"Bibi-Ri is amused: right enough. Sacred stove--yes!... Only he says the
affair is impossible."
For the first time Zelie regarded him fairly.
"I see no reason why any one should think so. Unless he forgets--as I
never do any more--that I am the daughter of convicts."
Ah, there was steel in that girl! What? The way she said it! Very
simply. Without rancor, you understand. Letting it bite of itself.
Without a quaver from that crisis of despair in which she must have
learned to say it. In a flash I knew how the gleaming, soft,
full-blooded slip of a creature had stood up against this tremendous
aunt of hers. And could stand. And would!... And Bibi-Ri: he knew too.
His babbling protest died cold on his lips.
"My convict father married my convict mother in this convict country,"
she went on, evenly. "I was born here. I must live and die here. I could
never look to marry outside--could I?... They would say I was
tainted.... For the rest--well, I have only to please myself, I
believe."
And mother Carron nodded like a grim showman.
"Eh? What do you think of that? A wise infant--eh? Could anything be
more just and reasonable?"
And it was so. She was right. It was perfectly just: perfectly
reasonable. There you had the stark and appalling fact. For this is
Noumea--as Mother Carron reminded us in good season. This is Noumea--the
Noah's Ark toy of penology. If you expect your convicts to pair off and
to breed like free folk, you must expect their children likewise to
couple as they can--or will: free folks themselves. And with whom? Where
do you draw the line? What kind of a social formula have you left for
the second generation, reared in an out-door jail? Our wise
philanthropists who devised the experiment: I wonder if they ever
thought so far ahead. They should have been interested in Zelie--the
perfect product.
Meanwhile there remained my companion--Bibi-Ri. Poor Bibi-Ri....
Whatever had passed between him and that unhappy deluded child I could
not know, you comprehend--in truth I never did know. But they must have
been very close at one time: those two: before his great ambition nipped
him. He was suffering. He writhed. Nevertheless I saw it was going to
make no difference with him.... Not now. Not this late along. I sensed
his effort. I heard him draw his breath sharp like a man who plucks the
barb from the wound.
"One moment, Madame!" He avoided Zelie. In abrupt and flurried speech he
addressed himself to Mother Carron. "A moment, Madame--I beg. This is
mere madness. And painful. And unnecessary.... There is still one easy
way out for her, you know--for Zelie, for me, for everybody. Still a
way."
She unbent to him all at once as to a prodigal son.
"Tiens!" she cried. "You have perceived it?"
"I have remembered. I intended not to tell you: to let it come of
itself. And truly--you drove it somewhat out of mind. But now--"
"At last!"
"If we can only get Zelie to listen--"
"Ha! Just look at her there!"
"It fits the need."
"She never had but one, my boy--to hear you speak out once like this: as
if you meant it." "And besides," he stammered, "it should cancel
any--any obligations you might still hold against me, myself."
"Parbleu! I should hope so!"
He labored on, with a kind of desperate snuffle.
"At the end, Madame, we can always turn for aid to the Church--the
patient friend of us all.... This afternoon--uneasy about Zelie, I
confess, and thinking a decisive step would be best for every one--this
very afternoon I took myself to St. Gregory's and there I saw--"
"Bibi-Ri: in a moment I shall kiss you!"
"For God's sake let me speak, Madame!... I saw the Directress of the
Order of St. Joseph of Cluny. She heard me readily. You know--these good
nuns--how they rescue any they can of the children of Noumea.... Well: I
arranged it.... To-night a travelling sister will visit you here. By
great luck she is returning home very soon. If the dispositions are
favorable she has promised to take Zelie at once, to guard her and to
see her safe--passage free--to France, where refuge and the consolations
of religion, Madame, await her!"
In the silence that dropped you should have seen Mother Carron.
"Refuge!" she began, empurpled. "What is the fellow talking about?
Conso--.... Look here. Do you mean a convent?"
"Of course, Madame."
"A convent! In truth? Is this all you have to offer?"
"Yes, Madame."
She flung up her arms.
"Faith of God! You dare to make me ridicule like that? Animal low of
ceiling!... But no, I tell you, but no! It is too much. My turn now.
Listen to me, both. Listen to my plan!... To-day I also went to St.
Gregory's: do you hear? I also sought the aid of Holy Church, which
never refuses in the cause of morality--Heaven be praised!--to perform a
convict marriage where it can. I also obtained help. That good Father
Anselm: he also promised. He also is coming here to-night!... And word
of honor, I hope to be turned into a pepper-mill if I don't have him
marry the two of you on the spot."
One and the other, she challenged them.
"You think not; you wilful imp?" she roared. "I tell you it shall be
so!... And you, Bibi-Ri--you grin in that sickly fashion? Wait, my gar:
I'm not done with you yet! Thousand thunders!--in another minute you
will be crawling at the crook of my finger.... Attend!"
And looming on us there, gigantic in the firelight like some ancient
fury, she launched her climax.
"You recall that tale I started for your benefit? Well: there is more of
it. I told you my sister knew all the story of 'the wickedest man'?
Well: there was one thing she did not know and would have given much to
hook up--like many another blackmailer, then and since.... Note!... From
the murderous purpose with which that fiend pursued all in his
power--wife, family, associates--it appears he spared a single victim.
The creature, indeed, in whom he centered his whole affection--to call
it so--his hateful pride, at least. A single one he set aside. But only
to be the instrument of a last defiance.
"Brought to exposure, his course run out: what do you suppose he did?
Why he took measures to conceal that remaining heir of his house beyond
recovery.... He put away that son. He lost him! Completely. In space: in
the world: in the crowd and the gutter. Where none should ever find him
again--as none ever did, for all the rewards and all the police.
"Such cleverness--eh? Such logic. For observe.... They dared pass no
death sentence while there appeared any chance of extracting his secret.
A vast estate was waiting on the person of that child--one of the finest
fortunes in France: the heritage of a golden line. He kept it waiting.
At a stroke he saved himself before the judges: he hid away the only
treasure he loved: he prolonged his own evil destiny through this
unknown seed of his planted somewhere in the mud!"
Her regard flamed on Bibi-Ri.
"Unknown--my little dears. Unknown ever since!... Though it is said
Heaven itself had set its seal on that race for a warning and a symbol:
though the child himself was marked from birth: was marked about the
neck--so the legend goes--with a thin red line like the print of a noose
or the trace of strangling fingers!"
Bibi-Ri had propped himself by the table, one hand clutching the close
collar of his jacket.
"How--how could you guess...!"
"Ah-ah! Now will you try to throw us over? Not so easily--eh? Now don't
you think you still have need of us? Until the depositions are made, at
least?... Sac a papier! The very instant you showed me that old
miniature and the initial it bears--I knew you, my boy! I could have
read you your whole fortune then: only I saved the best of it for a
wedding present! And for sure, I never expected you to try a bolt. A
droll of an idea--that! To run away from your chief witness?... Why,
stupid one!" She broke off to drop him a little mocking curtsey.
"Monsieur the Duke!... It was my own sister had had the honor to be Your
Grace's nurse!"
He was trembling. "Tell me the name of that family!"
"But certainly, my lad.... After you are married!" "Don't torture me!
Tell me the name of that man!"
"But certainly, my love.... It is M. de Nou!"
Strange how like a sinister refrain that title--that word--ran and
recurred throughout the affair. But this time it had an impact as never
before. Credit me! This time it came home to Bibi-Ri: and my little
joker absolutely reeled under it.
"Eh?" cried Mother Carron. "Eh? How is your sacred ambition now? Is
there any manhood to you? And what are you going to do about it?"
What indeed! She had reduced him to a rag. For this she had played upon
a febrile nature, you understand: had battered it, dazzled it, wrung it
of emotions: confirming his wildest beliefs: destroying his dearest
illusions: tossing his hopes to the stars and smirching them in the mire
with the same sweep:--that he might have no other will at the end....
And therein appeared the triumph of her masterful certitude. For
presently raising his miserable and hunted eyes he looked at her: he
looked for me in the shadow: he did not look at Zelie again--but he
looked toward the door....
How easy it might have seemed, after all! Actually in his pocket he
carried his release ticket, ready dated. His ship lay in harbor. His
sentence expired some few days off. A step would take him into the
night. He had simply to keep safe within police limits until the hour of
sailing and march himself freely on board. And then ... he had won! You
see? By his theory the world would open before him the most radiant of
welcomes. By his faith he would have his life-long arrears to collect:
his gorgeous dreams to realize. One must have been a felon--one must
have eaten his heart in prison cells--and even in this widest and
farthest of prison cells with its wall of painted horizons none the
less alien and inexorable--to feel what those dreams meant to him.
Now again, as before, he had only to get himself off stage: he needed
only the boldness to break once for all with the thief's part--as he
himself had said: the selfishness to stand to his game--as Mother Carron
put it!
And in truth what was hindering him? No actual compulsion: none he need
fear. Only impalpable things. Shame. Uncertainty, timidity, regret. The
pressures of personality. The qualms of a poor juggler with life:
fearful of missing--fearful of not seizing it featly.... Cobwebs all!
What he would have done about it the good God can tell. I have asked
myself often enough. But he hesitated a bit too long: that little fool
of fortune with his face of a rubber puppet squeezed by fate. Next
moment the cue had been taken from him, for across the pause ran a thin,
keen whistle. Mother Carron spun around. And as if dispatched on that
breath--through the key-hole, perhaps--there blew in suddenly among us
from the back of the house somewhere a tiny, gray-faced, white-haired
wraith of a man.
"Well--idiot?... What's up now?"
From her greeting, as from the blurred effacement of the apparition
himself, one divined without trouble the person of that former
redoubtable housebreaker: Carron. In a voice scarcely above the singing
of the kettle he made his announcement.
"There are two coming by the road."
"Hey?" she bawled. "What two?"
"A priest and another."
Mother Carron smiled the only smile to pass upon her wintry front that
night: she spread her hands before us.
"Enfin! What did I tell you? And in great good time, my word!... You
hear that--you others?... Go and welcome Father Anselm, fool! And fetch
out the wine, if you are able to stir your pins!"
The shadow sighed.
"It is not Father Anselm."
"Not Father Anselm?... Imbecile! Of course it is!"
"It is not Father Anselm."
"Who then--vaurien?"
"It is the fat priest from La Foa."
Impossible to doubt his steadfast whispering.
"La Foa!" she echoed, stricken. "You say? Not truly!... La Foa?"
"I saw him."
"And another? What other?"
"We think he is Bombiste."
I can swear that wretched individual never in his black past had handled
a bomb with half the effect his mere nickname produced among us there.
"Bombiste! The executioner's assistant?... From Ile de Nou?... Here?"
"They are at the gate."
"Thunder of God!... And above all, at this time!" She caught his arm.
"Delay that priest! Any way and anyhow: hold him!... Confess to him, if
nothing else will do--Heaven knows you need it!... And let the other
through at once. Be quick!"
She banished him like a puff of smoke and we waited in drawn
suspense--we four--our eyes on the archway through which this visitant
must now appear.
"What can he want?" demanded Mother Carron. "That blood-stained basket
robber!"
And Zelie answered her very quietly.
"I suppose he brings me my message from M. de Nou."
You will remember in all my term at Noumea I had seen but once before
this ignoble under-servant of the guillotine. I could have preferred
never to see him again. He did not improve on closer view.
He was one of those creatures somehow resembling insects: like the
ciliate and noxious things that run about when you lift a damp rock. You
know?... Very black. Very hairy, with hair overlaid in fringes curiously
soft and glistening. With eyes very small, round and quick as beads. In
person he was misshapen: bandy-legged: but with all that a powerful
ruffian, whose long, crooked arms might have ended in nippers like a
scorpion's.
There you have the fellow Bombiste, who presently slid in at the doorway
and stood blinking through the light.
We regarded this type: and he us. Did I tell you he called himself a
Pole? I cannot say. But certainly his speech was hardly to be
comprehended. He spat something that could have passed equally for a
greeting or a curse. And so far he had the advantage of us: for any
reply of ours would have been only the half of that.
To do her justice Mother Carron kept a bold front to him. But she was
handling here a very different sort of brute--not to be reached by that
singular influence she exerted on the convict community at large:
himself an outcast among convicts: sharing the isolation of his detested
master on Ile de Nou. When she demanded to know his affair--
"Official!" he snarled back, with his slit grin.
Indeed it must have been a rare errand for him: a rare jest. He affected
in his manner a gratified swagger of contempt: natural enough for a man
with whom the vilest felon would never willingly speak, you understand:
natural enough for one whose only dealing with his fellows was to valet
their shorn bodies on the scaffold and to gather their last poor trifles
of property for the executioner's wage--"robbing the basket," as we
say.
"What are you after?" persisted Mother Carron.
"Not you, old woman!" he retorted. "Not any of you," he added with
brutal assurance as his glance shifted past Bibi-Ri and myself. "But I
come to see ... Mam'zelle here. And Mam'zelle alone!"
Well, we had had warning, to be sure. From this welter of evil portents
some actual horror was due. And my faith, he wasted little time about
it! He passed us over as if we had been less than nothing. He removed
his ragged straw hat to twirl on his finger. He scraped low before the
calm-faced girl who still waited impassive on the stairs. And then and
there he delivered himself of the message he had been taught. All at
once. Even glibly. With a kind of damnable sputtering eloquence.
"Mam'zelle Zelie--at your service--I bring you this word from my master:
best respects and affections. He bids me say the civil ceremony will be
for to-morrow, as planned. But he mistrusts your clever aunt--who might
indeed try tricks to interfere. And so ... you see ... to-night:
straightway: will be the wedding, Mam'zelle!
"The priest is here. In me behold one happy witness! For the other--" He
grinned. "Perhaps Madame Carron will do." He thrust a thumb at Bibi-Ri.
"Or that young buck yonder. The master himself only delays his
impatience a few moments formally to arrive when all is ready. Safely
escorted, you can believe, in this place of so bad a reputation--from
which, moreover, he promises to remove you at once."
To see the rascal strut, and what airs he took!
"Meantime, Mam'zelle--in attending--please will you put on your best
frock and prepare yourself," he concluded. "And as your wedding gift ...
the master has pleasure to send you herewith the precious chains and
jewels in this box and asks you to wear them for his sake!"
Throughout this stupefying recital none of the rest of us stirred, you
will conceive. And when he had done we could still only stare. A
picture, if you like! Zelie, the unfortunate child: and there,
distorting himself in gallant gesture, offering tribute, that foul
ambassador! The glow of fallen embers in the fire smudged him with
infernal fantasy--it lent her the softest flush, making her young beauty
to quicken and to kindle. As if a guilty angel should stoop from the
lower step of heaven to take a bribe of hell. For she assented: make no
mistake.... She was going to assent. He tendered her a small black box
of leather: she had a hand outstretched to it--when a word dropped sheer
and arresting in the silence as a pebble in a well.
It was not Mother Carron who spoke: our crafty hostess was far too
burdened just then under the collapse of all her craftiness. Decidedly
it was not me. Remained only Bibi-Ri. And in truth, he it was: though
the fact appeared as one of those momentary incredibilities of
intercourse.
"Zelie!"
Now I cannot pretend to know, what lay in the mind of that young girl.
Who could plumb such a depth? She had kept herself inscrutable. How she
actually felt toward Bibi-Ri I had no guess. She had seen him pared like
a carrot--humiliated as few could be--his little human folly and
weakness exposed, his grand hopes and aspirations made sordid and slimy.
Even his one effort, his scheme of shuffling her away into a convent
which must have seemed the sorriest cowardice, had surprised no motion
from her. But how she regarded him now was plain. In the slow lift of
her head, the heavy glitter of her eyes--plain to read.
"Zelie," he said. "You can't go on with it."
"No?" she inquired.... "No?"
Some way or other he had taken up position between the door and the
stairs.... Oh, not with any sort of flash heroism--understand me. I am
not giving you a feuilleton of melodrama. But there he put himself and
there he stayed.
Of course that brute Bombiste had bristled at the first interruption.
With a sign Zelie checked him short.... She was ready for Bibi-Ri. She
had been waiting for Bibi-Ri. One knew it. One knew this to be their
real meeting, and finally one knew who was and who had been his real
opponent. Here the issue was joined. Between the dream and the girl--as
you might say--here stood the Red Mark.
"You can't go on with it," he repeated in a voice, after all emotions,
that had become almost matter of fact. "It is unthinkable. You will not
touch those presents."
"I wonder if I won't," she answered.
"They were stolen from dead men--"
"Not so wicked as stealing heart and faith," she said.
"For this crime: worse than murder--"
"Not so bad as killing a soul given into your hand," she said.
"By a man the lowest of assassins!"
"Not so low," she said, "but that you claim his name, his blood and his
fortune for your own!"
Ah, they were striking at each other's naked breasts, those two. With
naked weapons. And neither of them shirked it. Not the girl, who sent
back as good as she got--not Bibi-Ri, who took even that last terrible
thrust.
"Such things do not happen." You would have thought he was putting a
form of statement. "All else aside--" he said, "all else aside, this
does not happen."
"What can you do or say to prevent?" she asked, leading him by so much.
"Anything you want of me."
"I want nothing: it would only be false."
"Anything you want me to say."
"I want to hear nothing: it would only be lies."
"Zelie," he offered, "will you marry me?"
That must have been the test, you know. In the covert, unproclaimed
struggle which had brought them both to this pass, that must have been
the gauge. Whatever thrill of satisfied passionate resentment she could
have wished must have been hers there and then.
"Will you wed with me, Zelie?"
An exultant throb escaped her.
"Too late!" she said.
But he was beyond flinching.
"Let me be sure," he begged. "I was wrong, Zelie. I was blind and mad
and heartless. I say so. But I give it up--I give up all that foolish
gilded fancy of mine, for I see what true treasure it cost me.... Or
look--petite--I give it up to you and we go seek the future together.
Heaven knows if it could ever be any worth to us after--after to-night.
But it's all I have. Zelie ... take it for my wedding gift!"
She looked him up and she looked him down, long and steadily.
"Comedian!" she said....
Well--it was rather hard. What? To twit that poor player at life with
his poor playing. At his last and best not to believe him. At his
supreme attempt to throw in his teeth that supreme mockery. Rather hard.
In effect!
It left him dumb--and again across the pause, from somewhere outside,
cut a shrill, thin whistle. Again came floating in among us, from
nowhere at all, the spectral guardian of the gates: Carron. Again from a
voice like a piping wind at a key-hole, we heard the news.
"Father Anselm has arrived. He is in the basse-cour, with the other
priest. Also two sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, who came with him."
"Father Anselm!" echoed Mother Carron, dully, in a sort of groan. "So
much for my plan.... And the sisters?... So much for Bibi's! We're all
finely cooked, the lot of us!" But even in disaster she could keep the
uses of habit. "Sacred pig, you take your own time!" she scolded. "Was
that your signal?"
"Not for them," sighed Carron. "We gave no signal for them, seeing who
they were. But a carriole is climbing by the road--"
In fact through the heavy tropic night and the open doorway there
reached our ears as we hearkened a grind of wheels, the muffled jolting
of a cart.
"Two militaires on the driver's seat," continued Carron, unhurried,
unvarying. "And inside--another man: a man in a black coat. The runner
who brought word is not quite sure, but he thinks--"
"Eh?"
"It is M. de Nou!"
So once more, to clinch the tragedy, there befell that phrase so often
repeated: and this time like the summons of fate, this time invoking the
very presence of the monster himself, soon to descend upon us. Bombiste
gave an obscene chuckle. He had been wriggling and scowling these last
few tense moments in a furious temper at the neglect of himself and his
black box. But I think no one else in the room drew breath until Mother
Carron, with a remnant of vigor, summed the whole desperate business and
spread it in a sweep to Bibi-Ri and cried, as she had cried before--
"What are you going to do about it now?"
Bibi-Ri fell back three paces to the archway. He drew the door shut. He
swung into place the bar. Then he walked over toward the foot of the
stairs.
It had been my share, if you have followed me, to see many curious
changes wrought upon my luckless friend during some few hours. It was my
fortune at the end to see him himself. Simply. The proper spirit of a
man rising to a situation no longer tolerable. Figure to yourself this
eager little chap: high-keyed, timid, fervid: something of a buffoon,
always a victim of his perceptions. Do you remember that cry of his when
he spoke of his coming release? "Able to taste it," he had said. What do
you suppose he must have been tasting at this crisis? Such a perceptive,
whimsical poor devil!... But yet capable of an ultimate gesture as far
above bitterness as above rage or despair.
"Why," he said, with his wry smile that I knew so well and from all his
little height, "why--since I can't play any other it seems, I have one
part left in my repertoire.... I can still play the gentleman!"
Deliberately, giving no other warning, he struck from the hand of
Bombiste the black leather box--dashed it far away into the fireplace.
With an inhuman scream the Pole jumped for his throat. They locked. And
the rest was convulsion.