My fair friend caught me by the arm. "Who is he?" she cried. "What is his
name?"
Something in her face struck me as she put that question. A spasm of
jealousy shook me to the soul. "You know him?" I said.
"His name!" she vehemently repeated; "his name!"
"Francis," I answered.
"Francis--_what_?"
I shrugged my shoulders. I could neither remember nor pronounce the
barbarous English surname. I could only tell her it began with an "R."
She dropped back into the chair. Was she going to faint? No: she
recovered, and more than recovered, her lost color. Her eyes flashed
superbly. What did it mean? Profoundly as I understand women in general, I
was puzzled by _this_ woman!
"You know him?" I repeated.
She laughed at me. "What nonsense! How should I know him? Go and quiet the
wretch."
My looking-glass was near. One glance at it satisfied me that no woman in
her senses could prefer the Englishman to Me. I recovered my self-respect.
I hastened to the Englishman's bedside.
The moment I appeared he pointed eagerly toward my room. He overwhelmed me
with a torrent of words in his own language. I made out, from his gestures
and his looks, that he had, in some incomprehensible manner, discovered
the presence of my guest; and, stranger still, that he was scared by the
idea of a person in my room. I endeavored to compose him on the system
which I have already mentioned--that is to say, I swore at him in _my_
language. The result not proving satisfactory, I own I shook my fist in
his face, and left the bedchamber.
Returning to my fair friend, I found her walking backward and forward in a
state of excitement wonderful to behold. She had not waited for me to fill
her glass--she had begun the generous Moselle in my absence. I prevailed
on her with difficulty to place herself at the table. Nothing would induce
her to eat. "My appetite is gone," she said. "Give me wine."
The generous Moselle deserves its name--delicate on the palate, with
prodigious "body." The strength of this fine wine produced no stupefying
effect on my remarkable guest. It appeared to strengthen and exhilarate
her--nothing more. She always spoke in the same low tone, and always, turn
the conversation as I might, brought it back with the same dexterity to
the subject of the Englishman in the next room. In any other woman this
persistency would have offended me. My lovely guest was irresistible; I
answered her questions with the docility of a child. She possessed all the
amusing eccentricity of her nation. When I told her of the accident which
confined the Englishman to his bed, she sprang to her feet. An
extraordinary smile irradiated her countenance. She said, "Show me the
horse who broke the Englishman's leg! I must see that horse!" I took her
to the stables. She kissed the horse--on my word of honor, she kissed the
horse! That struck me. I said. "You _do_ know the man; and he has wronged
you in some way." No! she would not admit it, even then. "I kiss all
beautiful animals," she said. "Haven't I kissed _you_?" With that charming
explanation of her conduct, she ran back up the stairs. I only remained
behind to lock the stable door again. When I rejoined her, I made a
startling discovery. I caught her coming out of the Englishman's room.
"I was just going downstairs again to call you," she said. "The man in
there is getting noisy once more."
The mad Englishman's voice assailed our ears once again. "Rigobert!
Rigobert!"
He was a frightful object to look at when I saw him this time. His eyes
were staring wildly; the perspiration was pouring over his face. In a
panic of terror he clasped his hands; he pointed up to heaven. By every
sign and gesture that a man can make, he entreated me not to leave him
again. I really could not help smiling. The idea of my staying with _him_,
and leaving my fair friend by herself in the next room!
I turned to the door. When the mad wretch saw me leaving him he burst out
into a screech of despair--so shrill that I feared it might awaken the
sleeping servants.
My presence of mind in emergencies is proverbial among those who know me.
I tore open the cupboard in which he kept his linen--seized a handful of
his handkerchiefs--gagged him with one of them, and secured his hands with
the others. There was now no danger of his alarming the servants. After
tying the last knot, I looked up.
The door between the Englishman's room and mine was open. My fair friend
was standing on the threshold--watching _him_ as he lay helpless on the
bed; watching _me_ as I tied the last knot.
"What are you doing there?" I asked. "Why did you open the door?"
She stepped up to me, and whispered her answer in my ear, with her eyes
all the time upon the man on the bed:
"I heard him scream."
"Well?"
"I thought you had killed him."
I drew back from her in horror. The suspicion of me which her words
implied was sufficiently detestable in itself. But her manner when she
uttered the words was more revolting still. It so powerfully affected me
that I started back from that beautiful creature as I might have recoiled
from a reptile crawling over my flesh.
Before I had recovered myself sufficiently to reply, my nerves were
assailed by another shock. I suddenly heard my mistress's voice calling to
me from the stable yard.
There was no time to think--there was only time to act. The one thing
needed was to keep Mrs. Fairbank from ascending the stairs, and
discovering--not my lady guest only--but the Englishman also, gagged and
bound on his bed. I instantly hurried to the yard. As I ran down the
stairs I heard the stable clock strike the quarter to two in the morning.
My mistress was eager and agitated. The doctor (in attendance on her) was
smiling to himself, like a man amused at his own thoughts.
"Is Francis awake or asleep?" Mrs. Fairbank inquired.
"He has been a little restless, madam. But he is now quiet again. If he is
not disturbed" (I added those words to prevent her from ascending the
stairs), "he will soon fall off into a quiet sleep."
"Has nothing happened since I was here last?"
"Nothing, madam."
The doctor lifted his eyebrows with a comical look of distress. "Alas,
alas, Mrs. Fairbank!" he said. "Nothing has happened! The days of romance
are over!"
"It is not two o'clock yet," my mistress answered, a little irritably.
The smell of the stables was strong on the morning air. She put her
handkerchief to her nose and led the way out of the yard by the north
entrance--the entrance communicating with the gardens and the house. I was
ordered to follow her, along with the doctor. Once out of the smell of the
stables she began to question me again. She was unwilling to believe that
nothing had occurred in her absence. I invented the best answers I could
think of on the spur of the moment; and the doctor stood by laughing. So
the minutes passed till the clock struck two. Upon that, Mrs. Fairbank
announced her intention of personally visiting the Englishman in his room.
To my great relief, the doctor interfered to stop her from doing this.
"You have heard that Francis is just falling asleep," he said. "If you
enter his room you may disturb him. It is essential to the success of my
experiment that he should have a good night's rest, and that he should own
it himself, before I tell him the truth. I must request, madam, that you
will not disturb the man. Rigobert will ring the alarm bell if anything
happens."
My mistress was unwilling to yield. For the next five minutes, at least,
there was a warm discussion between the two. In the end Mrs. Fairbank was
obliged to give way--for the time. "In half an hour," she said, "Francis
will either be sound asleep, or awake again. In half an hour I shall come
back." She took the doctor's arm. They returned together to the house.
Left by myself, with half an hour before me, I resolved to take the
Englishwoman back to the village--then, returning to the stables, to
remove the gag and the bindings from Francis, and to let him screech to
his heart's content. What would his alarming the whole establishment
matter to _me_ after I had got rid of the compromising presence of my
guest?
Returning to the yard I heard a sound like the creaking of an open door on
its hinges. The gate of the north entrance I had just closed with my own
hand. I went round to the west entrance, at the back of the stables. It
opened on a field crossed by two footpaths in Mr. Fairbank's grounds. The
nearest footpath led to the village. The other led to the highroad and the
river.
Arriving at the west entrance I found the door open--swinging to and fro
slowly in the fresh morning breeze. I had myself locked and bolted that
door after admitting my fair friend at eleven o'clock. A vague dread of
something wrong stole its way into my mind. I hurried back to the stables.
I looked into my own room. It was empty. I went to the harness room. Not a
sign of the woman was there. I returned to my room, and approached the
door of the Englishman's bedchamber. Was it possible that she had remained
there during my absence? An unaccountable reluctance to open the door made
me hesitate, with my hand on the lock. I listened. There was not a sound
inside. I called softly. There was no answer. I drew back a step, still
hesitating. I noticed something dark moving slowly in the crevice between
the bottom of the door and the boarded floor. Snatching up the candle from
the table, I held it low, and looked. The dark, slowly moving object was a
stream of blood!
That horrid sight roused me. I opened the door. The Englishman lay on his
bed--alone in the room. He was stabbed in two places--in the throat and in
the heart. The weapon was left in the second wound. It was a knife of
English manufacture, with a handle of buckhorn as good as new.
I instantly gave the alarm. Witnesses can speak to what followed. It is
monstrous to suppose that I am guilty of the murder. I admit that I am
capable of committing follies: but I shrink from the bare idea of a crime.
Besides, I had no motive for killing the man. The woman murdered him in my
absence. The woman escaped by the west entrance while I was talking to my
mistress. I have no more to say. I swear to you what I have here written
is a true statement of all that happened on the morning of the first of
March.
Accept, sir, the assurance of my sentiments of profound gratitude and
respect.