For a while neither James O'Donnell nor Dominique Lavirotte moved.
At last the old man said:
"Whether I shoot you or not is a matter of perfect indifference to me.
There would be no pity, no shame in doing so. I look on myself as a
dead man, and I am not only dead in my own eyes, but also dishonoured.
I do not say you were the cause of my dishonour, but you are a
criminal with regard to my son, and an unprincipled liar with regard
to myself. I do not know why I am talking to you. The sight of your
dead body would be better for me than those shaking limbs and that
craven face. Shall I put you out of your pain? Shall I fire?"
"For God's sake, Mr. O'Donnell, put down that dreadful thing, and let
us talk like men."
"You a man!" cried the old man, in a low, scoffing voice. "Who, in the
darkness of the night, sprang upon an unarmed man, who had never done
you any harm, and sought to stab him to death without giving him one
chance for his life! You, who not only did this, but did this to your
greatest friend, call yourself a man! You are a low, mean, cowardly
hound, and shooting is too good for you!"
A queer look came into Lavirotte's eyes.
"If you put down that revolver," he said more collectedly, and with a
ghastly smile, "I will tell you how all that thing happened. How is it
that, although, as you say--to my shame I confess it--I made a
murderous assault upon my dear good friend Eugene----"
"If you wish to live a few minutes longer," said James O'Donnell,
"you had better give up that horrible, lying slang of dear good
friend Eugene. I am in no humour to dry the crocodile's tears of an
arch-blasphemous hypocrite like you."
Lavirotte seemed gaining courage. With a wave of his hand he put aside
the old man's violent interruption and proceeded: "How is it that,
after an occurrence such as you describe, Eugene forgave me?"
"Because he is too noble and good a fellow for a cowardly wretch like
you to know."
Lavirotte now smiled a smile of self-assurance and ease. "Mr.
O'Donnell," he said, making a motion towards a chair, "have the
goodness to sit down. This house is not all my own. I rent only two
rooms, this one and the one behind. I do not think it would be fair of
you to disturb the quiet of this house with anything so rude as a
pistol-shot, or to shock the susceptibilities of my good friends here
with anything so revolting as a murder. But if you will drop that
revolver I'll tell you something about that affair with your son you
never heard before, and which, perhaps, even to your blind and bigoted
mind, may put a new aspect on the matter."
The old man dropped his arm in mute amazement at this attack. He had
come there with the intention of shooting Lavirotte, after reproaching
him violently for the injuries he had inflicted and the hopes he had
betrayed. And now, here was Lavirotte coolly turning on him, abusing
him instead of sitting mutely under his reproaches, and smiling with
as much assurance as though he were the person with the grievance who
was about to extend mercy.
"It would be," said Lavirotte, "more convenient and comfortable if you
sat down. I am scarcely strong enough to stand. You say you are a dead
man. I am a man only very slightly alive."
"I will never, sir," said the old man, "sit down in the presence of a
scoundrel such as you, again."
"I was never very intimate with you, Mr. O'Donnell----"
"Never, thank Heaven, sir."
"Because I always had a natural aversion from fools."
"Fool, sir! Fool! Do you mean to say I am a fool?"
"Yes, a pitiable fool. Who but a pitiable fool would entrust the
savings of a lifetime to a sanctimonious old swindler like Vernon? I
never yet met a man who made a parade of his religion that was not as
great a villain as his courage would allow. But I am getting away from
the point. I was saying a little while ago does it not seem strange to
you that Eugene should forgive me utterly after I had attempted to
murder him?"
"I said no, sir. The boy was always distinguished by his generosity."
"Does it not seem strange to you that I, being Eugene's great friend,
should have made a murderous attack upon him without any cause known
to you?"
"No, sir; it does not seem strange. It would seem strange to me if you
had acted according to any ordinary principle of honour or honesty."
"But why, in the name of reason, should I attack Eugene, my dearest
and best friend?"
"Because he was your dearest and best friend, and it satisfied the
demands of your vile nature that you should sacrifice the man who was
your most intimate friend."
"No; that was not the reason. That is what a shallow-pated fool might
think. Something of greater moment than the virtues or vices I possess
was the cause of it."
"Ay, some foolish quarrel between two young men. Perhaps you were both
heated in argument; perhaps you had both been too free with liquor.
But, however you put it, or however high the anger of you both may
have gone, only a coward and scoundrel would take a man unawares and
attempt to stab him. Young men may have their quarrels; but in these
countries, sir, young men do not in their quarrels use the knife!" The
old man was still standing a few feet distant from the chair in which
Lavirotte sat. His left hand was clenched behind his back. His right
hung down by his side, holding the revolver.
"There was no quarrel of any kind. We had not even been together that
night. I waited for him. I lay in hiding for him, and as he was
passing by I sprang at him and tried to kill him without a word of
warning."
"Infamous monster," cried the old man, shaking with rage. "Do you mean
to tell his father this?" James O'Donnell's hand tightened on the
revolver, and without raising his wrist he threw the muzzle slightly
upward.
"Keep your hand still, sir. Keep your hand still. You came here
to shoot me because I had failed to keep a promise which I had
every reason to hope I could keep. You came here to shoot me,
because, through no fault of mine, but through your own stupid
wrong-headedness, you, in the decline of life, found yourself
commercially a ruined man. You have had a long and prosperous career.
I have had nothing but struggles and difficulties and disappointments
all my life, short as it is. Suppose for a moment that Eugene, without
knowing it, ruined all my life, all my future."
"I can suppose nothing so absolutely absurd."
"Then, sir, your want of imagination in this thing only confirms my
former opinion of you--you are a fool. Keep your hand quiet. It might
be a satisfaction for you to murder me when you came in first, and
when your faith in my wickedness was without a flaw. But it will not
do now, and you would have no more comfort in shooting me at this
moment than you would in facing all the widows and orphans made by
that bank, that rotten concern which you in your infatuation believed
to be sound, which paid you heavy dividends for your money and your
consent to be stupid, and which in the end reduced thousands of
simple, thrifty folk to penury. Sir, will you put that pistol down on
the table and take a chair?"
This was even a still more unexpected attack than the former one. Mr.
O'Donnell's mind was thrown into some confusion by finding that he was
not only opposed in the field where he had made sure of success, but
that his flanks were turned while he had been announcing victory to
himself. Never in the whole course of his life had anyone before
seriously questioned even his judgment, not to say the foundations of
his honesty. And here was the very man for whom he entertained the
greatest contempt and loathing, calmly assuming a superior tone and
impugning the honesty of one who had hitherto been regarded as
impeccable.
In a dazed, stupid way he put the revolver on the table and took the
chair, as he had been asked.
"Now, sir, it is time you knew all. Your son is now happily married to
a woman I once madly loved. Remember, I am not using the word 'madly'
in any figurative or poetic sense; I am talking the commonest and most
ordinary prose. I loved her madly, notwithstanding the fact that I was
engaged to be married to another woman. And without knowing that he
did it, and to tell the truth, after I had been rejected by her, he
made love to her and succeeded. Then it was that something rose within
me, which you have to-night called by a variety of names, which others
would call hate, jealousy, revenge, but perhaps which might be called
insanity more truly than anything else. I am sure I must have been mad
at the time. I remember nothing of it but a hurry in my head, a tumult
in my blood, a wild desire to do something that I knew was not right,
and yet which I knew I must do. Then I remember no more until I awoke
healed of the fever of madness and hurt in the encounter with Eugene."
He rose from his chair heavily as he spoke, crossed to the table where
the revolver lay, took up the weapon, and said: "A capital revolver--a
splendid revolver, sir--a six-chamber one. According to our own
showing neither of us has much to live for; and according to your
showing the hangman would be the only person seriously injured if I
committed suicide. If you are disposed to have half of this I promise
to take the other half, and then we shall both be quits."
"Are you mad again?"
"Not yet; but I feel it coming on."