FELIX
It was Antonino.
"Is this the keeper?" thought Césarine, laughing scornfully within
herself. "A pretty boy for the austere Clemenceau to trust! Do not
excuse yourself," she called out. "Close the door--it causes a draft!
So, you told my husband that you loved me?"
Far from expecting this address, the Italian let several seconds pass
before he faltered:
"Who told you so?"
"He did! he never lacks frankness, I will say that for him. Well, you
have destroyed my chances of securing a peaceful life. And yet I never
did you any harm, did I?"
"I destroy you?" repeated he, as she began to weep after a vain attempt
to hide her eyes in her tresses.
"How is that?"
"Because I lost control of myself under his anger and his threats, and I
confessed to him also that I was fond of you. We have a fellow feeling
and selected the same confidant!"
"You love me?"
"For what else did I come back to this gloomy house? What else would
have induced me to stay? He drove me away before, and I never suspected
that it was to clear the scene for Rebecca, fool--child that I was! And
now he picked the quarrel with me about you in order to go off with the
heathen! You men are so monopolizing! He wants to be let love the
inky-eyed Jewess, but I must not say a kind word to you! Oh, what am I
to do now?" and in pretending to repair the disarray of her hair, down
came a luxuriant tress. "What does it matter which way I turn? All roads
lead to the river or the railroad--a step into the cold water or repose
on the track of the iron horse, and no one will then torment poor
Césarine!"
"You have some sinister plan," said Antonino, frightened by her manner.
"I will not let you go away alone."
"Is it thus you guard your master's house?"
"Then wait till he returns and decide upon something."
"He will decide on separating us, that is sure. Do you think if he takes
me, that you could go with us?"
"No! but if you meant to kill yourself, I should die after you."
"Why not die together?"
"I do not care."
"Then you love me thoroughly?" she exclaimed in delight.
"Death would be repose, and this struggle is driving me frantic," said
he, in a deep voice.
"Well, we will die some day," she said with pretended fervor, "but we
are young and have time before us. Lovers do not willingly die! If you
love me as I love you, you would, like me, find life all of a sudden
wondrously bright! What a blessing that I have money for our enjoyment!"
clapping her hands like a child.
"In your fair Italy, we--"
"Money," repeated he, raised by her magic into a region above such
sordid ideas and falling quickly.
"Of course! my bank orders! stay, they are in your box. Let us hasten
away before he returns. Quick, take!"
"No;" said Antonino. "When he left the house in my charge he bade me
touch nothing, and let nothing be touched until his return."
"He forsaw!" muttered the faithless wife, gnawing one of the tresses
furiously as she studied the Italian's emotion. "Get me my money!"
"Wait until--"
"And with it those papers that describe your discoveries."
"What do you mean?" he cried, coming to a halt, half-way toward the
chest while she was undoing one of the windows of which she had drawn
back the curtains. "The papers--they are not mine, or yours."
"They will make the man I love rich and famous!" she replied, with eyes
that seemed to light up the room far more than the starlight entering.
"You know all about the work. With those plans in the language you also
read, you can rise higher than he! He restricts his genius to his
country--you--we will sell to the highest bidder!"
"Mercenary fiend! I comprehend all now!" said the Italian.
"So much the better!" she replied, coolly, having opened the window and
descried a shadow standing guard in a narrow alley. "We shall lose no
time in explaining."
"You mean to betray your country?"
"Neither mine nor yours! our country is wherever love and gold are
rulers."
"Wretch!" cried he, taking a step toward her so threateningly that she
retreated from the window to which his back was turned as he continued
to face her.
"Which is the meaner?" she responded. "I deceive a man who loaths me,
scorns me and threatens me with the love of another! You deceive the man
who shelters you and to whom you owe everything. I betray him who does
me harm--you, him who did you good. We are on a level, unless you have
surpassed me. This is love! Did you imagine that you can withdraw the
foot that takes one step in this path? An error, for one must tread it
to the end. The steps are passion, the fault, the vice and the crime.
But I have need of you to save me. I am yours and your soul is mine!
Take the spoil and follow me!"
In his surprise, Antonino did not remark a footstep, sounding harsh with
gravel grinding the wood of the verandah, or a grim face at the open
window.
"You are right," he said. "I am a scoundrel, but I am not going to be a
villain. It is I who should commit suicide. Farewell! my death be on
your head!"
"You have spoken your doom!" said she quickly, as she made a sign to Von
Sendlingen in whose hand she saw naked steel abruptly gleam.
"Who's there?" began the Italian, but, before he could turn, the long
stiletto, drawn out of a sword-cane, was passed through his slender
body.
He fell without a groan and his staring eyes, sublimely unconscious of
his assassin and of the instigator of the crime, were riveted, on the
ceiling.
"Confound it!" said the colonel, "this is not your husband!"
"No, another conscientious fool!" she said brutally. "Waste no time on
that boy. Before the man returns, let us seize our prise. Keep your
hands off. This is no common chest. It opens with a combination lock and
the word is 'R-e-b-e-c-c-a!'"
She quickly fingered the studs which opened the lock when properly
played upon, and to the joy of Colonel Von Sendlingen, she could lift up
the loosened lid. But for a temporary vexation, they saw in the dim
light that a kind of steel grating still closed the discovered space.
"That will not detain me long," said the colonel, contemptuously, and
relying upon his great strength as he forced his fingers between these
bars, he secured a firm hold and began to draw the frame up toward him.
"You have done your part, madame, well, and I--"
At the same instant, the chest became a mass of the whitest flame which
expanded monstrously and the whole house shook in a dreadful explosion.
It was supernaturally that Clemenceau had been warned to stand aside and
let the justice of heaven deal its stroke. No longer fear that Césarine
will work evil alone or directed by Von Sendlingen. At the last moment,
all was put in order again by the execution by the soulless mechanism of
the burglar defying-safe. The law of heaven shone forth in triumph and
what was repentant in the errant soul was recalled to where goodness is
omnipotent.
The flame leaped over the three dead bodies and seized upon the
furniture, spreading in all sides. The timbers of the villa were old and
kiln-dried. The proprietor, returning from the station, had a dreadful
beacon to guide him.
All Montmorency turned out of doors to assist in extinguishing the
conflagration. Not often does the quiet suburb treat itself to such
spectacles, and when, to that sensation, was added that of three dead
bodies dragged from the shattered drawing-room where every thing else
was consumed, it may be believed that the night was memorable.
The Daniels were telegraphed to at Paris, and they returned before
midnight. They alone knew that the grief of Clemenceau was given to
Antonino and not to his wife, but the lookers-on were deceived, and many
a man, returning to his slippers and the evening journal, scolded his
wife for having repeated baseless scandals about the proprietor of the
Reine-Claude Villa living on cool terms with his unfortunate wife.
The coroner of Montmorency did not display any broad perception of the
tragedy, although the superfluity of eight inches of Sendlingen's steel
in the side of a young man pronounced dead by asphyxia would have struck
one of the laity. But the reporters of the Paris press were more
perspicacious. They related that an envoy of a foreign union of
unscrupulous capitalists had attempted to rob M. Clemenceau's residence
of his inventions and France of a glory, but had been met by his
dauntless wife and an assistant who had punished the brigand, although
losing their own lives in defence of the patriotic trust. It was formed
convenient to suppress all mention of the fact of the lady being Russian
and the man Italian.
But in his death, Von Sendlingen gained some revenge. The loss of
Antonino the detailed plans delayed Clemenceau in his project. The War
farther threw them back and it was only recently that his perfected
cannon was formally accepted. In all his tribulations and
disappointments, Daniels supported him, for he, too, was an idealist,
and so truly his friend as to defer his own scheme until he should be at
ease.
After the fortuitous meeting of those men had come irresistible
attraction and communion, moral, intellectual and scientific--friendship
to the full meaning of the word.
Poetic justice, as we call the fate least like what man deals out,
decreed that the château of the Marchioness de Latour-lagneau should be
dilapidated during the Prussian occupation of Montmorency. On its ruins
rises the manufactury of he new rifle. On the side of the heart, too,
the same justice rewarded Clemenceau, for he married Rebecca, and they
were happy in having sons to bear his name worthily. Césarine was
forgotten, since, however great a conflagration may be--however far the
flare may be cast on the sky--whatever the extent of damage--it must die
out in time. Such is Passion, and the brighter its blaze the blacker the
ruins it leaves after it--the deeper the misery--the wider the
loneliness. It devours itself, with no revival like the Phoenix; but
Love occupies the whole of life, however extended, and still has the
strength and volumn to transport its worshipers to the realm of the
happy.