IN THE RUE ST. GINGOLPHE AGAIN
One would almost have said that the good citizen Jacquetot was restless
and disturbed. It was not that the little tobacco shop left aught to be
desired in the way of order, neither had the tobacconist quitted his
seat at the window-end of the counter. But he was not smoking, and at
short intervals he drew aside the little red curtain and looked out into
the quiet Rue St. Gingolphe with a certain eagerness.
The tobacconist was not in the habit of going to meet things. He usually
waited for them to come to him. But on this particular evening of
September in a year which it is not expedient to name, he seemed to be
looking out into the street in order that he might not be taken by
surprise in the event of an arrival. Moreover he mopped his vast
forehead at unnecessarily frequent intervals, just as one may note a
snuff-taker have recourse to that solace more frequently when he is
agitated than when a warm calm reigns within his breast.
“So quiet--so quiet,” he muttered, “in our little street--and in the
others--who knows? It would appear that they have their shutters lowered
there.”
He listened intently, but there was no sound except the clatter of an
occasional cart or the distant whistle of a Seine steamer.
Then the tobacconist returned to the perusal of the _Petit
Journal_. Before he had skimmed over many lines, he looked up sharply
and drew aside the red curtain. Yes! It was some one at last. The
footsteps were hurried and yet hesitating--the gait of a person not
knowing his whereabouts. And yet the man who entered the shop a moment
later was evidently the same who had come to the citizen Jacquetot when
last we met him.
“Ah!” exclaimed the tobacconist. “It is you!”
“No,” replied the other. “It is not. I am not the citizen...Morot--I
think you call it.”
“But, yes!” exclaimed the fat man in amazement. “You are that citizen,
and you are also the Vicomte d'Audierne.”
The new-comer was looking round him curiously; he stepped towards the
curtained door, and turned the handle.
“I am,” he said, “his brother. We are twins. There is a resemblance. Is
this the room? Yes!”
“Yes, monsieur. It is! But never was there such a resemblance.”
The tobacconist mopped his head breathlessly.
“Go,” said the other, “and get a mattress. Bring it and lay it on this
table. My brother is wounded. He has been hit.”
Jacquetot rose laboriously from his seat. He knew now that this was not
the Vicomte d'Audierne. This man's method was quite different. He spoke
with a quiet air of command, not doubting that his orders would be
obeyed. He was obviously not in the habit of dealing with the People.
The Vicomte d'Audierne had a different manner of speaking to different
people--this man, who resembled him so strangely, gave his orders
without heeding the reception of them.
The tobacconist was essentially a man of peace. He passed out of a small
door in the corner of the shop, obeying without a murmur, and leaving
the new-comer alone.
A moment later the sound of wheels awoke the peaceful stillness of the
Rue St. Gingolphe. The vehicle stopped, and at the same instant the man
passed through the little curtained doorway into the room at the back of
the shop, closing the door after him.
The gas was turned very low, and in the semi-darkness he stood quite
still, waiting. He had not long to wait; he had scarcely closed the door
when it was opened again, and some one entered rapidly, closing it
behind him. Then the first comer raised his arm and turned up the gas.
Across the little table, in the sudden flood of light, two men stood
looking at each other curiously. They were so startlingly alike, in
height and carriage and every feature, that there was something weird
and unpleasant in their action--in their silence.
“Ah!” said the last comer. “It is thou. I almost fired!”
And he threw down on the table a small revolver.
“Why have you done this?” continued the Vicomte d'Audierne. “I thought
we agreed sixteen years ago that the world was big enough to contain us
both without meeting, if we exercised a little care.”
“She is dead,” replied the brother. “She died two years ago--the wife of
Prangius--what does it matter now?”
“I know that--but why did you come?”
“I was ordered to Paris by the General. I was near you at the barricade,
and I heard the bullet hit you. Where is it?”
The Vicomte looked down at his hand, which was pressed to his breast;
the light of the gas flickered, and gleamed on his spectacles as he did
so.
“In my chest,” he replied. “I am simply dripping with blood. It has
trickled down my legs into my boots. Very hot at first--and then very
cold.”
The other looked at him curiously, and across his velvety eyes there
passed that strange contraction which has been noted in the glance of
the Vicomte d'Audierne.
“I have sent for a mattress,” he said. “That bullet must come out. A
doctor is following me; he will be here on the instant.”
“One of your Jesuits?”
“Yes--one of my Jesuits.”
The Vicomte d'Audierne smiled and winced. He staggered a little, and
clutched at the back of a chair. The other watched him without emotion.
“Why do you not sit down?” he suggested coldly. “There are none of
your--_People_--here to be impressed.”
Again the Vicomte smiled.
“Yes,” he said smoothly, “we work on different lines, do we not? I
wonder which of us has dirtied his hands the most. Which of the two--the
two fools who quarrelled about a woman. Ha? And she married a third--a
dolt. Thus are they made--these women!”
“And yet,” said the Jesuit, “you have not forgotten.”
The Vicomte looked up slowly. It seemed that his eyelids were heavy,
requiring an effort to lift them.
“I do not like to hear the rooks call--that is all,” he said.
The other turned away his soft, slow glance, the glance that had failed
to overcome Christian Vellacott's quiet defiance--
“Nor I,” he said. “It makes one remember.”
There was a short silence, and then the Jesuit spoke--sharply and
suddenly.
“Sit down, you fool!” he said. “You are fainting.”
The Vicomte obeyed, and at the same moment the door opened and the
tobacconist appeared, pushing before him a mattress.
The Jesuit laid aside his hat, revealing the tonsure gleaming whitely
amidst his jetty hair, and helped to lay the mattress upon the table.
Then the two men, the Provincial and the tobacconist of the Rue St.
Gingolphe, lifted the wounded aristocrat gently and placed him upon the
improvised bed. True to his blood, the Vicomte d'Audierne uttered no
sound of agony, but as his brother began to unbutton the butcher's
blouse in which he was disguised he fainted quietly. Presently the
doctor arrived. He was quite a young man, with shifting grey eyes, and
he saluted the Provincial with a nervous obsequity which was unpleasant
to look upon. The deftness with which he completed the task of laying
bare the wound was notable. His fingers were too clever to be quite
honest. When, however, he was face to face with the little blue-rimmed
orifice that disfigured the Vicomte's muscular chest, the expression of
his face--indeed his whole manner--changed. His eyes lost their
shiftiness--he seemed to forget the presence of the great man standing
at the other side of the table.
While he was selecting a probe from his case of instruments the Vicomte
d'Audierne opened his eyes.
“Ah!” said the doctor, noting this at once. “You got this on the
Boulevard?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get here?” He was feeling the wounded man's pulse now.
“Cab.”
“All the way?”
“Of course.”
“Who carried you into this room?” asked the doctor, returning to his
case of instruments.
“No one! I walked.” The doctor's manner, quick and nonchalant, evidently
aggravated his patient.
“Why did you do that?”
He was making his preparations while he spoke, and never looked at the
Vicomte.
“In order to avoid attracting attention.”
This brought the doctor's glance to his face, and the result was
instantaneous. The young man started, and into his eyes there came again
the shifty expression, as he looked from the face of the patient to that
of the Provincial standing motionless at the other side of the table. He
said nothing, however, and returned with a peculiar restraint to his
preparations. It is probable that his silence was brought about by the
persistent gaze of two pairs of deep velvety eyes which never left his
face.
“Will Monsieur take chloroform,” he asked, unfolding a clean
pocket-handkerchief, and taking from his waistcoat pocket a small phial.
“No!”
“But--I beg of you------”
“It is not necessary,” persisted the Vicomte calmly.
The doctor looked across to the Provincial and made a hopeless little
movement of the shoulders, accompanied by an almost imperceptible
elevation of the eyebrows.
The Jesuit replied by looking meaningly at the small glass-stoppered
bottle.
Then the doctor muttered:
“As you will!”
He had laid his instruments out upon the mattress--the gas was turned up
as high as it would go. Everything was ready. Then he turned his back a
moment and took off his coat, which he laid upon a chair, returning
towards the bed with one hand behind his back.
Quick as thought, he suddenly darted forward and pressed the clean
handkerchief over the wounded man's mouth and nose. The Vicomte
d'Audierne gave a little smothered exclamation of rage, and raised his
arms; but the Jesuit was too quick for him, and pinned him down upon the
mattress.
After a moment the doctor removed the handkerchief, and the Vicomte lay
unconscious and motionless, his delicate lips drawn back in anger, so
that the short white teeth gleamed dangerously.
“It is possible,” said the surgeon, feeling his pulse again, “that
Monsieur has killed himself by walking into this room.”
Like a cat over its prey, the young doctor leant across the mattress.
Without looking round he took up the instruments he wanted, knowing the
order in which they lay. He had been excellently taught. The noiseless
movements of his white fingers were marvellously dexterous--neat, rapid,
and finished. The evil-looking instruments gleamed and flashed beneath
the gaslight. He had a peculiar little habit of wiping each one on his
shirt-sleeve before and after use, leaving a series of thin red stripes
there.
After the lapse of a minute he raised his head, wiped something which he
held in his fingers, and passed it across to the Provincial.
“That is the bullet, my father,” he said, without ceasing his
occupation, and without raising his eyes from the wounded man.
“Will he live?” asked the Jesuit casually, while he examined the bullet.
“If he tries, my father,” was the meaning reply.
The young doctor was bandaging now, skilfully and rapidly.
“This would be the death of a dog,” said the Provincial, as if musing
aloud; for the surgeon was busy at his trade, and the tobacconist had
withdrawn some time before.
“Better than the life of a dog,” replied the Vicomte, in his smoothly
mocking way, without opening his eyes.
It was very easy to blame one woman, and to cast reflections upon the
entire sex. If these brothers had not quarrelled about that woman, they
would have fallen out over something else. Some men are so: they are
like a strong spirit--light and yet potent--that floats upon the top of
all other liquids and will mingle with none.
It would seem that these two could not be in the same room without
quarrelling. It was only with care that (as the Jesuit had coldly
observed) they could exist in the same world without clashing. Never
was the Vicomte d'Audierne so cynical, so sceptical, as in the presence
of his brother. Never was Raoul d'Audierne so cold, so heartless, so
Jesuitical, as when meeting his brother's scepticism.
Sixteen years of their life had made no difference. They were as far
apart now as on one grey morning sixteen years ago, when the Vicomte
d'Audierne had hurried away from the deserted shore of the Côte du Nord,
leaving his brother lying upon the sand with an ugly slit in his neck.
That slit had healed now, but the scar was always at his throat, and in
both their hearts.
True to his training, the Provincial had not spoken the truth when he
said that he had been ordered to Paris. There was only one man in the
world who could order him to do anything, and that man was too wise to
test his authority. Raoul d'Audierne had come to Paris for the purpose
of seeing his brother--senior by an hour. There were many things of
which he wished to speak, some belonging to the distant past, some to a
more recent date. He wished to speak of Christian Vellacott--one of the
few men who had succeeded in outwitting him--of Signor Bruno, or Max
Talma, who had died within pistol range of that same Englishman, a
sudden, voiceless death, the result of a terrible access of passion at
the sight of his face.
But this man was a Jesuit and a d'Audierne, which latter statement is
full of import to those who, having studied heredity, know that
wonderful _inner_ history of France which is the most romantic
story of human kind. And so Raoul d'Audierne--the man whose power in the
world is like that of the fires burning within the crust of the earth,
unseen, immeasurable--and so he took his hat, and left the little room
behind the tobacconist's shop in the Rue St. Gingolphe--beaten,
frustrated.