A single lighted lamp, turned low, was suspended from the ceiling of the
raftered room, and through the open doorway which gave on to a little
wooden piazza with a slight railing and small, shaky gate came the swish
of the Watloon River. No moon was visible, but the stars were radiant
and alive--trembling with life. There was something soothing, something
endlessly soothing in the sound of the river. It suggested the ceaseless
movement of life to the final fulness thereof.
So still was the room that it might have seemed to be without life, were
it not for a faint sound of breathing. The bed, however, was empty,
and no chair was occupied; but on a settle in a corner beside an unused
fireplace sat a man, now with hands clasped between his knees, again
with arms folded across his breast; but with his head always in a
listening attitude. The whole figure suggested suspense, vigilance and
preparedness. The man had taken off his boots and stockings, and his
bare feet seemed to grip the floor; also the sleeves of his jacket were
rolled up a little. It was not a figure you would wish to see in
your room at midnight unasked. Once or twice he sighed heavily, as he
listened to the river slishing past and looked out to the sparkle of the
skies. It was as though the infinite had drawn near to the man, or else
that the man had drawn near to the infinite. Now and again he brought
his fists down on his knees with a savage, though noiseless, force. The
peace of the river and the night could not contend successfully against
a dark spirit working in him. When, during his vigil, he shook his
shaggy head and his lips opened on his set teeth, he seemed like one who
would take toll at a gateway of forbidden things.
He started to his feet at last, hearing footsteps outside upon the
stairs. Then he settled back again, drawing near to the chimney-wall,
so that he should not be easily seen by anyone entering. Presently there
was the click of a latch, then the door opened and shut, and cigar-smoke
invaded the room. An instant later a hand went up to the suspended
oil-lamp and twisted the wick into brighter flame. As it did so, there
was a slight noise, then the click of a lock. Turning sharply, the
man under the lamp saw at the door the man who had been sitting in
the corner. The man had a key in his hand. Exit now could only be had
through the door opening on to the river.
“Who are you? What the hell do you want here?” asked the fellow under
the lamp, his swarthy face drawn with fear and yet frowning with anger.
“Me--I am Jean Jacques Barbille,” said the other in French, putting
the key of the door in his pocket. The other replied in French, with
a Spanish-English accent. “Barbille--Carmen’s husband! Well, who would
have thought--!”
He ended with a laugh not pleasant to hear, for it was coarse with
sardonic mirth; yet it had also an unreasonable apprehension; for why
should he fear the husband of the woman who had done that husband such
an injury!
“She treated you pretty bad, didn’t she--not much heart, had Carmen!” he
added.
“Sit down. I want to talk to you,” said Jean Jacques, motioning to two
chairs by a table at the side of the room. This table was in the middle
of the room when the man under the lamp-Hugo Stolphe was his name--had
left it last. Why had the table been moved?
“Why should I sit down, and what are you doing here?--I want to know
that,” Stolphe demanded. Jean Jacques’ hands were opening and shutting.
“Because I want to talk to you. If you don’t sit down, I’ll give you no
chance at all.... Sit down!” Jean Jacques was smaller than Stolphe,
but he was all whipcord and leather; the other was sleek and soft, but
powerful too; and he had one of those savage natures which go blind with
hatred, and which fight like beasts. He glanced swiftly round the room.
“There is no weapon here,” said Jean Jacques, nodding. “I have put
everything away--so you could not hurt me if you wanted.... Sit down!”
To gain time Stolphe sat down, for he had a fear that Jean Jacques was
armed, and might be a madman armed--there were his feet bare on the
brown painted boards. They looked so strange, so uncanny. He surely must
be a madman if he wanted to do harm to Hugo Stolphe; for Hugo Stolphe
had only “kept” the woman who had left her husband, not because of
himself, but because of another man altogether--one George Masson. Had
not Carmen herself told him that before she and he lived together? What
grudge could Carmen’s husband have against Hugo Stolphe?
Jean Jacques sat down also, and, leaning on the table said: “Once I was
a fool and let the other man escape-George Masson it was. Because of
what he did, my wife left me.”
His voice became husky, but he shook his throat, as it were, cleared it,
and went on. “I won’t let you go. I was going to kill George Masson--I
had him like that!” He opened and shut his hand with a gesture of
fierce possession. “But I did not kill him. I let him go. He was so
clever--cleverer than you will know how to be. She said to me--my wife
said to me, when she thought I had killed him, ‘Why did you not
fight him? Any man would have fought him.’ That was her view. She was
right--not to kill without fighting. That is why I did not kill you at
once when I knew.”
“When you knew what?” Stolphe was staring at the madman.
“When I knew you were you. First I saw that ring--that ring on your
hand. It was my wife’s. I gave it to her the first New Year after we
married. I saw it on your hand when you were drinking at the bar next
door. Then I asked them your name. I knew it. I had read your letters to
my wife--”
“Your wife once on a time!”
Jean Jacques’ eyes swam red. “My wife always and always--and at the last
there in my arms.” Stolphe temporized. “I never knew you. She did not
leave you because of me. She came to me because--because I was there
for her to come to, and you weren’t there. Why do you want to do me any
harm?” He still must be careful, for undoubtedly the man was mad--his
eyes were too bright.
“You were the death of her,” answered Jean Jacques, leaning forward.
“She was most ill-ah, who would not have been sorry for her! She was
poor. She had been to you--but to live with a woman day by day, but to
be by her side when the days are done, and then one morning to say, ‘Au
revoir till supper’ and then go and never come back, and to take money
and rings that belonged to her!... That was her death--that was the end
of Carmen Barbille; and it was your fault.”
“You would do me harm and not hurt her! Look how she treated you--and
others.”
Jean Jacques half rose from his seat in sudden rage, but he restrained
himself, and sat down again. “She had one husband--only one. It was Jean
Jacques Barbille. She could only treat one as she treated me--me, her
husband. But you, what had you to do with that! You used her--so!”
He made a motion as though to stamp out an insect with his foot.
“Beautiful, a genius, sick and alone--no husband, no child, and you used
her so! That is why I shall kill you to-night. We will fight for it.”
Yes, but surely the man was mad, and the thing to do was to humour
him, to gain time. To humour a madman--that is what one always advised,
therefore Stolphe would make the pourparler, as the French say.
“Well, that’s all right,” he rejoined, “but how is it going to be done?
Have you got a pistol?” He thought he was very clever, and that he would
now see whether Jean Jacques Barbille was armed. If he was not armed,
well, then, there would be the chances in his favour; it wasn’t easy to
kill with hands alone.
Jean Jacques ignored the question, however. He waved a hand impatiently,
as though to dismiss it. “She was beautiful and splendid; she had been
a queen down there in Quebec. You lied to her, and she was blind at
first--I can see it all. She believed so easily--but yes, always! There
she was what she was, and you were what you are, not a Frenchman, not
Catholic, and an American--no, not an American--a South American. But
no, not quite a South American, for there was the Portuguese nigger in
you--Sit down!”
Jean Jacques was on his feet bending over the enraged mongrel. He had
spoken the truth, and Carmen’s last lover had been stung as though a
serpent’s tooth was in his flesh. Of all things that could be said about
him, that which Jean Jacques said was the worst--that he was not all
white, that he had nigger blood! Yet it was true; and he realized that
Jean Jacques must have got his information in Shilah itself where he
had been charged with it. Yet, raging as he was, and ready to take the
Johnny Crapaud--that is the name by which he had always called Carmen’s
husband--by the throat, he was not yet sure that Jean Jacques was
unarmed. He sat still under an anger greater than his own, for there was
in it that fanaticism which only the love or hate of a woman could breed
in a man’s mind.
Suddenly Stolphe laughed outright, a crackling, mirthless, ironical
laugh; for it really was absurdity made sublime that this man, who
had been abandoned by his wife, should now want to kill one who had
abandoned her! This outdid Don Quixote over and over.
“Well, what do you want?” he asked.
“I want you to fight,” said Jean Jacques. “That is the way. That was
Carmen’s view. You shall have your chance to live, but I shall throw you
in the river, and you can then fight the river. The current is swift,
the banks are steep and high as a house down below there. Now, I am
ready...!”
He had need to be, for Stolphe was quick, kicking the chair from beneath
him, and throwing himself heavily on Jean Jacques. He had had his day at
that in South America, and as Jean Jacques Barbille had said, the water
was swift and deep, and the banks of the Watloon high and steep!
But Jean Jacques was unconscious of everything save a debt to be
collected for a woman he had loved, a compensation which must be taken
in flesh and blood. Perhaps at the moment, as Stolphe had said to
himself, he was a little mad, for all his past, all his plundered,
squandered, spoiled life was crying out at him like a hundred ghosts,
and he was fighting with beasts at Ephesus. An exaltation possessed
him. Not since the day when his hand was on the lever of the flume with
George Masson below; not since the day he had turned his back for ever
on the Manor Cartier had he been so young and so much his old self-an
egotist, with all the blind confidence of his kind; a dreamer inflamed
into action with all a mad dreamer’s wild power. He was not fifty-two
years of age, but thirty-two at this moment, and all the knowledge got
of the wrestling river-drivers of his boyhood, when he had spent hours
by the river struggling with river-champions, came back to him. It was
a relief to his sick soul to wrench and strain, and propel and twist
and force onward, step by step, to the door opening on the river, this
creature who had left his Carmen to die alone.
“No, you don’t--not yet. The jail before the river!” called a cool,
sharp, sour voice; and on the edge of the trembling platform overhanging
the river, Hugo Stolphe was dragged back from the plunge downward he was
about to take, with Jean Jacques’ hand at his throat.
Stolphe had heard the door of the bedroom forced, but Jean Jacques had
not heard it; he was only conscious of hands dragging him back just at
the moment of Stolphe’s deadly peril.
“What is it?” asked Jean Jacques, seeing Stolphe in the hands of two
men, and hearing the snap of steel. “Wanted for firing a house for
insurance--wanted for falsifying the accounts of a Land Company--wanted
for his own good, Mr. Hugo Stolphe, C.O.D.--collect on delivery!” said
the officer of the law. “And collected just in time!”
“We didn’t mean to take him till to-morrow,” the officer added, “but out
on the river one of us saw this gladiator business here in the red-light
zone, and there wasn’t any time to lose.... I don’t know what your
business with him was,” the long-moustached detective said to Jean
Jacques, “but whatever the grudge is, if you don’t want to appear in
court in the morning, the walking’s good out of town night or day--so
long!”
He hustled his prisoner out.
Jean Jacques did not want to appear in court, and as the walking was
officially good at dawn, he said good-bye to Virginie Poucette’s sister
through the crack of a door, and was gone before she could restrain him.
“Well, things happen that way,” he said, as he turned back to look at
Shilah before it disappeared from view.
“Ah, the poor, handsome vaurien!” the woman at the tavern kept saying to
her husband all that day; and she could not rest till she had written to
Virginie how Jean Jacques came to Shilah in the evening, and went with
the dawn.