A few hours after this conversation, Laflamme sought to accomplish
his escape. He had lately borne a letter from the Commandant, which
permitted him to go from point to point outside the peninsula of Ducos,
where the least punished of the political prisoners were kept. He
depended somewhat on this for his escape. Carbourd had been more heroic,
but then Carbourd was desperate. Laflamme believed more in ability than
force. It was ability and money that had won over the captain of the
Parroquet, coupled with the connivance of an old member of the Commune,
who was now a guard. This night there was increased alertness, owing to
the escape of Carbourd; and himself, if not more closely watched, was
at least open to quick suspicion owing to his known friendship for
Carbourd. He strolled about the fortified enclosure, chatting to fellow
prisoners, and waiting for the call which should summon them to the
huts. Through years of studied good-nature he had come to be regarded as
a contented prisoner. He had no enemies save one among the guards. This
man Maillot he had offended by thwarting his continued ill-treatment of
a young lad who had been one of the condemned of the Commune, and whose
hammock, at last, by order of the Commandant, was slung in Laflamme’s
hut. For this kindness and interposition the lad was grateful and
devoted. He had been set to labour in the nickel mines; but that came
near to killing him, and again through Laflamme’s pleading he had been
made a prisoner of the first class, and so relieved of all heavy tasks.
Not even he suspected the immediate relations of Laflamme and Carbourd;
nor that Laflamme was preparing for escape.
As Laflamme waited for the summons to huts, a squad of prisoners went
clanking by him, manacled. They had come from road-making. These never
heard from wife nor child, nor held any commerce with the outside world,
nor had any speech with each other, save by a silent gesture--language
which eluded the vigilance of the guards. As the men passed, Laflamme
looked at them steadily. They knew him well. Some of them remembered his
speeches at the Place Vendome. They bore him no ill-will that he did not
suffer as they. He made a swift sign to a prisoner near the rear of the
column. The man smiled, but gave no answering token. This was part of
the unspoken vocabulary, and, in this instance, conveyed the two words:
I escape.
A couple of hours later Laflamme rose from a hammock in his hut, and
leant over the young lad, who was sleeping. He touched him gently.
The lad waked: “Yes, yes, monsieur.”
“I am going away, my friend.”
“To escape like Carbourd?”
“Yes, I hope, like Carbourd.”
“May I not go also, monsieur? I am not afraid.”
“No, lad. If there must be death one is enough. You must stay.
Good-bye.”
“You will see my mother? She is old, and she grieves.”
“Yes, I will see your mother. And more; you shall be free. I will see to
that. Be patient, little comrade. Nay, nay, hush!... No, thanks. Adieu!”
He put his hands on the lad’s shoulder and kissed his forehead.
“I wish I had died at the Barricades. But, yes, I will be brave--be sure
of that.”
“You shall not die--you shall live in France, which is better. Once
more, adieu!” Laflamme passed out. It was raining. He knew that if he
could satisfy the first sentinel he should stand a better chance of
escape, since he had had so much freedom of late; and to be passed by
one would help with others. He went softly, but he was soon challenged.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“Condemned of the Commune--by order.”
“Whose order?”
“That of the Commandant.”
“Advance order.”
The sentinel knew him. “Ah, Laflamme,” he said, and raised the point of
his bayonet. The paper was produced. It did not entitle him to go about
at night, and certainly not beyond the enclosure without a guard--it was
insufficient. In unfolding the paper Laflamme purposely dropped it in
the mud. He hastily picked it up, and, in doing so, smeared it. He wiped
it, leaving the signature comparatively plain--nothing else. “Well,”
said the sentinel, “the signature is right. Where do you go?”
“To Government House.”
“I do not know that I should let you pass. But--well, look out that the
next sentinel doesn’t bayonet you. You came on me suddenly.”
The next sentinel was a Kanaka. The previous formula was repeated. The
Kanaka examined the paper long, and then said: “You cannot pass.”
“But the other sentinel passed me. Would you get him into trouble?”
The Kanaka frowned, hesitated, then said: “That is another matter. Well,
pass.”
Twice more the same formula and arguments were used. At last he heard a
voice in challenge that he knew. It was that of Maillot. This was a
more difficult game. His order was taken with a malicious sneer by the
sentinel. At that instant Laflamme threw his arms swiftly round the
other, clapped a hand on his mouth, and, with a dexterous twist of leg,
threw him backward, till it seemed as if the spine of the soldier must
break. It was impossible to struggle against this trick of wrestling,
which Laflamme had learned from a famous Cornish wrestler, in a summer
spent on the English coast.
“If you shout or speak I will kill you!” he said to Maillot, and then
dropped him heavily on the ground, where he lay senseless. Laflamme
stooped down and felt his heart. “Alive!” he said, then seized the rifle
and plunged into the woods. The moon at that moment broke through the
clouds, and he saw the Semaphore like a ghost pointing towards Pascal
River. He waved his hand towards his old prison, and sped away.
But others were thinking of the Semaphore at this moment, others saw it
indistinct, yet melancholy, in the moonlight. The Governor and his wife
saw it, and Madame Solde said: “Alfred, I shall be glad when I shall see
that no more.”
“You have too much feeling.”
“I suppose Marie makes me think more of it to-day. She wept this morning
over all this misery and punishment.”
“You think that. Well, perhaps something more--”
“What more?”
“Laflamme.”
“No, no, it is impossible!”
“Indeed it is as I say. My wife, you are blind. I chanced to see him
with her yesterday. I should have prevented him coming to-day, but I
knew it was his last day with the portrait, and that all should end
here.”
“We have done wrong in this--the poor child! Besides, she has, I fear,
another sorrow coming. It showed itself to me to-day for the first
time.” Then she whispered to him, and he started and sighed, and said at
last:
“But it must be saved. By--! it shall be saved!” And at that moment
Marie Wyndham was standing in the open window of the library of Pascal
House. She had been thinking of her recent visit to the King’s Cave,
where she had left food, and of the fact that Carbourd was not there.
She raised her face towards the moon and sighed. She was thinking of
something else. She was not merely sentimental, for she said, as if she
had heard the words of the Governor and Madame Solde: “Oh! if it could
be saved!”
There was a rustle in the shrubbery near her. She turned towards the
sound. A man came quickly towards her. “I am Carbourd,” he said; “I
could not find the way to the Cave. They were after me. They have
tracked me. Tell me quick how to go.”
She swiftly gave him directions, and he darted away. Again there was a
rustle in the leaves, and a man stepped forth. Something glistened in
his hands--a rifle, though she could not see it plainly. It was levelled
at the flying figure of Carbourd. There was a report. Marie started
forward with her hands on her temples and a sharp cry. She started
forward--into absolute darkness. There was a man’s footsteps going
swiftly by her. Why was it so dark? She stretched out her hands with a
moan.
“Oh! mother!--oh! mother! I am blind!” she cried.
But her mother was sleeping unresponsive beyond the dark-beyond all
dark. It was, perhaps, natural that she should cry to the dead and not
to the living.
Marie was blind. She had known it was coming, and it had tried her, as
it would have tried any of the race of women. She had, when she needed
it most, put love from her, and would not let her own heart speak, even
to herself. She had sought to help one who loved her, and to fully prove
the other--though the proving, she knew, was not necessary--before the
darkness came. But here it was suddenly sent upon her by the shock of
a rifle shot. It would have sent a shudder to a stronger heart than
hers--that, in reply to her call on her dead mother, there came from the
trees the shrill laugh of the mopoke--the sardonic bird of the South.
As she stood there, with this tragedy enveloping her, the dull boom of a
cannon came across the valley. “From Ducos,” she said. “M. Laflamme has
escaped. God help us all!” And she turned and groped her way into the
room she had left.
She felt for a chair and sat down. She must think of what she now was.
She wondered if Carbourd was killed. She listened and thought not, since
there was no sound without. But she knew that the house would be roused.
She bowed her head in her hands. Surely she might weep a little for
herself--she who had been so troubled for others. It is strange, but she
thought of her flowers and birds, and wondered how she should tend them;
of her own room which faced the north--the English north that she loved
so well; of her horse, and marvelled if he would know that she could not
see him; and, lastly, of a widening horizon of pain, spread before the
eyes of her soul, in which her father and another moved.
It seemed to her that she sat there for hours, it was in reality minutes
only. A firm step and the opening of a door roused her. She did not
turn her head--what need? She knew the step. There was almost a touch of
ironical smiling at her lips, as she thought how she must hear and feel
things only, in the future. A voice said: “Marie, are you here?”
“I am here.”
“I’ll strike a match so that you can see I’m not a bushranger. There has
been shooting in the grounds. Did you hear it?”
“Yes. A soldier firing at Carbourd.”
“You saw him?”
“Yes. He could not find the Cave. I directed him. Immediately after he
was fired upon.”
“He can’t have been hit. There are no signs of him. There, that’s
lighter and better, isn’t it?”
“I do not know.”
She had risen, but she did not turn towards him. He came nearer to her.
The enigmatical tone struck him strangely, but he could find nothing
less commonplace to say than: “You don’t prefer the exaggerated
gloaming, do you?”
“No, I do not prefer the gloaming, but why should not one be patient?”
“Be patient!” he repeated, and came nearer still. “Are you hurt or
angry?”
“I am hurt, but not angry.”
“What have I done?--or is it I?”
“It is not you. You are very good. It is nobody but God. I am hurt,
because He is angry, perhaps.”
“Tell me what is the matter. Look at me.” He faced her now-faced her
eyes, looking blindly straight before her.
“Hugh,” she said, and she put her hand out slightly, not exactly to him,
but as if to protect him from the blow which she herself must deal: “I
am looking at you now.”
“Yes, yes, but so strangely, and not in my eyes.”
“I cannot look into your eyes, because, Hugh, I am blind.” Her hand went
further out towards him.
He took it silently and pressed it to his bosom as he saw that she spoke
true; and the shadow of the thing fell on him. The hand held to his
breast felt how he was trembling from the shock.
“Sit down, Hugh,” she said, “and I will tell you all; but do not hold my
hand so, or I cannot.”
Sitting there face to face, with deep furrows growing in his
countenance, and a quiet sorrow spreading upon her cheek and forehead,
she told the story how, since her childhood, her sight had played
her false now and then, and within the past month had grown steadily
uncertain. “And now,” she said at last, “I am blind. I think I should
like to tell my father--if you please. Then when I have seen him and
poor Angers, if you will come again! There is work to be done. I hoped
it would be finished before this came; but--there, good friend, go; I
will sit here quietly.”
She could not see his face, but she heard him say: “My love, my love,”
very softly, as he rose to go; and she smiled sadly to herself. She
folded her hands in her lap, and thought, not bitterly, not listlessly,
but deeply. She wanted to consider all cheerfully now; she tried to do
so. She was musing among those flying perceptions, those nebulous facts
of a new life, experienced for the first time; she was now not herself
as she had been; another woman was born; and she was feeling carefully
along the unfamiliar paths which she must tread. She was not glad that
these words ran through her mind continuously at first:
“A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of
death without any order, and where the light is darkness.”
Her brave nature rose against the moody spirit which sought to take
possession of her, and she cried out in her heart valiantly: “But there
is order, there is order. I shall feel things as they ought to be. I
think I could tell now what was true and what was false in man or woman;
it would be in their presence not in their faces.”
She stopped speaking. She heard footsteps. Her father entered. Hugh
Tryon had done his task gently, but the old planter, selfish and hard as
he was, loved his daughter; and the meeting was bitter for him. The
prop of his pride seemed shaken beyond recovery. But the girl’s calm
comforted them all, and poignancy became dull pain. Before parting for
the night Marie said to Hugh: “This is what I wish you to do for me to
bring over two of your horses to Point Assumption on the river. There is
a glen beyond that as you know, and from it runs the steep and dangerous
Brocken Path across the hills. I wish you to wait there until M.
Laflamme and Carbourd come by the river--that is their only chance. If
they get across the hills they can easily reach the sea. I know that two
of your horses have been over the path; they are sure-footed; they would
know it in the night. Is it not so?”
“It is so. There are not a dozen horses in the colony that could be
trusted on it at night, but mine are safe. I shall do all you wish.”
She put out both her hands and felt for his shoulders, and let them
rest there for a moment, saying: “I ask much, and I can give no reward,
except the gratitude of one who would rather die than break a promise.
It isn’t much, but it is all that is worth your having. Good-night.
Good-bye.”
“Good-night. Good-bye,” he gently replied; but he said something beneath
his breath that sounded worth the hearing.
The next morning while her father was gone to consult the chief
army-surgeon at Noumea, Marie strolled with Angers in the grounds. At
length she said: “Angers, take me to the river, and then on down, until
we come to the high banks.” With her hand on Angers’ arm, and in her
face that passive gentleness which grows so sweetly from sightless eyes
till it covers all the face, they passed slowly towards the river. When
they came to the higher banks covered with dense scrub, Angers paused,
and told Marie where they were.
“Find me the she-oak tree,” the girl said; “there is only one, you
know.”
“Here it is, my dear. There, your hand is on it now.”
“Thank you. Wait here, Angers, I shall be back presently.”
“But oh, my dear--”
“Please do as I say, Angers, and do not worry.” The girl pushed aside
some bushes, and was lost to view. She pressed along vigilantly by a
descending path, until her feet touched rocky ground. She nodded to
herself, then creeping between two bits of jutting rock at her right,
immediately stood at the entrance to a cave, hidden completely from the
river and from the banks above. At the entrance, for which she felt, she
paused and said aloud: “Is there any one here?” Something clicked far
within the cave. It sounded like a rifle. Then stealthy steps were
heard, and a voice said:
“Ah, mademoiselle!”
“You are Carbourd?”
“As you see, mademoiselle.”
“You escaped safely then from the rifle-shot? Where is the soldier?”
“He fell into the river. He was drowned.”
“You are telling me truth?”
“Yes, he stumbled in and sank--on my soul!”
“You did not try to save him?”
“He lied and got me six months in irons once; he called down on my back
one hundred and fifty lashes, a year ago; he had me kept on bread and
water, and degraded to the fourth class, where I could never hear
from my wife and children--never write to them. I lost one eye in the
quarries because he made me stand too near a lighted fuse--”
“Poor man, poor man!” she said. “You found the food I left here?”
“Yes, God bless you! And my wife and children will bless you too, if I
see France again.”
“You know where the boat is?”
“I know, mademoiselle.”
“When you reach Point Assumption you will find horses there to take you
across the Brocken Path. M. Laflamme knows. I hope that you will both
escape; that you will be happy in France with your wife and children.”
“You will not come here again?”
“No. If M. Laflamme should not arrive, and you should go alone, leave
one pair of oars; then I shall know. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, mademoiselle. A thousand times I will pray for you. Ah, mon
Dieu! take care!--you are on the edge of the great tomb.”
She stood perfectly still. At her feet was a dark excavation where was
the skeleton of Ovi the King. This was the hidden burial-place of the
modern Hiawatha of these savage islands, unknown even to the natives
themselves, and kept secret with a half-superstitious reverence by this
girl, who had discovered it a few months before.
“I had forgotten,” she said. “Please take my hand and set me right at
the entrance.”
“Your hand, mademoiselle? Mine is so--! It is not dark.”
“I am blind now.”
“Blind--blind! Oh, the pitiful thing! Since when, mademoiselle?”
“Since the soldier fired on you-the shock....”
The convict knelt at her feet. “Ah, mademoiselle, you are a good angel.
I shall die of grief. To think--for such as me!”
“You will live to love your wife and children. This is the will of God
with me. Am I in the path now? Ah, thank you.”
“But, M. Laflamme--this will be a great sorrow to him.”
Twice she seemed about to speak, but nothing came save good-bye. Then
she crept cautiously away among the bushes and along the narrow path,
the eyes of the convict following her. She had done a deed which,
she understood, the world would blame her for if it knew, would call
culpable or foolishly heroic; but she smiled, because she understood
also that she had done that which her own conscience and heart approved,
and she was content.
At this time Laflamme was stealing watchfully through the tropical
scrub, where hanging vines tore his hands, and the sickening perfume
of jungle flowers overcame him more than the hard journey which he had
undergone during the past twelve hours.
Several times he had been within voice of his pursuers, and once a
Kanaka scout passed close to him. He had had nothing to eat, he had
had no sleep, he suffered from a wound in his neck caused by the broken
protruding branch of a tree; but he had courage, and he was struggling
for liberty--a tolerably sweet thing when one has it not. He found the
Cave at last, and with far greater ease than Carbourd had done, because
he knew the ground better, and his instinct was keener. His greeting to
Carbourd was nonchalantly cordial:
“Well, you see, comrade, King Ovi’s Cave is a reality.”
“So.”
“I saw the boat. The horses? What do you know?”
“They will be at Point Assumption to-night.”
“Then we go to-night. We shall have to run the chances of rifles along
the shore at a range something short, but we have done that before, at
the Barricades, eh, Carbourd?”
“At the Barricades. It is a pity that we cannot take Citizen Louise
Michel with us.”
“Her time will come.”
“She has no children crying and starving at home like--”
“Like yours, Carbourd, like yours. Well, I am starving here. Give me
something to eat.... Ah, that is good--excellent! What more can we want
but freedom! Till the darkness of tyranny be overpast--overpast, eh?”
This speech brought another weighty matter to Carbourd’s mind. He said:
“I do not wish to distress you, but--”
“Now, Carbourd, what is the matter? Faugh! this place smells musty.
What’s that--a tomb? Speak out, Citizen Carbourd.”
“It is this: Mademoiselle Wyndham is blind.” Carbourd told the story
with a great anxiety in his words.
“The poor mademoiselle--is it so? A thousand pities! So kind, so
young, so beautiful. Ah, I am distressed, and I finished her portrait
yesterday! Yes, I remember her eyes looked too bright, and then again
too dull: but I thought that it was excitement, and so--that!”
Laflamme’s regret was real enough up to a certain point, but, in
sincerity and value, it was chasms below that of Hugh Tryon, who, even
now, was getting two horses ready to give the Frenchmen their chance.
After a pause Laflamme said: “She will not come here again, Carbourd?
No? Ah, well, perhaps it is better so; but I should have liked to speak
my thanks to her.”
That night Marie sat by the window of the sitting-room, with the light
burning, and Angers asleep in a chair beside her--sat till long after
midnight, in the thought that Laflamme, if he had reached the Cave,
would, perhaps, dare something to see her and bid her good-bye. She
would of course have told him not to come, but he was chivalrous, and
then her blindness would touch him. Yet as the hours went by the thought
came: was he, was he so chivalrous? was he altogether true?... He did
not come. The next morning Angers took her to where the boat had been,
but it was gone, and no oars were left behind. So, both had sought
escape in it.
She went to the Cave. She took Angers with her now. Upon the wall a
paper was found. It was a note from M. Laflamme. She asked Angers to
give it to her without reading it. She put it in her pocket and kept
it there until she should see Hugh Tryon. He should read it to her. She
said to herself as she felt the letter in her pocket: “He loved me. It
was the least that I could do. I am so glad.” Yet she was not altogether
glad either, and disturbing thoughts crossed the parallels of her
pleasure.
The Governor and Madame Solde first brought news of the complete escape
of the prisoners. The two had fled through the hills by the Brocken
Path, and though pursued after crossing, had reached the coast, and were
taken aboard the Parroquet, which sailed away towards Australia. It
is probable that Marie’s visitors had their suspicions regarding the
escape, but they said nothing, and did not make her uncomfortable. Just
now they were most concerned for her bitter misfortune. Madame Solde
said to her: “My poor Marie--does it feel so dreadful, so dark?”
“No, madame, it is not so bad. There are so many things which one does
not wish to see, and one is spared the pain.”
“But you will see again. When you go to England, to great physicians
there.”
“Then I should have three lives, madame: when I could see, when sight
died, and when sight was born again. How wise I should be!”
They left her sadly, and after a time she heard footsteps that she knew.
She came forward and greeted Tryon.
“Ah,” she said, “all’s well with them, I know; and you were so good.”
“They are safe upon the seas,” he gently replied, and he kissed her
hand.
“Now you will read this letter for me. M. Laflamme left it behind in the
Cave.”
With a pang he took it, and read thus:
DEAR FRIEND,--My grief for your misfortune is inexpressible. If it
were possible I should say so in person, but there is danger, and we
must fly at once. You shall hear from me in full gratitude when I
am in safety. I owe you so many thanks, as I give you so much of
devotion. But there is the future for all. Mademoiselle, I kiss
your hand.
Always yours,
RIVE LAFLAMME.
“Hugh!” she said sadly when he had finished, “I seem to have new
knowledge of things, now that I am blind. I think this letter is not
altogether real. You see, that was his way of saying-good-bye.”
What Hugh Tryon thought, he did not say. He had met the Governor on his
way to Pascal House, and had learned some things which were not for her
to know.
She continued: “I could not bear that one who was innocent of any real
crime, who was a great artist, and who believed himself a patriot,
should suffer so here. When he asked me I helped him. Yet I suppose I
was selfish, wasn’t I? It was because he loved me.”
Hugh spoke breathlessly: “And because--you loved him, Marie?”
Her head was lifted quickly, as though she saw, and was looking him in
the eyes. “Oh no, oh no,” she cried, “I never loved him. I was sorry for
him--that was all.”
“Marie, Marie,” he said gently, while she shook her head a little
pitifully, “did you, then, love any one else?”
She was silent for a space and then she said: “Yes--Oh, Hugh, I am so
sorry for your sake that I am blind, and cannot marry you.”
“But, my darling, you shall not always be blind, you shall see again.
And you shall marry me also. As though--life of my life! as though one’s
love could live but by the sight of the eyes!”
“My poor Hugh! But, blind, I could not marry you. It would not be just
to you.”
He smiled with a happy hopeful determination; “But if you should see
again?”
“Oh, then....”
She married him, and in time her sight returned, though not completely.
Tryon never told her, as the Governor had told him, that Rive Laflamme,
when a prisoner in New Caledonia, had a wife in Paris: and he is man
enough to hope that she may never know.
But to this hour he has a profound regret that duels are not in vogue
among Englishmen.