THE MARK OF CAIN.
When Jehan, in a fever of indignation, slipped stealthily out of the
house in the Rue Touchet and sped up the dark, quiet street after
Madame de Vidoche, he had no subtler purpose in his mind than to
overtake her and warn her. The lady had spoken kindly to him on the
night of the supper at Les Andelys. She was young, weak, oppressed;
the plot against her seemed to the child to be fiendish in its
artfulness. It needed no more to rouse every chivalrous instinct in
his nature--and these in a boy should be many, or woe betide the
man--and determine him to save her.
He thought that if he could overtake her and warn her all would be
well; and at first his purpose went no farther than that. But as he
ran, now looking over his shoulder in terror, and now peering into the
darkness ahead, sometimes slipping into the gutter in his haste, and
sometimes stumbling over a projecting step, a new and whimsical
thought flashed into his mind, and in a moment fascinated him. How it
came to one so young, whether the astrologer's duplicity, to which he
had been a witness, suggested it, or it sprang from some precocious
aptitude in the boy's own nature, it is impossible to say. But on a
sudden there it was in his mind, full-grown, full-armed, a perfect
scheme. He had only a few minutes in which to consider it before he
caught madame up, and the time to put it into execution came; but in
that interval he found no flaw in it. Rather he revelled in it. It
satisfied the boy's stern sense of retribution and justice. It more
than satisfied the boy's love of mischief and trickery.
He felt not the slightest misgiving, therefore, when it came to
playing his part. He went through it without pity, without a scruple
or thought of responsibility--nay, he followed madame home, and hid
himself behind the curtain, with no feeling of apprehension as to what
was coming, with no qualms of conscience.
But when he had seen all, and lying spell-bound in his hiding-place
had witnessed the tragedy, when covering his ears with his hands,
and cowering down as if he would cower through the floor, he had
heard Vidoche's death-cry and winced at each syllable of madame's
heart-broken utterance--when, with quaking limbs and white cheeks, he
had crept at last down the stairs and fled from the accursed house,
then the boy knew all; knew what he had done, and was horror-stricken!
Even the darkness and freezing cold were welcome, if he might escape
from that house--if he might leave those haunting cries behind. But
how? by what road? He fled through street after street, alley after
alley, over bridges, and along quays, by the doors of churches and the
gates of prisons. But everywhere the sights and sounds went with him,
forestalled him, followed him. He could not forget. When at last,
utterly exhausted, he flung himself down on a pile of refuse in a
distant corner of the Halles, his heart seemed bursting. He had killed
a man. He had worse than killed a woman. He would be hung. The
astrologer had told him truly; he was doomed, given up to evil and the
devil!
He lay for a long time panting and shuddering, with his face hidden;
while a burst of agony, provoked by some sudden pang of remembrance,
now and again racked his frame. The spot he had, almost unconsciously,
chosen for his hiding-place was a corner between two stalls, at the
east end of the market: an angle well sheltered from the wind, and
piled breast-high with porters' knots and rubbish. The air was a
little less bitter there than outside; and by good fortune he had
thrown himself down on an old sack, which he, by-and-bye, drew over
him. Otherwise he must have perished. As it was, he presently sobbed
himself into an uneasy slumber; but only to awake in a few minutes
with a scream of affright and a dismal return of all his
apprehensions.
Still, nature was already at work to console him; and misery sleeps
proverbially well. After a time he dozed again for a few minutes, and
then again. At length, a little before daybreak, he went off into a
sounder sleep, from which he did not awake until the wintry sun was
nearly an hour up, and old-fashioned people were thinking of dinner.
After opening his eyes, he lay a while between sleeping and waking,
with the sense of some unknown trouble heavy upon him. On a sudden a
voice, a harsh, rasping voice, speaking a strange clipped jargon,
roused him effectually. "He is a runaway!" the voice said, with two or
three unnecessary oaths. "A crown to a penny on it, my bully-boys!
Well, it is an ill-wind blows no one any good. Rouse up the little
shaveling, will you? That is not the way! Here, lend it me."
The next moment the boy sat up, with a cry of pain, for a heavy
porter's knot fell on his shin-bone and nearly broke it. He found
himself confronted by three or four grinning ruffians, whose eyes
glistened as they scanned his velvet clothes and the little silver
buttons that fastened them. The man who had spoken before seemed to be
the leader of the party: a filthy beggar with one arm and a hare-lip.
"Ho! ho!" he chuckled; "so you can feel, M. le Marquis, can you! Flesh
and blood like other folk. And doubtless with money in your pockets to
pay for your night's lodging."
He hauled the child to him and passed his hands through his clothes.
But he found nothing, and his face grew dark. "_Morbleu!_" he swore.
"The little softy has brought nothing away with him!"
The other men, gathering round, glared at the boy hungrily. In the
middle of the Forest of Bondy he could not have been more at their
mercy than he was in this quiet corner of the market, where a velvet
coat with silver buttons was as rare a sight as a piece of the true
cross. Two or three houseless wretches looked on from their frowsy
lairs under the stalls, but no one dreamed of interfering with the men
in possession. As for the boy, he gazed at his captors stolidly; he
was white, mute, apathetic.
"Plague, if I don't think the lad is a softy!" said one, staring at
him.
"Not he!" replied the man who had hold of him. And roughly seizing the
boy by the head with his huge hand, he forced up an eyelid with his
finger as if to examine the eye. The boy uttered a cry of pain.
"There!" said the ruffian, grinning with triumph. "He is all right.
The question is, what shall we do with him?"
"There are his clothes," one muttered, eyeing the boy greedily.
"To be sure, there are always his clothes," was the answer. "It does
not take an Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu to see that, gaby!
And, of course, they would melt to the tune of something apiece! But
maybe we can do better than that with him. He has run away. You don't
find truffles on the dung-hill every day."
"Well," said his duller fellows, their eyes beginning to sparkle with
greed, "what then, Bec de Lievre?"
"If we take him home again, honest market porters, why should we not
be rewarded? Eh, my bully-boys?"
"That is a bright idea!" said one. So said another. The rest nodded.
"Ask him where he lives, when he is at home."
They did. But Jehan remained mute. "Twist his arm!" said the last
speaker. "He will soon tell you. Or stick your finger in his eye
again! Blest if I don't think the kid _is_ dumb!" the man continued,
gazing with astonishment at the boy's dull face and lack-lustre eyes.
"I think I shall find a tongue for him," the former operator replied
with a leer. "Here, sonny, answer before you are hurt, will you? Where
do you live?"
But Jehan remained silent. The ruffian raised his hand. In another
moment it would have fallen, but in the nick of time came an
interruption. "Nom de ma mere!" someone close at hand cried, in a
voice of astonishment. "It is my Jehan!"
Two of the party in possession turned savagely on the intruder--a
middle-sized man with foxy eyes, and a half-starved ape on his
shoulder. "Who asked you to speak?" snarled one. "Begone about your
business, my fine fellow, or I shall be making a hole in you!" cried
another.
"But he is my boy!" the new-comer answered, fairly trembling with joy
and astonishment. "He is my boy!"
"Your boy?" cried Bec de Lievre, in a tone of contempt. "You look like
it, don't you? You look as if you dined on gold plate every day and
had a Rohan to your cup-bearer, you do! Go along, man; don't try to
bamboozle us, or it will be the worse for you!" And with an angry
scowl he turned to his victim.
But the showman, though he was a coward, was not to be put down so
easily. "It is the boy who is bamboozling you!" he said. "You take him
for a swell! It is only his show dress he has on. He is a tumbler's
boy, I tell you. He circled the pole with me for two years. Last
November he ran away. If you do not believe me, ask the monkey. See,
the monkey knows him."
Bec de Lievre had to acknowledge that the monkey did know him. For the
poor beast was no sooner brought close to its old playmate than it
sprang upon him and covered him with caresses, gibbering and crying
out the while after so human a fashion that it might well have moved
hearts less hard. The boy did not return its endearments, however; but
a look of intelligence came into his eyes, and on a sudden he heaved a
sigh as if his heart was breaking.
The men who had taken possession of him looked at one another. "It was
the boy's cursed clothes fooled us," Bec de Lievre growled savagely.
"We will have them, at any rate. Strip him and have done with it. And
do you keep off, Master Tumbler, or we will tumble you."
But when the showman, who was trembling with delight and anticipation,
made them understand that he would give a crown for the boy as he was
in his clothes--"and that is more than the fence will give you," he
added--they began to see reason. True, they stood out for a while for
a higher price; but the bargain was eventually struck at a crown and a
livre, and the boy handed over.
Master Crafty Eyes' hand shook as he laid it on the child's collar and
turned him round so that he might see his face the better. Bec de
Lievre discerned the man's excitement, and looked at him curiously.
"You must be very fond of the lad," he said.
The showman's eyes glittered ferociously. "So fond of him," he said,
in a mocking tone, "that when I get him home I shall--oh, I shall not
hurt his fine clothes, or his face, or his little brown hands, for
those all show, and they are worth money to me. But I shall--I shall
put a poker in the fire, and then Master Jehan will take off his new
clothes so that they may not be singed, and--I shall teach him several
new tricks with the poker."
"You are a queer one," the other answered. "I'll be shot if you don't
look like a man with a good dinner before him."
"That is the man I am," the showman answered, a hideous smile
distorting his face. "I have gone without dinner or supper many a day
because my little friend here chose to run away one fine night, when
he was on the point of making my fortune. But I am going to dine now.
I am going to feed--on him!"
"Well, every man to his liking," the hare-lipped beggar answered
indifferently. "You have paid for your dinner, and may cook it as you
please, for me."
"I am going to," the showman answered, with an ugly look. He plucked
the boy almost off his feet as he spoke, and while the men cried after
him "_Bon appetit!_" and jeered, dragged him away across the open part
of the market; finally disappearing with him in one of the noisome
alleys which then led out of the Halles on the east side.
His way lay through a rabbit-warren of beetling passages and narrow
lanes, where the boy, once loose, could have dodged him a hundred ways
and escaped; and he held him with the utmost precaution, expecting him
every moment to make a desperate attempt at it. But Jehan was not the
old Jehan who had turned and twisted, walked and frolicked on the
rope, and in the utmost depths of ill-treatment had still kept teeth
to bite and spirit to use them. He was benumbed body and soul. He had
had no food for nearly twenty hours. He had passed the night exposed
to the cold. He had gone through intense excitement, horror, despair.
So he stumbled along, with Vidoche's dying cries in his ears, and,
famished, frozen, bemused, met the showman's threats with a face of
fixed, impassive apathy. He was within a very little of madness.
For a time Crafty Eyes did not heed this strange impassiveness. The
showman's fancy was busy with the punishment he would inflict when he
got the boy home to his miserable room. He gloated in anticipation
over the tortures he would contrive, and the care he would take that
they should not maim or disfigure the boy. When he had him tied down,
and the door locked, and the poker heated--ah! how he would enjoy
himself! The ruffian licked his lips. His eyes sparkled with pleasure.
He jerked the boy along in his hideous impatience.
But after a time the child's bearing began to annoy him. He stopped
and, holding him with one hand, beat him brutally on the head with the
other, until the boy fell and hung in his grasp. Then he dragged him
up roughly and hauled him on with volleys of oaths; still scowling at
him from time to time, as if, somehow, he found this little foretaste
of vengeance less satisfying than he had expected.
There were people coming and going in the dark filthy lane where this
happened--a place where smoke-grimed gables almost met overhead, and
the gutter was choked with refuse--but no one interfered. What was a
little beating more or less? Or, for the matter of that, what was a
boy more or less? The hulking loafers and frowsy slatterns, who
huddled for warmth in corners, nodded their heads and looked on
approvingly. They had their own brats to beat and business to mind.
There was no one to take the boy's part. And another hundred yards
would lodge him in the showman's garret.
At that last moment the boy awoke from his trance and understood; and
in a convulsion of fear hung back and struggled, screaming and
throwing himself down. The man dragged him up savagely, and was in the
act of taking him up bodily to carry him, when a person, who had
already passed the pair once, came back and looked at the boy again.
The next moment a hand fell on the showman's arm, and a voice said,
"Stop! What boy is that?"
The showman looked up, saw that the intervener was a priest, and
sneered. "What is that to you, father?" he said, trying by a side
movement to pass by. "Not one of your flock, at any rate."
"No, but you are!" the priest retorted in a strangely sonorous voice.
He was a stalwart man, with a mobile face and sad eyes that seemed out
of keeping with the rest of him. "You are! And if you do not this
minute set him down and answer my question, you ruffian, when your
time comes you shall go to the tree alone!"
"Diable!" the showman muttered, startled yet scowling. "Who are you,
then?"
"I am Father Bernard. Now tell me about that boy, and truly. What have
you been doing to him? Ay, you may well tremble, rascal!"
For the showman was trembling. In the Paris of that day the name of
Father Bernard was almost as well known as the name of Cardinal
Richelieu. There was not a night-prowler or cutpurse, bully or
swindler, who did not know it, and dream in his low fits, when the
drink was out and the money spent, of the day when he would travel by
Father Bernard's side to Montfaucon, and find no other voice and no
other eye to pity him in his trouble. Impelled by feelings of
humanity, rare at that time, this man made it his life-work to attend
on all who were cast for execution; to wait on them in prison, and be
with them at the last, and by his presence and words of comfort to
alleviate their sufferings here, and bring them to a better mind. He
had become so well known in this course of work that the king himself
did him honour, and the Cardinal granted him special rights. The mob
also. The priest passed unharmed through the lowest wynds of Paris,
and penetrated habitually to places where the Lieutenant of the
Chatelet, with a dozen pikes at his back, would not have been safe for
a moment.
This was the man whose stern voice brought the showman to a
standstill. Master Crafty Eyes faltered. Then he remembered that the
boy was his boy, that his title to him was good. He said so sulkily.
"Your boy?" the priest replied, frowning. "Who are you, then?"
"An acrobat, father."
"So I thought. But do acrobats' boys wear black velvet clothes with
silver buttons?"
"He was stolen from me," the showman answered eagerly. He had a good
conscience as to the clothes. "I have only just recovered him,
father."
"Who stole him? Where has he been?" The priest spoke quickly, and with
no little excitement. He looked narrowly at the boy the while, holding
him at arm's length. "Where did he spend last night, for instance?"
The showman spread out his palms and shrugged his shoulders. "How
should I know?" he said. "I was not with him."
"He has black hair and blue eyes!"
"Yes. But what of that?" Crafty Eyes answered. "I can swear to him. He
is my boy."
"And mine!" Father Bernard retorted with energy. "The boy I want!" The
priest's eyes sparkled, his form seemed to dilate with triumph. "Deo
laus! Deo laus!" he murmured sonorously, so that a score of loiterers
who had gathered round, and were staring and shivering by turns, fell
back affrighted and crossed themselves. "He is the boy! God has put
him in my way this day as clearly as if an angel had led me by the
hand. And he goes with me; he goes with me. Chut, man!"--this to the
showman, who stood frowning in his path--"don't dare to look black at
me. The boy goes with me, I say. I want him for a purpose. If you
choose you can come too."
"Whither?"
"To the Chatelet," Father Bernard answered, with a grim chuckle. "You
don't seem to relish the idea. But do as you please."
"You will take the boy?"
"This moment," the priest answered.
"_Mon Dieu!_ but you shall not!" the showman exclaimed. Wrath for the
moment drove out fear. He seized the child by the arm. "He is my boy!
You shall not, I say!" he cried, almost foaming with rage. "He is
mine!"
[Illustration: "'WHO STOLE HIM? WHERE HAS HE BEEN?'" (_p_. 169).]
"Idiot! Beast! Gallows-bird!" the priest thundered in reply. "For
one-half of a denier I would throw you into the next street! Let go,
or I will blast you with--Oh, it is well for you you are reasonable.
Now begone! Begone! or, at a word from me, there are a score here
will----"
He did not finish his sentence, for the showman fell back
panic-stricken, and stood off among the crowd, malevolence and craven
fear struggling for the mastery in his countenance. The priest took
the boy up gently in his arms and looked at him. His face grew
strangely mild as he did so. The black brows grew smooth, the lips
relaxed. "Get a little water," he said to the nearest man, a hulking,
olive-skinned Southerner. "The child has swooned."
"Your pardon, father," the man answered. "He is dead."
But Father Bernard shook his head. "No, my son," he said kindly. "He
who led me here to-day will keep life in him a little longer. God's
ways never end in a _cul-de-sac_. Get the water. He has swooned only."