence, we are safe.”

Ned looked upon the speaker with a shocking expression.

“If she _has_ kept silence?” he muttered.

“Monsieur,” said the little man (the tears were trickling down his

lean cheeks), “the carts passed but ten minutes ago. I hurried forth,

and ran till I could get glimpse of them down a side-street. She was

there. She sat with her arms bound, looking up and smiling; and the

snow fell upon her blue eyes, like feathers from the wings of the

angels that fluttered overhead awaiting her.”

He uttered a little cry, staggered, recovered himself, and clutched

feebly at the figure that drove by him.

“Monsieur! It is too late--it is useless! In God’s name do nothing to

compromise us!--monsieur!”

He followed, sobbing and piping, down the stairs. The rush passed from

him; the door slammed back in his face.

“_Mon Dieu_!” he wailed to himself, “he will ruin all!”

Ned tore upon his way. To see--to gain speech with her, if only at the

foot of the scaffold--“Oh, merciful Christ! not so to make this agony

everlasting!”

He sobbed and panted as he ran: “You didn’t kill him! You didn’t kill

him!” He kept crying it, as if he thought his hurrying voice might

reach her before ever his feet could cover the distance. Once he

pictured her--the soft sinning child that had whispered to him,

kissing his hand that night in the hot still secrecy of the

room--under the hands of the callous ruffian who had spoken with him

from the guillotine, and his wild prayers swung into frightful

blasphemies. Some of the few he met in his headlong rush shrunk from

him, leaving him the road. Others, who appeared likely to obstruct his

passage, he cursed as he fled by. They were all ghosts to him,

glimmering, impalpable--flashing past in a white foam of flakes.

At length he broke into the place of the guillotine, and, without

pausing in his mad race, beat the snow from his eyes--and saw.

Here at least, by reason of the bitter cold, was no gala-day, and the

crowd stood not so thick about the scaffold but that he might charge

into and penetrate it.

He had reached at last--so his whirling brain interpreted it--the very

congress of all the spectres that had haunted him of late. The silent

dull air was thick with silent threads--busy stitches in a shroud

whose hem was the enceinte of the city. Here a silent white pack stood

looking up at a white yoke. There was no terror in all the scene, save

where, on the platform itself, the boots of the executioners slipped

in a red thaw.

Then, in a moment, he was aware of her. She rose from the cloud of

white shapes--herself a statue of whiteness--pure at last--and other

white shapes stooped and lifted her.

He burst through the intervening whiteness--tore his way into the

shroud.

“Nicette!” he screamed.

She struggled free for an instant--turned, looked down, and saw him.

Through the rain of flakes the rapture of a deathless passion was

revealed to him.

The next moment she was fallen prostrate. A whirring silvery wing

swooped upon her. She seemed to break in half, like a woman of snow.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

The 1899 Dodd, Mead & Co. edition was consulted for many of the

following corrections.

Alterations to the text:

Add TOC.

A few punctuation corrections: missing commas/periods, quotation mark

pairing, etc.

Note: minor spelling and hyphenization inconsistencies (_e.g._

unnamable/unnameable, seaport/sea-port, meadow-path/meadow path, etc.)

have been preserved.

[Book I/Chapter XIII]

Change “his innate _migivings_ must once more gather” to _misgivings_.

[Book I/Chapter XX]

“and accepted his to her _carrriage_” to _carriage_.

[Book II/Chapter II]

“I sink, Was there evaire the time when” change comma to period.

“this same wife lay _adying_” to _a-dying_.

[Book II/Chapter XV]

“committed himself to the _hoplessness_ of slumber” to _hopelessness_.

[Book II/Chapter XVI]

“turned upon her in _uttter_ desperation” to _utter_.

“Oh, _monsier_, monsieur! if I could learn it” to _monsieur_.

[End of Text]