pointed, the most sinister interest: and next I found myself still
holding the razor over Bibi-Ri's cheek where he had taken an ugly gash.
That big devil smiled and chuckled in intimate fashion at my red blade.
His eyes shone like topaz. Stupidly I followed their gaze. When I looked
up again ... the two outside were gone.
"Name of God!" I cried. "Who are those?"
Bibi-Ri had fallen back in his chair.
"The vultures!"
Well, I understood fast enough that I had made acquaintance of the
terrible M. de Nou. The other would be his aide and familiar, a former
Polish anarchist--I had heard--whom even the society of convicts
rejected and who bore the fit name: Bombiste. These were the dreaded
servants of the guillotine. But now they had passed I was bold as the
best: I could mock myself.
"Imbeciles!" I laughed. "To be scared by an old bogey like that! The
executioner? So be it. We can curse him and let him go.... Though in
truth he has a sickly notion of an afternoon call, the lascar! ... Sit
still while I plaster that sliced onion of yours."
But something had come upon Bibi-Ri. For once he gave me back no jest.
"The monster has marked me down! You heard him? It is a warning!" At
that he started up, all streaky with soap and blood as he was, and must
rush away on some errand. And then remembering it would be impossible to
run the police limits of Noumea before dark, collapsed again. "I am
lost!"
Figure my amazement.
"But how?" I demanded. "Does your blessed executioner have power to pick
his own victims?... Does he go about cropping heads, for example, like a
man in a flower garden? What can he make to you? ... Unless perhaps he
has come between you and that fair fortune I saw you pursuing so
ardently a moment ago."
The way his jaw dropped! As if I had touched the very spring of his
destiny.
Now you can guess that I knew perhaps a little--no matter how little--of
lawlessness and violence and secret intrigue persisting within this
model criminal laboratory of ours. Do you change vice to virtue by
transporting it half a world away and bottling it up? A disturbing
question. At least if you expect your convicts to work, to aspire, even
to marry and to multiply like free men, you must expect them also to
covet, to scheme, to quarrel and to sin--again like free men. These
facts I had noted without exploring too deeply, you comprehend. But
Bibi-Ri was the last I should have credited with a share in their darker
meaning.
Only picture this client as I had found him. A nimble rogue: a kind of
licensed pest, with a droll face resembling those rubber toys that wink
and grimace between your fingers. True, he had been shipped with the
worst of us. But what of that? One knows these gentlemen the Parisian
police: how they cry a wolf and then go out and nab some stray puppy in
the street. Bibi-Ri! One wondered how he had ever earned his sentence.
And yet--and yet there was certainly something about the fellow. In his
eyes were depths. Something fateful and despairing. Something, in view
of his accustomed mad humor, to make me pitiful and uneasy.
"Look here, my zig," I said. "I have seen too much and not enough. What
have you done? I spy a gay mystery that makes a comedian like you play
such a part."
"Perhaps it is the other part I have to play," he returned, with a gleam
of his proper spirit. "Perhaps I am playing it at the last gasp of
fright--my poor knees clapping like castanets......
"Dumail," he said, "put it this way: Suppose you were within three
counted weeks of your final release from this hell of an island. Your
little red ticket in hand and the actual ship in harbor that presently
should bear you home. Within sight of heaven--you understand. Able to
taste it. Able to count the days still left you like so many bars on a
red-hot gridiron still to be crossed. Three little weeks, Dumail!...
And then your sacred luck offered to trip you up and cheat you again....
Rigolo--what?"
"Very rigolo," I agreed, luring him. "But it seems to me you are
borrowing your effects from the martyrdom of the holy St. Laurent."
"Oh, I have a stranger impersonation than that in my repertoire," he
flashed. "Conceive, if you can, that I am also supposed to fill the role
of a seigneur--and a very noble gentlemen, too--in disguise!"
Perched there on the chair with a dirty towel about his neck, his hair
in a wisp, smeared like a clown and preaching his gentility, he made a
figure completely comic--should I say?--or tragic. Anyway I gave a
gesture of derision that stung him past endurance.
"Dumail--" he broke out. "You laugh? Dumail, will you believe this?
There is awaiting me back home at the present moment a heritage of
millions. Of millions, I swear to you! Not the treasure of an opium
dream, Dumail, but a place ready established among the great and the
fortunate. For me: Number Matricule 2232! Life in a gondola, do you see?
Luxury, leisure, rank. Beauty. Women. Happiness! Everything a poor lost
devil could crave!"
Well, you know, it was a bit too much for me.
"Comedian!" I applauded. "Ah-ah--comedian!"
A sort of fury took him. All else forgotten, he jerked loose the collar
of his jacket: made to spread it wide--checked himself and instead drew
out from his breast an object for my inspection.
I had view of a miniature: one of those cherubic heads on ivory that
relate to the model, perhaps, as a promise relates to a fact in this
naughty world. Nevertheless I could trace a sort of semblance to that
roguish front as it might have seemed in childhood--all ringlets and
innocence, cerulean eye and carmine cheek--the whole encircled by a
double row of pearls: Bibi-Ri himself.
"My title deed."
I was impressed. Impossible to deny a richness in this miniature. And
while the likeness was thin the pearls were indubitable. Still--
"Blagueur!" I murmured. "Where did you snaffle it?"
Gloomily he regarded me. "You are like the others. Always while I was
kicking about the gutters or the jail it was that way. No one would
listen. Another of Bibi-Ri's jokes! And I lacked any clew to this
trinket: my single poor inheritance.... But now--look! These queer signs
on the reverse. They have been deciphered. Oh, an unbelievable stroke of
chance! Of course I have much to learn. The name of the family. My own
true name itself. But at least I am in the way of proof and this time I
was going to win!... A famished man--a man famished since his birth,
Dumail--is set before a boundless feast. Does he joke about that?"
"Perhaps not," I admitted. "Go on."
"But I am showing you what Life means to me!"
"And M. de Nou--?" I reminded him.
He shuddered: his head dropped upon his breast.
"M. de Nou--is Death!"
Well, you know, this was all very thrilling for emotion, but as a
statement it left something to be desired.
"Answer me," I commanded. "Have you killed any one?"
"No!"
"Is there another sentence hanging over you? Have you some stain on your
prison record?"
"None."
"Whom have you wronged?"
"Nobody."
"Then sacred pig! It is only a folly of nerves after all! Just because
you expect to cash your millions and swim in champagne at last?... Bear
up under it, my boy. Stiffen your lip! Faith, you might be a missing
dauphin or even the Red Mark himself--as people say--and still you could
meet your luck with a little courage!"
Like a jack on wires Bibi-Ri sprang to his feet.
"True!" he laughed, shrill. "You are right, Dumail. You are the friend
in need!... Where is that blessed mop, to dry my face at least. So! I'm
off!... But to-night--what? I owe you something, Dumail: you and your
curiosity! To-night you shall come behind the scenes. If you dare.
Understood?" He wheeled at the step: his eyes held their old twinkling
deviltry. "I was a thief before I was ever a gentleman," he said, with
his weird grin, "and I can still play that farce to its end--get through
and done with it and pull out once for all!... You shall see for
yourself!"
Thereupon he left me to the haze of bewilderment in which I lived for
the rest of the day.
Now you can imagine without much telling that we have ways--we convicts
assigned here and there on service--to conduct our own underground
affairs in despite authority. Unnecessary to explain these little
evasions. Enough to say my client was as good as his word that evening.
Enough to say that under misty stars, while the military of the watch
were safely watching, Bibi-Ri crept out of town by forbidden paths: and
that I crept along with him.
Inland from Noumea for a wide district is all one checkerboard of
gardens and small estates where liberes and convict proprietors--the
aristocrats of our settlement--enjoy their snug retreat. Not being a
reformed bandit myself, skilled in agriculture and piety, I was strange
to this countryside. But Bibi-Ri had the key. I could only tag at his
heels through blind plantations and admire his silence and his speed.
Truly, as he said, he was taking me behind the scenes: until at last, in
a grove of flamboyants that wrapped the night with darker webbing, he
set hand to a door.
For all I knew it could have opened on the Pit itself: but a shaft of
light guided me stumbling into a stone-flagged kitchen, low and dim and
smoky in fact as some lesser inferno.
By the hearth a woman turned from tending the kettle to overlook us
steadily. She was alone, but my faith! she had no need to fear. Figure
to yourself this massive sibyl with a face planned on a mason's square,
deep-chiselled and brooding in the flush of firelight. She was like
that. Yes, a sibyl in her cave, to whom Bibi-Ri entered gingerly as a
cat.
"I am here, Mother Carron," he said.
Then for sure and for the first time I saw where we stood. Mother
Carron! In Noumea--through all the obscure complex of convict life--no
name bore more significance: or less, in the official sense. For she had
no number. Consider what that means to a community of jailbirds. The
finger of the law had never touched her. Consider how singular in a
country of keepers and felons!
She was a free colonist. Her husband, a distinguished housebreaker, had
been transported some years before. Whereupon she had had the
hardihood--sufficient if you like!--to immigrate, to claim a concession
and to have that same husband assigned her as a convict laborer.
Since then she had wielded a curious power. Her size, her tongue, her
knowledge of crime and criminals and her contempt of them all--these
made her formidable. But also it was whispered that queer things went on
at her plantation under the flamboyant trees: a famous rendezvous where
no prying agent ever found a shred of evidence--against her or any one
else. Successful escapes had been decided there, they said. And
disputes of convict factions that troubled no other court, and even
politics of the underworld at home, referred to certain great ones among
us. Our inner conclave of transportes--so dread and secret that to be
identified a member brings solitary confinement in the black cells--had
assembled there to seek her counsel. Had demurred to it and been routed
with her broom whisking about their ears, if rumor spoke true. For she
was a lady of weighty ways.
Me, I was glad to slip aside unchallenged. I had no desire to linger
between that dame and the purpose, whatever it might be, that dwelt in
the fixity of her frown. As a spectator I blotted myself in the shadows,
to attend the next act of this hidden and somber drama.
"Monsieur," she began, with an affectation wholly foreign to her rough
voice, "I have the felicity to inform you that our beloved Zelie is home
from Fonwhary again."
"I knew it," murmured Bibi-Ri.
"She resides at present under this poor roof."
He cast a nervous glance toward the stairway. "I knew that," he said.
"Ah? You know so much? After staying away so long?... We began to doubt
it."
She came to plant herself before him, and the effect of her politeness
was like a bludgeon.
"In that case be kind enough to sit, Monsieur Bibi-Ri. Dear little
Monsieur Bibi-Ri: we have missed you! Be seated. You bring your pockets
full of news, it seems."
But it seemed on the other hand, not so. I saw my companion brace
himself. Evidently this was his stage-play: the ordeal he had now to
meet.
"You must excuse me, Madame. I cannot remain and I have no news....
Except that I drop this business on the spot. Like a live coal,
Madame!"
His whimsy might have disarmed any other.
"I have done my best with Zelie. Sad! Somehow she fails to perceive any
longer my true charm.... You had sent me mysterious word, Madame, of
some danger to which you said she was drifting. Well--seeing her in the
public market to-day I sought to question her: at the least to give her
brotherly advice. Madame--she repulsed me. Like that! Would neither talk
nor listen. Said we were watched. Said it was not safe.
"Sapristi!... You can believe I was ready to quit then and there! But
presently I found a better reason--if I needed one, Madame. For casting
about, perplexed as I was, of a sudden I recognized--can you guess? Why
the man! The individual you expected to send me against, I imagine. From
whom I am supposed to guard her, perhaps! I saw him.
"After that: enough and many thanks!" he laughed, with a catch in his
throat. "No place for Bibi! Finished. Rien ne va plus!... For who am I
to chase any maid so unwilling? And at the same time who am I and what
should I be doing--in my present station, Madame--to cross the little
harmless fancies of such a personage?... It was M. de Nou!" he cried.
Still she made no move.
"And so--Bibi-Ri retires," he concluded, unsteadily, edging for his
exit. "I withdraw! You can find someone better fitted. My time is up. My
ship sails soon. I will not need to come again, I think. In parting--"
"What!" It was like the break of a banking storm. "What did you sing me
there? 'Not come again?' Forty devils! Do you know if you hadn't come
to-night in answer to my message I would have had you haled by the
leg?... Why you two sous' worth! You think to employ your sneaking
pickpocket tricks on me? To decamp with the prize I taught you to use:
and pay nothing for it?"
There was incredulity in her wrath: the measure pf her rude mastery.
"Before God! Where did you get the courage to try that?" she marvelled.
"As if I had not trouble enough already with the other stubborn brat
herself. And now you!... Have you altogether forgotten that I betrothed
you myself to my niece--my own dead sister's child--when she came
visiting from the church school at Fonwhary some weeks ago?"
"You said it was so," admitted Bibi-Ri, squirming.
"Good! Then you can wager it was so, my boy.... And at that time did you
or did you not strike a solemn bargain with me?"
He made no denial.
"You wept--sacred pipe! You called every saint to witness your
gratitude. Anything I wanted! Zelie? Of course. You would always be the
defense of that precious infant against the taint and the curse of
Noumea!"
He shrugged.
"You swore by your own hope of salvation to save her--to pluck this pure
flower from the dung-hill and marry her the very hour of your release.
Your bridal trip should carry her away to France.... Are these your
words?"
"I offered to," he retorted. "But Zelie refused even then--you know she
did! And so she has since."
"Fichtre! You and your offers! Tell me--from the day you discovered your
heritage have you ever been back to persuade her?"
He avoided that stern eye.
"There it is, you see!" She gave an eloquent gesture. "As for her--leave
her to me. She is only a stiff-necked little idiot who knows nothing.
You should have made up her mind for her. You! I picked you for that:
and you were willing enough before. But straightway: instead: what did
you do?... Why you began to swell up over notions of your coming
greatness! That is what happened to you. Shrimp! Can't I read your soul?
"Suddenly you found yourself to be a somebody! Ambition grew in you like
a mushroom. Not good enough--Zelie, of New Caledonia! She might handicap
you in your fine career. You beheld a glorious future that had no place
for her. But who opened that prospect? Cre tonnerre! Who sold it you?
Who deciphered the miniature? Who but I?
"And now at last, when the girl falls in deadly peril--as much through
pique as through mere blindness, be sure of it!--when I call you to
redeem your pledge and protect her: you quit! You 'withdraw'! You
decide to use your new airs and graces and pull your feet out of
the wet! Because you prefer the excuse of a coward to that of a
traitor--Monsieur--is that it?"
Her fist hit the table like a sledge.
"Faineant!... Unless you brand yourself as shamefully as any Red Mark
that ever lived.... Sit down!"
He had been sidling, bit by bit: he had taken himself almost to the
door-sill: but under that tone of thunder--under that sudden amazing and
cryptic jibe--he started, he faltered, he obeyed. She bulked above him
and it was about this time I began truly to be sorry for my harlequin
friend.
It was plain enough by this time, you understand, that I was witnessing
one of those obscure human tangles which ravel themselves in the depths
of a penal society. Possible nowhere else, I suppose. Yet its threads
were the passions and its center was the heart: and poor Bibi-Ri no
poorer hero than you or I or any of us might prove. At this point he
had fallen back to his defense: sullen, awed, but also intently curious
of her. How she expected to force him to her design I could not guess.
But breathlessly I watched while she wove about him and about.
Back by the hearth she stood meditative for a space in silence: a dim
presence in that room where the kettle hissed and gave off its
vapors--of brewing fates, perhaps.
"Give me a man if he be a bad one. A man who can stand to his game two
days on end--how do they put it: those savants?--'developing his
capabilities.' Ah! Not like these others. Waffles! Half-baked. Mixed
with small impulses good and evil. Let him be saint or devil, so he
develop that capability. Let me see him anyway stand to it!... As I have
seen a few:
"I remember many years ago at the prison of Mazas," she went on, as if
in casual retrospect, "they kept a certain famous captive. Myself, I was
never a resident there--no thanks!--I prefer the comforts of honesty.
But my one sister, now dead, she was beginning her own silly career
about then. She lacked the brains to steer it safe. So for a time she
inhabited that same institution. And one day as we went by the visitors'
room she pinched my arm to look.
"'There goes the wickedest man in France,' she said.
"Down the courtyard came a dozen of gendarmes parading a prisoner. That
was a devil--if you like! That was a type--for example. Tall and fierce
and unbeaten, with the eyes of a tiger. Once to see him was never to
forget him again.... While he was still newly-caught they had always to
guard him that way lest he slay some one with his manacled fists.
"He belonged to the very oldest stock of the South, it appeared: the old
high noblesse. And was he rich? And proud? You can believe it. But also
he was a great criminal such as walks the earth every while or so to
remind us after all how short a journey it is to hell. A true devil. My
sister knew him. She had been a servant in the household. She knew his
whole story--which soon was hushed, I can tell you: a scandal too black
to publish."
Her voice rose a rumbling note under the vault.
"Messieurs, never mind the rest of the tale at present. But inquire only
this: Did they slay him? Did they give him his deserts?... Oh, naturally
not--else where is the use of Noumea! We must suppose those savants were
glad of the specimen. 'The wickedest man'--do you see? And as for him:
he was strong. And cunning to seize his opportunities. And above all
true to his own devilment. So he won reprieve, Messieurs. They preserved
him. They shipped him out to this tropic forcing house of ours--to let
him keep on developing!... And he has. He does. My faith! With the
approval of the Administration. With all kinds of special privileges and
gratifications!"
She moved from the shadow again.
"Why do you tell me this?" demanded Bibi-Ri, hoarsely.
"For your instruction, Bibi-Ri," she returned, with her tone of
intolerable significance. "To show you how one man stood to it.
Admirable--eh?... A moment ago you spoke of his 'harmless fancies.'
Well: he gluts them. He gets what he wants. A fancy of pride? Behold him
in his black coat and his lofty office! A fancy for blood? From time to
time he stands to spill it publicly on the scaffold! A fancy for young
and innocent flesh--a solace to his old age?... Do you imagine he would
be balked of that? Or rather are you prepared to hear how--with official
permission and even the clerical benediction--how he manages to bedevil
and to win the particular young girl of his choice?"
In hammer blows she planted each phrase.
"How this same man has let no grass grow under his feet in his little
rivalry with yourself, Bibi-Ri!"
She spared him nothing.
"How, having desired your Zelie without 'ifs' or 'buts' he found means
to make his purpose good, Bibi-Ri!"
He could only gape at her.
"How he followed her to Fonwhary: how he followed her back: how he
missed no trick of persuading and persisting: how he finally forced her
consent like any true lover in this very house this morning!"
"It is not possible!" gasped Bibi-Ri.
"Eh? It is true of true!" she trumpeted. "Name of God--where do you
think you are? This is Noumea!... Let her pass for a fool--half-mad with
bitterness and chagrin though she be--and still you must admit it is not
every poor orphan who gets such a chance hereabouts. What? To occupy a
little manor outside the prison grounds. To enjoy the little benefits of
official standing. To wear the pretty trifles of jewelry, the rings and
keepsakes and lockets, that fall to the master's share every time he
strikes off a lucky head!... Dieu!... Can you picture to yourself the
home-coming at that menage after a day's honest labor? To be sure, she
might require him first to wash his hands for fear of spoiling her new
gown! But these stains of the trade--what do they matter? And so your
Zelie, your sweet pigeon, your simple Caledonienne who was all too
simple for you--whom you cast aside with 'brotherly advice'--she chooses
to embrace that ghoul, that hell-hound, that old satyr of all the
infamies.... To-morrow she weds with M. de Nou!"
In blind distress he stumbled to his feet and shied from her with hands
outspread to fend away the monstrous thing. But skillfully she headed
him around to the foot of the stairs and brought him face to face with
the actual vision descending there.
"Ask her yourself!"...
You have seen those figures in a window of old stained glass which leap
from the haze of color as if illumined of themselves. The girl who
waited just above us on the step bore that same transparent loveliness,
with all the fleshly promise of my glimpse of her in the market. She
wore a single belted garment of some white peasant's stuff, but nothing
could have suited better in the somber light of that place, smoke-blued
against smoky walls. In truth it might have seemed the subtlest coquetry
to clothe such beauty in the coarsest garb. For she herself was delicate
as a bud. Vital and lithe: with a close-set casque of jet hair, mouth
like a crushed mulberry against satin, mutinous eyes and chin: the wild,
slight, heavy-scented flower of these climes.
There she stood quite coolly: even languidly.
"Visitors?" she inquired, aware of us with impersonal gaze. "I wondered
if any would stop to-night. It would be kind of them to come and wish me
happiness."
Except that she spoke unsmiling and ignored Bibi-Ri, except for her
deathly pallor, she seemed without the least consciousness of a terrible
irony. And when my poor friend made some sound in his throat her pure
brow clouded a bit: she pouted.
"Have you been making yourself tiresome again with the visitors, Maman?
Now where is the good of that? I wish you would not start fretting with
everybody.... Yes, I shall be married. Yes, I shall be married
to-morrow. By special civil license and by the priest from La Foa.
There! It is all settled.... I hope you can find something more amusing
for our guests."
Incredible to see how quiet she was, how composed, how youthfully
unstrained. Only when her heavy lids swept over Bibi-Ri and their
glances crossed could you detect like electric charges the
unacknowledged tension behind.