CLYTAEMNESTRA.
She had barely disappeared when the boy, listening eagerly, heard
the great door below flung open, and instinctively sank down again.
A breath of cold air rose from below. A harsh voice--a voice he
knew--cursed someone or something in the hall, a heavy step came
stumbling up the stairs, and in a moment M. de Vidoche, followed by a
sleepy servant, pushed his way through the curtains. He was flushed
with drink, yet he was not drunk, for as he crossed the floor he shot
a swift sidelong glance at his wife's door--a glance of dark meaning;
and, though he railed savagely at the servant for letting the fire go
out, he had the air of listening while he spoke, and swore, to show
himself at ease.
The man muttered some excuse, and, kneeling, began to blow the embers,
while Vidoche looked on moodily. He had not taken off his hat and
cloak. "Has madame been out this evening?" he said suddenly.
"No, my lord."
"Her woman is lying with her?"
"Yes, my lord."
A moment's silence. Then, "Trim the lamp, curse you! Don't you see it
is going out? Do you want to leave me in the dark? _Sacre!_ This might
be a pigsty from the way it is kept!"
The man was used to be kicked and abused, but it seemed to him that
his master's caprices were taking a fresh direction. It was not his
business to think, however. He trimmed the lamp and took the cloak and
hat, and was going, when Vidoche called him back again. "Put on a
log," he said, "and give me that drink. _Nom du diable_, it is cold!
You lazy hound, you have been sleeping!"
The man vowed he had not, and M. de Vidoche listened to his
protestations as if he heard them. In reality his thoughts were busy
with other things. Would it be tonight, or to-morrow, or the next day?
he was wondering darkly. And how would it--take her? Would he be
there, or would they come and tell him? Would she sicken and fade
slowly, and die of some common illness to all appearance, with the
priest by her side? Or would he awake in the night to hear her
screaming, and be summoned to see her writhing in torture, gasping,
choking, praying them to save--to save her from this horrible pain?
God! The perspiration broke out on his brow. He shivered. "Give me
that!" he muttered hoarsely, holding out a shaking hand. "Give it me,
I say!"
The man was warming the posset, but he rose hastily and handed it.
"Put lights in my room! And, hark you--you will sleep there to-night.
I am not well. Go and get your straw, and be quick about it."
Vidoche listened with the cup in his hand while the man went down and
fetched a taper and some coverings from the hall, and, coming up
again, opened one of the doors on the right--not the one against which
the boy lay. The servant went into the room and busied himself there
for a time, while the master sat crouching over the fire, thinking,
with a gloomy face. He tried to turn his thoughts to the Farincourt,
and to what would happen afterwards, and to a dozen things with which
his mind had been only too ready to occupy itself of late. But now
his thoughts would not be ordered. They returned again and again to
the door on his left. He caught himself listening, waiting, glancing
at it askance. And this might go on for days. _Dieu!_ the house would
be a hell! He would go away. He would make some excuse to leave
until--until after Christmas.
He shivered, cursed himself under his breath for a fool, and drank
half the mulled wine at a draught. As he took the cup from his lips,
his ear caught a slight sound behind him, and, starting, he peered
hastily over his shoulder. But the noise came apparently from the next
room, where the servant was moving about; and, with another oath,
Vidoche drained the cup and set it down on the table.
He had scarcely done so when he drew himself suddenly upright and
remained in that position for a moment, his mouth half open, his eyes
glaring. A kind of spasm seized him. His teeth shut with a click. He
staggered and clutched at the table. His face grew red--purple. His
brain seemed to be bursting; his eyes filled with blood. He tried to
cry, to give the alarm, to get breath, but his throat was held in an
iron vice. He was choking and reeling on his feet, when the man came
by chance out of the bedroom.
By a tremendous effort Vidoche spoke. "Who--made--this?" he muttered,
in a hissing voice.
The servant started, scared by his appearance. He answered,
nevertheless, that he had mixed it himself.
"Look at--the bottom of--the cup!" Vidoche replied in a terrible
voice. He was swaying to and fro, and kept himself up only by his grip
on the table. "Is there--anything there?"
The servant was terribly frightened, but he had the sense to obey. He
took up the cup and looked in it. "Is there--a powder--in it?" Vidoche
asked, a frightful spasm distorting his features.
"There is--something," the man answered, his teeth chattering. "But
let me fetch help, my lord. You are not well. You are----"
"A dead man!" the baffled murderer cried, his voice rising in a scream
of indescribable despair and horror. "A dead man! I am poisoned! My
wife!" He reeled with that word. He lost his hold of the table. "Ha,
_mon Dieu!_ Mercy! Mercy!" he cried.
In a moment he was down, writhing on the floor, and uttering shriek on
shriek: cries so dreadful that on the instant doors flew open and
sleepers awoke, and in a twinkling the room--though the lamp lay
quenched, overturned in his struggles--was full of lights and
frightened faces and huddled forms, and women who stopped their ears
and wept. The doorways framed more faces, the staircase rang with
sounds of alarm. Everywhere was turmoil and a madness of hurrying
feet. One ran for the doctor, another for the priest, a third for the
watch. The house seemed on a sudden alive; nay, the very courtyard,
where the porter was gone from his post, and the doors stood open, was
full of staring strangers, who gaped at the windows and the hurrying
lights, and asked whose was the hotel, or answered it was M. de
Vidoche's.
[Illustration: "IN A MOMENT HE WAS DOWN, WRITHING ON THE FLOOR" (_p_.
133).]
It had been. But already the man who had gone up the stairs so full of
strength and evil purpose lay dying, speechless, all but dead. They
had lifted him on to a pallet which someone drew from a neighbouring
room, and at first there had been no lack of helpers or ready hands.
One untied his cravat, and another his doublet, and two or three of
the coolest held him in his paroxysms. But then the magic word
"Poison!" was whispered; and one by one, all, even the man who had
been with him, even madame's woman, drew off, and left those two
alone. The livid body lay on the pallet, and madame, stunned and
horror-stricken, hung over it; but the servants stood away in a dense
circle, and looking on with gloom and fear in their faces, some
mechanically holding lights, some still grasping the bowls and basins
they were afraid to use, whispered that word again and again.
It seemed as if the tell-tale syllables passed the walls; for the
first to arrive, before doctor or priest, was the captain of the
watch. He came upstairs, his sword clanking, and, thrusting the
curtains aside, stood looking at the strange scene, which the many
lights, irregularly held and distributed, lit up as if it had been a
pageant on the stage. "Who is it?" he muttered, touching the nearest
servant on the arm.
"M. de Vidoche," the man answered.
"Is he dead?"
The man cringed before him. "Dead, or as good," he whispered. "Yes,
sir."
"Then he is not dead?"
"I do not know, sir."
"Then why the devil are you all standing like mutes at a funeral?" the
soldier answered, with an oath. "Leaving madame alone, too. Poison,
eh? Oh!" and he whistled softly. "So that is why you are all looking
on as if the man had got the plague, is it? A pretty set of curs you
are! But here is the doctor. Out of the way now," he added
contemptuously, "and let no one leave the room."
He went forward with the physician, and, while the latter knelt and
made his examination, the captain muttered a few words of comfort in
madame's ear. For all she heard or heeded, however, he might have
spared his pains. She had been summoned so abruptly, and the call had
so entirely snapped the thread of her thoughts, that she had not yet
connected her husband's illness with any act of hers. She had
absolutely forgotten the enterprise of the evening, its anticipations
and hopes. For the time she was spared that horror. But this illness
alone sufficed to overwhelm her, to sink her beyond the reach of
present comfort. She no longer remembered her husband's coldness, but
only the early days when he had come to her in her country home, a
black-bearded, bold-eyed Apollo, and wooed her impetuously and with
irresistible will. All his faults, all his unkindnesses, were
forgotten now: only his beauty, his vigour, his great passion, his
courage were remembered. A dreadful pain seized her heart when she
recognised that his had ceased to beat. She peered white-faced into
the physician's eyes, she hung on his lips. If she remembered her
journey to the Rue Touchet at all, it was only to think how futile her
hopes were now. He, whom she would have won back to her, was gone from
her for ever!
The doctor shook his head gravely as he rose. He had tried to bleed
the patient, without waiting, in this emergency, for a barber to be
summoned; but the blood would not flow. "It is useless," he said. "You
must have courage, madame. More courage than is commonly required," he
continued, in a tone of solemnity, almost of severity. He looked round
and met the captain's eyes. He made him a slight sign.
"He is dead?" she muttered.
"He is dead," the physician answered slowly. "More, madame--my task
goes farther. It is my duty to say that he has been poisoned."
"Dead!" she muttered, with a dry sob. "Dead!"
"Poisoned, I said, madame," the physician answered almost harshly. "In
an older man the symptoms might be taken for those of apoplexy. But in
this case not so. M. de Vidoche has been poisoned."
"You are clear on the point?" the captain of the watch said. He was a
grey-haired, elderly man, lately transferred from the field to the
slums of Paris, and his kindly nature had not been wholly obliterated
by contact with villainy.
"Perfectly," the doctor answered. "More, the poison must have been
administered within the hour."
Madame rose shivering from the dead man's side. This new terror, so
much worse than that of death, seemed to thrust her from him, to raise
a barrier between them. The soft white robe she had thrown round her
when she ran from her bed was not whiter than her cheeks; the lights
were not brighter than her eyes, distended with horror. "Poisoned!"
she muttered. "Impossible! Who would poison him?"
"That is the question, madame," the captain of the watch answered, not
without pity--not without admiration. "And if, as we are told, the
poison must have been given within the hour, it should not be
difficult to answer it. Let no one leave the room," he continued,
pulling his moustachios. "Where is the valet who waited on M. de
Vidoche?"
The man stood forward from the rest, shaking with alarm, and told
briefly all he knew; how he had left his master in his usual health,
and found him in some kind of seizure; how Vidoche had bidden him look
in the cup, and how he had found a sediment in it which should not
have been there.
"You mixed this wine yourself?" the captain of the watch said sharply.
The man allowed he had, whimpering and excusing himself.
"Very well. Let me see madame's woman," was the answer. "Which is she?
She is here, I suppose. Let her stand out."
A dozen hands were ready to point her out, a dozen lights were held up
that the Chevalier du Guet might see her the better. She was pushed,
nudged, impelled forward, until she stood trembling where the man had
stood. But not for long. The captain's first question was still on his
lips when, with a sudden gesture of despair, the woman threw herself
on her knees before him, and, grovelling in a state of abject terror,
cried out that she would tell all--all! All if they would let her go!
All if they would not torture her!
The captain's face grew stern, the lines about his mouth hardened.
"Speak!" he said curtly, and with a swift side-glance at the mistress,
who stood as if turned to stone. "Speak, but the truth only, woman!"
while a murmur of astonishment and fear ran round the circle.
It should be mentioned that at this time the crime of secret poisoning
was held in especial abhorrence in France, the poisoning of husbands
by wives more particularly. It was believed to be common; it was
suspected in many cases where it could not be proved. Men felt
themselves at the mercy of women who, sharing their bed and board,
had often the motive and always the opportunity; and in proportion as
the crime was easy of commission and difficult to detect was the
rigour with which it was rewarded when detected. The high rank of
the Princess of Conde--a Tremouille by birth and a Bourbon by
marriage--did not avail to save her from torture when suspected of
this; while the sudden death of a man of position was often sufficient
to expose his servants, and particularly his wife's confidante, to the
horrors of the question. Madame's woman knew all this. Such things
formed the gossip of her class, and in a paroxysm of fear, in terror,
in dread lest the moment should pass and another forestall her, she
flung both fidelity and prudence to the winds.
"I will! I will! All!" she cried. "And I swear it is true! She went
to a house in the Tournelles quarter to-night!"
"She? Who is she, woman?" the captain asked sharply.
"My lady there! She stayed an hour. I waited outside. As we came back
a boy ran after us, and talked with her by the porch of St. Gervais.
She sent me away, and I do not know what was his business. But after
we got home, and when she thought me asleep, she crept out of the room
and came here, and put something in that cup. I heard her go, and
stole to the door, and through the curtains saw her do it, but I did
not know what it was, or what she intended. I have told the truth. But
I did not know, I did not! I swear I did not!"
The captain silenced her protestations with a fierce gesture, and
turned from her to the woman she accused. "Madame," he said, in a low,
unsteady voice, "is this true?"
She stood with both her hands on her breast, and looked, with a face
of stone, not at him, but beyond him. She scarcely seemed to breathe,
so perfect was the dreadful stillness which held her. He thought she
did not hear: and he was about to repeat his question when she moved
her lips in a strange, mechanical fashion, and, after an effort,
spoke. "Is it true?" she whispered--in that stricken silence every
syllable was audible, and even at her first word some women fell to
shuddering--"is it true that I have killed my husband? Yes, I have
killed him. I loved him, and I have killed him. I loved him--I had no
one else to love--and I have killed him. God has let this be in this
world. You are real, and I am real. It is no dream. He has let it be."
"_Mon Dieu!_" the captain muttered, while one woman broke into noisy
weeping. "She is mad!"
But madame was not mad, or only mad for the moment. "It is strange,"
she continued, with writhing lips, but in the same even tone--which to
those who had ears to hear was worse than any loud outcry--"that such
a thing should be. God should not let it be, because I loved him. I
loved him, and I have killed him. I--but perhaps I shall awake
presently and find it a dream. Or perhaps he is not dead. Is he? Ha!
is he, man? Tell me!"
With the last words, which leapt from her lips in sudden frantic
questioning, she awoke as from a trance. She sprang towards the
doctor; then, turning swiftly, looked where the corpse lay, and with a
dreadful peal of laughter threw herself upon it. Her shrill cries so
filled the air, so rang through the empty hall below, so pierced the
brain, that the captain raised his hands to his ears, and the men
shrank back, looking at the women.
"See to her!" said the captain, stamping his foot in a rage and
addressing the physician. "I must take her away, but I cannot take her
like this. See to her, man. Give her something; drug her, poison her,
if you like--anything to stop her! Her cries will ring in my ears a
twelvemonth hence. Well, woman, what is it?" he continued impatiently.
Madame's woman had touched his arm.
"The boy!" she muttered. "The boy!" Her teeth were chattering with
terror. She pointed to the place where the servants stood most thickly
near the great curtains which shut off the staircase.
He followed the direction of her hand, but saw nothing except scared
faces and cringing figures. "What boy, woman?" he retorted. "What do
you mean?"
"The boy who came after us to the church," she answered. "I saw him a
minute ago--there! He was standing behind that man, looking under his
arm."
Three strides brought the captain of the watch to the place indicated.
But there was no boy there--there was no boy to be seen. Moreover, the
frightened servants who stood in that part declared that they had seen
no boy--that no boy could have been there. The captain, believing that
they had had eyes only for Madame de Vidoche, put small faith in their
protestations; but the fact remained that the boy was gone, and the
searcher returned baffled and perplexed: more than half inclined to
think that this might be a ruse on the woman's part, yet at a loss to
see what good it could do her. He asked her roughly how old the boy
was.
"About twelve," she answered, looking nervously over her shoulder. In
truth, she began to fancy that the boy was a familiar. Or what could
bring him here? How had he entered? And whither had he vanished?
"How was he dressed?" the captain asked angrily, waving back the
servants, who would have pressed on him in their curiosity.
"In black velvet," she answered. "But he had no cap. He was
bareheaded. And I noticed that he had black hair and blue eyes."
"Are you sure that the boy you saw here was the boy who followed you
and spoke to madame in the street?" he urged. "Be careful, woman!"
"I am certain of it," she answered feverishly. "I knew him in a
moment."
"Are you sure that madame did not bring him in with you?"
She vowed positively that she had not, and equally positively that the
boy could not have followed them in without being seen. In this we
know that she was mistaken; but she believed it, and her belief
communicated itself to her questioner.
He rubbed his head with his hand in extreme perplexity. If the boy
were a messenger from the villain whom this wretched woman had been to
visit, what could have brought him to the house? Why had he risked
himself on the scene of the murder? Unless--unless, indeed, his
mission were to learn what happened, and to warn his master!
The captain caught that in a moment, and, thrusting the servants on
one side, despatched three or four men on the instant to the Rue
Touchet, "_Pardieu!_" he exclaimed, wiping his forehead when they were
gone, "I was nearly forgetting him. The villain! I will be sworn he
tempted her! But now I think I have netted all--madame, the maid, the
man, the devil!" He ticked them off on his fingers. "There is only the
lad wanting. The odds are they will get him, too, in the Rue Touchet.
So far, so good. But it is hateful work," the old soldier continued,
with an oath, looking askance at the group which surrounded madame and
the doctor. "They will--ugh! it is horrible. It would be a mercy to
give her a dose now, and end all."
But there was no one to take the responsibility, and so the few who
were abroad very early that morning saw a strange and mournful
procession pass through the streets of Paris; those streets which have
seen so many grisly and so many fantastic things. An hour before
daybreak a litter, surrounded by a crowd of armed men, some bearing
torches and some pikes and halberds, came out of the Hotel Vidoche and
passed slowly down the Rue St. Denis. The night was at its darkest,
the wind at its keenest. Vagrant wretches, lying out in the Halles,
rose up and walked for their lives, or slowly froze and perished.
But there are worse things than death in the open; worse, at any rate,
than that death which comes with kindly numbing power. And some of
these knew it; nay, all. The poorest outcast whom the glare of the
cressets surprised as he lurked in porch or penthouse, the leanest
beggar who looked out startled by the clang and tramp, knew himself
happier than the king's prisoner bound for the Chatelet; and, hugging
his rags, thanked Heaven for it.