Before we come to the dark story of that night in the inn, it is but
fair to Frances to say that she came there with no definite evil
purpose. She had been cheerful on her journey from Munich. There was
one clear fact in her brain: She was on her way to George.
The countless toy farms of southern France, trimmed neatly by the inch,
swept past her. In Brittany came melancholy stretches of brown heath
and rain-beaten hills; or great affluent estates, the Manor houses
covered with thatch, stagnant pools close to the doors, the cattle
breaking through the slovenly wattled walls.
Frances, being a farmer, felt a vague amusement at these things, but
they were all dim to her as a faded landscape hanging on the wall.
She was going to George.
Sometimes she seemed to be in Lucy's room again, with the sweet, clean
air of youth about her. All of that purity and love might have gone
into George's life--before it fell into the slough.
But she was going now to take it out of the slough.
There was a merchant and his wife from Geneva in the carriage with
their little boy, a pretty child of five. Frances played and joked
with him.
"Has madam also a son?" his mother asked civilly.
She said yes, and presently added, "My son has now a great trouble, but
I am going to relieve him of it."
The woman, startled, stared at her.
"Is it not right for me to rid him of it?" she demanded loudly.
"Mais oui, certainement," said the Swiss. She watched Frances after
that furtively. Her eyes, she thought, were quite sane. But how
eccentric all of these Americans were!
Mrs. Waldeaux reached Vannes at nightfall. At last! Here was the
place in this great empty world where he was.
When the diligence entered the courtyard, George was so near to the
gate that the smoke of his cigar was blown into her face, but he did
not see her. He was lean and pale, and his eyes told his misery. When
she saw them his mother grew sick from head to foot with a sudden
nausea. This was his wife's doing. She was killing him! Frances
hurried into the inn, her legs giving way under her. She could not
speak to him. She must think what to do.
She was taken to her room. It was dark, and across the corridor she
saw Lisa in her lighted chamber. This was good luck! God had put the
creature at once into her hands to deal with!
She was conscious of a strange exaltation, as if from wine--as if she
would never need to sleep nor eat again. Her thoughts came and went
like flashes of fire. She watched Lisa as she would a vampire, a
creeping deadly beast. Pauline Felix--all that was adulterous and vile
in women--there it was!
Her mind too, as never before, was full of a haughty complacency in
herself. She felt like the member of some petty sect who is sure that
God communes with him inside of his altar rails, while the man is
outside whom he believes that God made only to be damned.
Lisa began to undress. Frances quickly turned away, ashamed of peeping
into her chamber. But the one fact burned on into her brain:
The woman was killing George.
If God would rid the world of her! If a storm should rise now, and the
lightning strike the house, and these stone walls should fall on her,
now--now!
But the walls stood firm and the moonlight shone tranquilly on the
world outside.
She told herself to be calm--to be just. But there was no justice
while this woman went on with her work! God saw. He meant her to be
stopped. Frances prayed to him frantically that Lisa might soon be put
off of the earth. Just as the Catholic used to pray before he
massacred the Huguenot, or the Protestant, when he tied his Catholic
brother to the stake. If this woman was mad for blood, it was a
madness that many sincere people have shared.
Colette was busy with her mistress for a long time. She was very
gentle and tender, being fond of Lisa, as people of her class always
were. She raised her voice as she made ready to leave the room.
"If the pain returns, here is the powder of morphia, mixed, within
madame's reach," she said.
Frances came close to the door.
"And if it continues?" asked Lisa.
"Let monsieur call me. I would not trust him to measure a powder,"
Colette said, laughing. "It is too dangerous. He is not used to
it--like me."
Mrs. Waldeaux saw her lay a paper package on a shelf.
"I will pray that the pain will not return," the girl said. "But if it
does, let monsieur knock at my door. Here is the tisane when you are
thirsty." She placed a goblet of milky liquid near the bed.
What more she said Frances did not hear.
It was to be! There was the morphia, and yonder the night drink within
her reach. It was God's will.
Colette turned out the lamp, hesitated, and sat down by the fire.
Presently she rose softly, bent over her mistress, and, finding her
asleep, left the room noiselessly. Her door closed far down the
corridor.
Mrs. Waldeaux was quite alone, now.
It was but a step across the hall. So easy to do--easy. It must be
done at once.
But her feet were like lead, she could not move; her tongue lay icy
cold in her mouth. Her soul was willing, but her body rebelled.
What folly was this? It was the work of a moment. George would be
free. She would have freed him.
In God's name then----
She crossed the hall softly. Into the hell of her thoughts flashed a
little womanish shame, that she, Frances Waldeaux, should be walking on
tiptoe, like a thief.
She took down the package, and leaning over the table at the side of
the bed, shook the white powder into the glass. Then she went back to
her room and shut the door.
The casement was open and the moonlight was white outside. She was
conscious that the glare hurt her eyes, and that there was a strange
stricture about her jaws and the base of her brain, like an iron hand.
It seemed to her but a minute that she stood there, but the dawn was
breaking when there was a sudden confusion in the opposite room. She
heard Colette's voice, and then George's, calling Lisa.
There was no answer.
Frances stood up, to listen. "Will she not speak?" she cried. "Make
her speak!"
But in reality she said nothing. Even her breath had stopped to listen.
There was no answer.
Frances was awake now, for the rest of her life. She knew what she had
done.
"Why, George," she said, "she cannot speak. She is dead. I did it."
She stood in the room a minute, looking from side to side, and then
went with measured steps out of it, down the corridor and into the
street.
"I did it," she said to herself again and again, as she walked slowly
on.
The old cathedral is opposite to the inn. Her eyes, as she passed,
rested on the gargoyles, and she thought how fine they were. One was a
ridiculous head with lolling tongue.
A priest's voice inside was chanting mass. A dozen Breton women in
their huge white winged caps and wooden shoes hurried up to the door,
through the gray fog. They met Mrs. Waldeaux and saw her face. They
huddled to one side, crossing themselves, and when she passed, stood
still, forgetting the mass and looking, frightened, up the steep street
behind her to find what horror had pursued her.
"They know what I have done," she said aloud.
Once when she was a child she had accidentally seen a bloated wretch, a
murderer, on his way to the gallows.
"I am he," she thought. "I--_I_, Frances."
Then the gargoyle came into her mind again. What a capital headpiece
it would make for "Quigg's" next column! It was time this week's jokes
were sent.
But at last these ghosts of yesterday's life faded out, and she saw the
fact.
She had hated her son's wife and had killed her!