“You know very well that she was not. On the contrary, the hanging was
turned by her partisans into an occasion for praising her marvellous
virtuousness. ‘If she had been weak,’ they said, ‘Kergrist would not
have hanged himself. Besides,’ they added, ‘how can a girl, be she ever
so pure and innocent, prevent her lovers from hanging themselves at
her windows? As to the money,’ they said, ‘it had been lost at the
gaming-table.’ Kergrist was reported to have been seen at Baden-Baden
and at Homburg; no doubt he played.”
“And the world was content with such an explanation?”
“Yes; why not? To be sure, some sceptical persons told the whole story
very differently. According, to their account, Miss Sarah had been the
mistress of M. de Kergrist, and, seeing him utterly ruined, had sent
him off one fine morning. They stated, that, the evening before the
accident, he had come to the house at the usual hour, and, finding
it closed, had begged, and even wept, and finally threatened to kill
himself; that, thereupon, he had really killed himself; (poor fool that
he was!) that Miss Brandon, concealed behind the blinds, had watched all
his preparations for the fearful act; that she had seen him fasten the
rope to the outside hinges of her window, put the noose around his
neck, and then swing off into eternity; that she had watched him closely
during his agony, and stood there till the last convulsions had passed
away.”
“Horrible!” whispered Daniel,--“too horrible!”
But Maxime seized him by the arm, and pressing it so as almost to hurt
him, said in a low, hoarse voice,--
“That is not the worst yet. As soon as she saw that Kergrist was
surely dead, she slipped down stairs like a cat, opened the house-door
noiselessly, and, gliding stealthily along the wall till she reached the
body, she actually searched the still quivering corpse to assure herself
that there was nothing in the pockets that could possibly compromise
her. Finding the last letter of Kergrist, she took it away with her,
broke the seal, and read it; and, having found that her name was not
mentioned in it, she had the amazing audacity to return to the body, and
to put the letter back where she had found it. Then only she breathed
freely. She had gotten rid of a man whom she feared. She went to bed,
and slept soundly.”
Daniel had become livid.
“That woman is a monster!” he exclaimed.
Brevan said nothing. His eyes shone with intense hatred; his lips were
quivering with indignation. He no longer thought of discretion, of
caution. He forgot himself, and gave himself up to his feelings.
“But I have not done yet, Daniel,” he said, after a pause. “There is
another crime on record, of older date. The first appearance of Miss
Brandon in Paris society. You ought to know that also.
“One evening, about four years ago, the president of the Mutual Discount
Society came into the cashier’s room to tell him, that, on the following
day, the board of directors would examine his books. The cashier, an
unfortunate man by the name of Malgat, replied that every thing was
ready; but, the moment the president had turned his back, he took a
sheet of paper, and wrote something like this:--
“‘Forgive me, I have been an honest man forty years long; now a fatal
passion has made me mad. I have drawn money from the bank which was
intrusted to my care; and, in order to screen my defalcations, I have
forged several notes. I cannot conceal my crime any longer. The first
defalcation is only six months old. The whole amount is about four
hundred thousand francs. I cannot bear the disgrace which I have
incurred; in an hour I shall have ceased to live.’
“Malgat put this letter in a prominent place on his desk, and then
rushed out, without a cent in his pocket, to throw himself into the
canal. But when he reached the bank, and saw the foul, black water, he
was frightened. For hours and hours he walked up and down, asking God in
his madness for courage. He never found that courage.
“But what was he to do? He could not flee, having no money; and where
should he hide? He could not return to his bank; for there, by this
time, his crime must have become known. In his despair he ran as far as
the Champs Elysees, and late in the night he knocked at the door of Miss
Brandon’s house.
“They did not know yet what had happened, and he was admitted. Then, in
his wild despair, he told them all, begging them to give him a couple of
hundreds only of the four hundred thousand which he had stolen in order
to give them to Miss Brandon,--a hundred only, to enable him to escape
to Belgium.
“They refused. And when he begged and prayed, falling on his knees
before Miss Sarah, Sir Thorn seized him by the shoulders, and turned him
out of the house.”
Maxime, overcome by his intense excitement, fell into an easy-chair,
and remained there for a considerable time, his eyes fixed, his brow
darkened, repenting himself, no doubt, of his candor, his wrath, and his
forgetfulness of all he owed to himself and to others.
But, when he rose again, his rare strength of will enabled him to assume
his usual phlegmatic manner; and he continued in a mocking tone,--
“I see in your face, Daniel, that you think the story is monstrous,
improbable, almost impossible. Nevertheless, four years ago, it was
believed all over Paris, and set off by a number of hideous details
which I will spare you. If you care to look at the papers of that year,
you will find it everywhere. But four years are four centuries in Paris.
To say nothing of the many similar stories that have happened since.”
Daniel said nothing, he only bowed his head sadly. He felt a kind of
painful emotion, such as he had never before experienced in his life.
“It is not so much the story itself,” he said at last, “that overcomes
me so completely. What I cannot comprehend is, how this woman could
refuse the man whose accomplice she had been the small pittance he
required in order to evade justice, and to escape to Belgium.”
“Nevertheless, that was so,” repeated M. de Brevan; and then he added
emphatically, “at least, they say so.”
Daniel did not notice this attempt to become more cautious again. He
continued pensively,--
“Is it not very improbable that Miss Brandon should not have been
afraid to exasperate the unfortunate man, and to drive him to desperate
measures? In his furious rage, he might have left the house, rushed to a
police-officer, and confessed to him every thing, laying the evidence he
had in his hands before a magistrate, and”--
“You say,” replied Brevan, interrupting him with a dry, sardonic laugh,
“precisely what all the advocates of the fair American said at that
time. But I tell you, that her peculiarity is exactly the daring with
which she ventures upon the most dangerous steps. She does not pretend
to avoid difficulties; she crushes them. Her prudence consists in
carrying imprudence to the farthest limits.”
“But”--
“You ought to credit her, besides, with sufficient astuteness and
experience to know that she had taken the most careful precautions,
having destroyed every evidence of her own complicity, and feeling quite
safe in that direction. Moreover, she had studied Malgat’s character,
as she studied afterwards Kergrist’s. She was quite sure that neither of
them would accuse her, even at the moment of death. And yet, in the
case of this Mutual Discount Society, her calculations did not prove
absolutely correct.”
“How so?”
“It became known that she had received Malgat two or three times
secretly, for he did not openly enter her house; and the penny papers
had it, that ‘the fair stranger was no stranger to small peculations.’
Public opinion was veering around, when it was reported that she
had been summoned to appear before a magistrate. That, however, was
fortunate for her; she came out from the trial whiter and purer than
Alpine snow.”
“Oh!”
“And so perfectly cleared, that, when the whole matter was brought up in
court, she was not even summoned as a witness.”