"REVENGE-BITTER! ERE LONG BACK ON ITSELF RECOILS!"
The night was close at hand as those two men came together, they being
brought so by the slow, heavy approach of Desparre towards where the
other sat his horse watching him. The dark had almost come. But,
still, there was a sufficiency of dusky light left beneath the stars
which began to twinkle above in the deep, sapphire sky for the
features of each to be recognised by the other.
"Yet," Clarges asked himself, as he dismounted and left his tired
horse standing unheld in the deserted street, "did Desparre recognise
his features?" He could hardly decide.
The man had stopped in that halting, dragging walk up the long,
deserted street which rose slightly on a hill; he had stopped and was
looking--yes, looking--staring--at him, yet saying nothing either with
his lips or by the expression of those glassy eyes. He was standing
still before him, mute and rigid.
And Clarges noted, all unimportant as it was, that far down the
street, a hundred yards away, the galley slave who was the only other
living creature about besides themselves, had halted too--had halted
and was looking up towards them as though wondering curiously what
these men might have to do with one another.
"Desparre!" exclaimed Walter Clarges now, abandoning all title, all
form of ceremony. "Desparre, how it is that you have been delivered
into my hands here to-night in this loathsome, plague-stricken spot, I
know not. Yet I know one thing. We have met. Met for me to kill you,
or for you to kill me!"
To his astonishment, to his utter amazement, the other was
silent--silent as if stricken dumb, as if turned to stone. But still
the glassy eyes regarded him and seemed to glisten in the light that
was almost darkness now.
Clarges paused a moment while observing that figure before him and
wondering if this might be some devilish ruse, some scheme concocted
in Desparre's mind for either saving himself or perpetrating some act
of treachery. The villain might, he thought, have a pistol in his
breast or pocket which he would suddenly draw forth and discharge full
at him. Then, seeing that the other still remained mute and
motionless, he said:
"No silence on your part can save you. Be dumb if you will, but act.
Draw your sword at once or stand there to be slain, to be righteously
executed. I have to avenge to-night the wrongs of myself and of my
wife--your daughter. Ha! you know that!"
As he mentioned "my wife--your daughter," he saw that he had moved the
man. His face became contorted with a horrible spasm; one part of it
seemed to be drawn down suddenly, the mouth, by the process, assuming
a hideous, one-sided grin.
Desparre was now awful to gaze upon.
Unsheathing his own sword, Clarges advanced towards him, uttering only
one word, the word "Draw." Then he stood before the other, waiting,
watching what he would do, while determined that, if he did not draw
as he bade him, he would thrust his weapon through his craven breast
and so put an end to his vile life.
At first Desparre did nothing, but stood stock and motionless before
him with always that drawn-down look upon one side of his face, though
now his lower jaw seemed, as seen through the dusk, to be working
horribly, and his teeth, one or two of which were discoloured, showing
like fangs.
Then he put his hand to his sword--it appeared as though that hand
would never reach the hilt, as though it were numbed or dead--and with
what looked like extreme effort, drew forth the blade. Yet only to let
it drop listlessly by his side directly afterwards, the point clicking
metallically against the cobble stones of the street as he did so.
Was the coward struck lifeless with fear? Almost, it seemed so. Yet
but a moment later, Clarges knew that it was something worse than fear
that possessed him. For now the sword he had held so languidly fell
altogether from his hand and clattered upon the stones as it did so,
while Desparre stood shaking before the man who was about to slay him,
his arms quivering helplessly, his face appalling in its distortions,
his body swaying. Then he, too, fell heavily, and lay, as it seemed,
lifeless before the other, his arms stretched out wide.
And Clarges, bending over him, regarding him as though he still
doubted whether this were a ruse or not, yet knowing, feeling certain,
that it was not so--did not perceive that the skulking form of the
galley-slave had drawn nearer to them--that the man was now crouching
in a stooping posture on the other side of the street regarding him
and Desparre, while his starting, eager eyes observed all that was
happening.
"Has he died of fright?" Clarges whispered to himself, while he bent
over the prostrate man. "Died of fright or by God's visitation? Or is
he dead? Anyway, he has escaped me for the present. So be it. We shall
meet again, unless this scourge which is over all the place takes him
or me, or both of us, before we can do so."
Whereupon, he left Desparre lying there. He could not stab him now,
helpless as he was and dead or dying? Yet, as he remounted his tired
steed which had stood tranquilly in the road where he had left it, he
remembered that, during the many weeks he had lain in the Paris
Hospital, and while the wounds administered at that craven's
instigation were healing, he had seen men brought into it who had
fallen almost lifeless in the street from paralysis and apoplexy. From
paralysis! Yes, that must be what had now stricken this man; he felt
sure it must. He remembered that there was one so brought in who had
dropped in the street suddenly--the doctors said from a great shock he
had received--whose face had been drawn down as Desparre's was, whose
jaws had twitched, even in his insensibility, in much the same way.
Yes, he reflected, it was that, it must be that which had stricken
this man thus at the moment when he had meant to slay him. One death
had saved him from another, since now he must surely be near his end.
If he did not perish of the stroke, the fever would doubtless lay hold
upon him. His account was made. And musing thus, thanking God, too,
that he had been spared from taking the life of even so great a
villain as Desparre, and from having for ever the burden of the man's
execution upon his head, he slowly rode off from the street of the
Barefooted Carmelites, to learn, if possible, whether the cordon of
women from Paris had yet arrived. But scarcely had his horse's hoofs
ceased to echo down that mournful, deserted place in which now lay two
bodies stretched upon their backs--the one, that of the poor dead
woman at the lower end of it, the other, that of the wealthy and
highly descended Armand, Duc Desparre--than forth from the porch
across the street there stole the form of the skulking convict,--the
convict who had been tracking Desparre from long before he entered the
street, the galley-slave who had stood, or crouched aside, to see what
should be the result of the meeting with the man who had dismounted
from his horse to parley with him.
With almost the sinuous crawl of the panther, this convict--old, and
with his close cropped hair flecked with grey--stole across the wide
street to where the form of Desparre lay; then, reaching that form, he
went down on one knee beside it, and, in the dark, felt all over it,
lifting up his own hands now and again and peering at them in the
night as though to see if they glistened with anything they might have
come against, while feeling also one palm with the fingers of the
other hand to discover if it was wet. Yet such was not the case.
"Almost I could have sworn," the _galérien_ muttered, "that I heard
his sword fall from him. That he was disarmed and therefore run
through a moment later. Yet he is not wounded; there is no blood. What
does it mean? That man was Walter Clarges--alive! Alive Alive! He whom
I have deemed dead for months. Her husband--and alive! He must have
slain him. He must. He must. He would be more than human, more than
man, to spare him after all that he and she have suffered. He must
have run that black treacherous heart through and through. Yet, there
is no wound that I can find; no blood!"
Again and again--feeling the body all over, feeling, too, that the
heart was beating beneath his hand and that there was no sign of cold
or stiffness coming into that form as it lay motionless there--he was
forced at last to the conclusion that, for some strange reason,
Clarges had spared his bitterest foe.
"Spared him," he hissed. "Spared him. Why, why, why!" and he rose to
his feet cursing Clarges for his weakness or folly. Cursing him even
as he looked down and meditated on throttling the man lying there
before him.
"He may spare him," he said. "I will not. My wrongs are as great, as
bitter as theirs. I will have his life. Here--to-night."
He had touched with his foot, some moments before, the sword which
Desparre had let fall from his nerveless hand, and the clatter of
which had led him to imagine that the duke had been disarmed. Now, he
picked up the weapon, tried it once against the stones, then bent over
the miserable man with his arm shortened so as to drive the blade a
moment later through throat and breast.
"Hellhound!" he muttered, "your hour is truly come. Devil! go to your
master. You swore she should go unharmed if I would but assist you in
your vengeance on him; that--that knowing I loved her--God, how I had
learnt to love her! in spite of my trying to force her to marry such
as you so that she might be great and powerful--she should be given
back to me. Whereby we could yet have lived happy, prosperous,
unmolested, together. Together! Together! And you sent her to exile
and death, and me--your tool--to the galleys. Die!"
And now, he drew back his arm so as to drive the blade home. Yet, even
as he did so, even before he thrust it through neck and chest, he
whispered savagely. "It is too good a death, it is too easy. He is
insensible from fear, he will die without pain. If there were any
other way--any method----"
He paused with his eyes roaming round the street from side to
side--then started. A moment afterwards he went up the steps of the
house with the sword still in his hand, and peered at the numbers
painted in great white figures on the door. In the dark of the summer
night, in the faint light given by the blazing southern stars, he
could decipher them.
"Seventy-seven," he muttered, "seventy-seven." Then paused again as
though thinking deeply, his empty hand fingering his grisly, unshaven
chin. "Seventy-seven. Ay! I do remember. This house was one of them.
One of the first. One of the worst. 'Twill serve."
He leant the sword against the side of the porch, muttering: "He would
not stab you to the heart--so--neither will I," then went slowly down
the steps again, and back to where Desparre lay unmoved. After which
he took both of the other's hands in his, drew them above the
shoulder, and stretched the arms out to their full length, and thus
hoisted the burden on his own gaunt shoulders--while bending--almost
staggering at first--under the weight. Yet he kept his feet; at last
he was able to straighten his back, and to stagger up the steps into
the house. Here, when once in it, he let the body down to the floor of
the passage and stood gasping and breathing heavily for some moments,
what time he muttered to himself:
"This will not do. Not here on the first floor. It is too near the
street. He must go higher. Higher yet. Otherwise he may be found--and
saved!"
Whereupon, having regained his breath, he lifted Desparre on to his
shoulders again and slowly mounted to the first floor of the house.
Then he rested there, and afterwards went on to the second. Here, as
was ever the case in the houses of the well-to-do in the city, the
sleeping apartments began; the principal bedroom of the master of the
house being in this instance on the front, or street side, while that
reserved for guests was on the back, and looked over a small plot of
ground, or garden. The moon, now peeping up, showed that both rooms
were in a state of great confusion--rooms to which, by this time, the
man had crept laboriously with his heavy, horrid burden on his back.
The bed, he could see, as still the rays stole in more fully to the
front apartment, was in disorder, the upper sheet and coverlet being
flung back as though some one had leapt hastily from them; the doors
of wardrobes and cupboards stood open; so, too, did the lid of a huge
strong-box bound and clasped with iron bands. Easy enough was it for
Vandecque to see that, from this room a hurried flight had been made,
and with only sufficient time allowed before the departure for the
more precious and smaller objects of value to be hastily gathered up.
For, upon the floor there lay--as he felt as well as saw, since his
feet struck against them--the larger articles of importance, the
silverware, the coffee pots and tea-pots, the salvers, and other
things. It had been a hurried flight!
"If," said Vandecque to himself, even as his eye glanced round on all
these things which he would once have deemed a rich booty had they
fallen into his hands, but which now he scorned, since, if he could
but gain his freedom by his conduct here and return to Paris a
liberated man, he would want for nothing, having at last grown rich
through the gambling house; "if I leave him in this house and he
recovers consciousness--strength--he may be able to attract attention;
to call for assistance from the window. He shall have no chance of
that. Come, murderer, come," and again he lifted the insensible man
upon his shoulders and bore him into the back, or spare, room.
This was not in a disordered condition. There would be no guests in
Marseilles at this time; no visitors from a healthy place to such an
unhealthy, stricken one as this. The bed was made and arranged, and on
to it Vandecque flung the body of his victim. His victim! Yes, yet how
long was it since he himself had been the victim? And, even as he
thought of how he had suffered at this man's hand, any compunctions he
might have had during the last hour--and, hardened as he was, he had
had them!--vanished for ever.
"Arrested by your orders," he muttered, glancing down upon Desparre as
he lay senseless on the bed; glaring down, indeed, though only able to
see the dim outline of his enemy's form, since, as yet, the moonbeams
had scarcely penetrated to this room. "By your orders, though not
knowing, never dreaming that it was so; not dreaming that my betrayal
came from you. Then the prison of La Tournelle--oh, God! for the third
time in my life--the condemnation to the galleys, this time in
perpetuity. I--I who had grown well-to-do, who had no need to be a
criminal again, who might have finished my life in ease. And
Laure--Laure--poor Laure!--whom I had hoped to see a Duchess, and
great--happy--or, at least, not unhappy! Cut-throat!" he almost
shrieked at the senseless man; "when I learnt, as we gaol birds do
learn from one another, all that you had done, I swore to escape from
these galleys somehow, to make my way back to Paris, to slay you. Yet,
it is better thus; far better. Lie there and die."
Then he went forth from the room, finding the key in the door and
turning it upon Desparre.
But, as he descended the stairs and returned to the street, taking no
precaution to deaden his footfall in the empty corridors, since he
knew well enough that there were none to hear them, he muttered to
himself, "Clarges spoke of her to him as 'his wife.' Also he said
'Your daughter.' Mon Dieu! was she that? Was she that? And if so, how
should the Englishman know it, how have found out what I spent years
in fruitlessly trying to discover?"
Musing thus, he caught up the sword which still stood in the porch,
flung it down a drain, and went slowly through the deserted streets
towards the Quai de Riveneuve where the galleys were, and to which the
convicts returned nightly to sleep--if they had not succumbed during
the day to the pestilence.