THE MASTER-CARPENTER HAS A PROBLEM
The Clerk of the Court came to his feet with a startled "Merci!" and the
master-carpenter fell back with a smothered exclamation. Both men stared
confusedly at the woman as she shut the door slowly and, as it might
seem, carefully, before she faced them.
"Here I am, George," she said, her face alive with vital adventure.
His face was instantly swept by a storm of feeling for her, his nature
responded to the sound of her voice and the passion of her face.
"Carmen--ah !" he said, and took a step forward, then stopped. The
hoarse feeling in his voice made her eyes flash gratitude and triumph,
and she waited for him to take her in his arms; but she suddenly
remembered M. Fille. She turned to him.
"I am sorry to intrude, m'sieu'," she said. "I beg your pardon. They
told me at the office of avocat Prideaux that M'sieu' Masson was here.
So I came; but be sure I would not interrupt you if there was not cause."
M. Fille came forward and took her hand respectfully. "Madame, it is the
first time you have honoured me here. I am very glad to receive you.
Monsieur and Mademoiselle Zoe, they are with you? They will also come in
perhaps?"
M. Fille was courteous and kind, yet he felt that a duty was devolving on
him, imposed by his superior officer, Judge Carcasson, and by his own
conscience, and with courage he faced the field of trouble which his
simple question opened up. George Masson had but now said there had been
nothing more than he himself had seen from the hill behind the Manor; and
he had further said, in effect, that all was ended between Carmen
Barbille and himself; yet here they were together, when they ought to be
a hundred miles apart for many a day. Besides, there was the look in the
woman's face, and that intense look also in the face of the master-
carpenter! The Clerk of the Court, from sheer habit of his profession,
watched human faces as other people watch the weather, or the rise or
fall in the price of wheat and potatoes. He was an archaic little
official, and apparently quite unsophisticated; yet there was hidden
behind his ascetic face a quiet astuteness which would have been a
valuable asset to a worldly-minded and ambitious man. Besides, affection
sharpens the wits. Through it the hovering, protecting sense becomes
instinctive, and prescience takes on uncanny certainty. He had a real
and deep affection for Jean Jacques and his Carmen, and a deeper one
still for the child Zoe; and the danger to the home at the Manor Cartier
now became again as sharp as the knife of the guillotine. His eyes ran
from the woman to the man, and back again, and then with great courage he
repeated his question:
"Monsieur and mademoiselle, they are well--they are with you, I hope,
madame?"
She looked at him in the eyes without flinching, and on the instant she
was aware that he knew all, and that there had been talk with George
Masson. She knew the little man to be as good as ever can be, but she
resented the fact that he knew. It was clear George Masson had told him
--else how could he know; unless, perhaps, all the world knew!
"You know well enough that I have come alone, my friend," she answered.
"It is no place for Zoe; and it is no place for my husband and him
together "she made a motion of the head towards the mastercarpenter.
"Santa Maria, you know it very well indeed!"
The Clerk of the Court bowed, but made no reply. What was there to say
to a remark like that! It was clear that the problem must be worked out
alone between these two people, though he was not quite sure what the
problem was. The man had said the thing was over; but the woman had
come, and the look of both showed that it was not all over.
What would the man do? What was it the woman wished to do? The master-
carpenter had said that Jean Jacques had spared him, and meant to forgive
his wife. No doubt he had done so, for Jean Jacques was a man of
sentiment and chivalry, and there was no proof that there had been
anything more than a few mad caresses between the two misdemeanants; yet
here was the woman with the man for whom she had imperilled her future
and that of her husband and child!
As though Carmen understood what was going on in his mind, she said:
"Since you know everything, you can understand that I want a few words
with M'sieu' George here alone."
"Madame, I beg of you," the Clerk of the Court answered instantly, his
voice trembling a little--"I beg that you will not be alone with him. As
I believe, your husband is willing to let bygones be bygones, and to
begin to-morrow as though there was no to-day. In such case you should
not see Monsieur Masson here alone. It is bad enough to see him here in
the office of the Clerk of the Court, but to see him alone--what would
Monsieur Jean Jacques say? Also, outside there in the street, if our
neighbours should come to know of the trouble, what would they say? I
wish not to be tiresome, but as a friend, a true friend of your whole
family, madame--yes, in spite of all, your whole family--I hope you will
realize that I must remain here. I owe it to a past made happy by
kindness which is to me like life itself. Monsieur Masson, is it not
so?" he added, turning to the master-carpenter. More flushed and
agitated than when he had faced Jean Jacques in the flume, the master-
carpenter said: "If she wants a few words-of farewell--alone with me, she
must have it, M'sieu' Fille. The other room--eh? Outside there"--he
jerked a finger towards the street--"they won't know that you are not
with us; and as for Jean Jacques, isn't it possible for a Clerk of the
Court to stretch the truth a little? Isn't the Clerk of the Court a man
as well as a mummy? I'd do as much for you, little lawyer, any time. A
word to say farewell, you understand!" He looked M. Fille squarely in
the eye.
"If I had to answer M. Jean Jacques on such a matter--and so much at
stake--"
Masson interrupted. "Well, if you like we'll bind your eyes and put wads
in your ears, and you can stay, so that you'll have been in the room all
the time, and yet have heard and seen nothing at all. How is that,
m'sieu'? It's all right, isn't it?"
M. Fille stood petrified for a moment at the audacity of the proposition.
For him, the Clerk of the Court, to be blinded and made ridiculous with
wads in his ears-impossible!
"Grace of Heaven, I would prefer to lie!" he answered quickly. "I will
go into the next room, but I beg that you be brief, monsieur and madame.
You owe it to yourselves and to the situation to be brief, and, if I may
say so, you owe it to me. I am not a practised Ananias."
"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, m'sieu'," returned Masson.
"I must beg that you will make your farewells of a minute and no more,"
replied the Clerk of the Court firmly. He took out his watch. "It is
six o'clock. I will come again at three minutes past six. That is long
enough for any farewell--even on the gallows."
Not daring to look at the face of the woman, he softly disappeared into
the other room, and shut the door without a sound.
"Too good for this world," remarked the master-carpenter when the door
closed tight. He said it after the disappearing figure and not to
Carmen. "I don't suppose he ever kissed a real grown-up woman in his
life. It would have shattered his frail little carcass if, if"--he
turned to his companion--"if you had kissed him, Carmen. He's made of
tissue-paper,--not tissue--and apple-jelly. Yes, but a stiff little
backbone, too, or he'd not have faced me down."
Masson talked as though he were trying to gain time. "He said three
minutes," she returned with a look of death in her face. As George
Masson had talked with the Clerk of the Court, she had come to see, in so
far as agitation would permit, that he was not the same as when he left
her by the river the evening before.
"There's no time to waste," she continued. "You spoke of farewells--
twice you spoke, and three times he spoke of farewells between us.
Farewells--farewells--George--!"
With sudden emotion she held out her arms, and her face flushed with
passion and longing.
The tempest which shook her shook him also, and he swayed from side to
side like an animal uncertain if the moment had come to try its strength
with its foe; and in truth the man was fighting with himself. His
moments with Jean Jacques at the flume had expanded him in a curious kind
of way. His own arguments while he was fighting for his life had, in a
way, convinced himself. She was a rare creature, and she was alluring--
more alluring than she had ever been; for a tragic sense had made her
thinner, had refined the boldness of her beauty, had given a wonderful
lustre to her eyes; and suffering has its own attraction to the
degenerate. But he, George Masson, had had a great shock, and he had
come out of the jaws of death by the skin of his teeth. It had been the
nearest thing he had ever known; for though once he had had a pistol
pointed at him, there was the chance that it might miss at half-a-dozen
yards, while there was no chance of the lever of the flume going wrong;
and water and a mill-wheel were as absolute as the rope of the gallows.
In a sense he had saved himself by his cleverness, but if Jean Jacques
had not been just the man he was, he could not have saved himself. It
did not occur to him that Jean Jacques had acted weakly. He would not
have done what Jean Jacques had done, had Jean Jacques spoiled his home.
He would have sprung the lever; but he was not so mean as to despise Jean
Jacques because he had foregone his revenge. This master-carpenter had
certain gifts, or he could not have caused so much trouble in the world.
There is a kind of subtlety necessary to allure or delude even the
humblest of women, if she is not naturally bad; and Masson had had
experiences with the humblest, and also with those a little higher up.
This much had to be said for him, that he did not think Jean Jacques
contemptible because he had been merciful, or degraded because he had
chosen to forgive his wife.
The sight of the woman, as she stood with arms outstretched, had made his
pulses pound in his veins, but the heat was suddenly chilled by the wave
of tragedy which had passed over him. When he had climbed out of the
flume, and opened the lever for the river to rush through, he had felt as
though ice--cold liquid flowed in his veins, not blood; and all day he
had been like that. He had moved much as one in a dream, and he had felt
for the first time in his life that he was not ready to bluff creation.
He had always faced things down, as long as it could be done; and when it
could not, he had retreated, with the comment that no man was wise who
took gruel when he needn't. He was now face to face with his greatest
problem. One thing was clear--they must either part for ever, or go
together, and part no more. There could be no half measures. She was
a remarkable woman in her way, with a will of her own, and a kind of
madness in her; and there could be no backing and filling. They only
had three minutes to talk together alone, and two of them were up.
Her arms were held out to him, but he stood still, and before the fire of
her eyes his own eyes dropped. "No, not yet!" he exclaimed. "It's been
a day--heaven and hell, what a day it's been! He had me like that!" He
opened and shut his hand with fierce, spasmodic strength. "And he let me
go--oh, let me go like a fox out of a trap! I've had enough for one day
--blood of St. Peter, enough, enough!"
The flame of desire in her eyes suddenly turned to fury. "It is
farewell, then, that you wish," she said hoarsely. "It is no more and
farewell then? You said it to him"--she pointed to the other room--"you
said it to Jean Jacques, and you say it to me--to me that's given you all
I have. Ah, what a beast you are, George Masson!"
"No, Carmen, you have not given me all. If you had, there would be no
farewell. I would stand by you to the end of life, if I had taken all."
He lied, but that does not matter here.
"All--all!" she cried. "What is all? Is it but the one thing that the
world says must part husband and wife? Caramba! Is that all? I have
given everything--I have had your arms around me--"
"Yes, the Clerk of the Court saw that," he interrupted. "He saw from the
hill behind the Manor on Tuesday last."
There was a tap at the door of the other room; it slowly opened, and the
figure of the Clerk appeared. "Two minutes--just two minutes more, old
trump!" said the master-carpenter, stretching out a hand. "One minute
will be enough," said Carmen, who was suffering the greatest humiliation
which can come to a woman.
The Clerk looked at them both, and he was content. He saw that one
minute would certainly be enough. "Very well, monsieur and madame," he
said, and closed the door again.
Carmen turned fiercely on the man. "M. Fille saw, did he, from Mont
Violet? Well, when I came here I did not care who saw. I only thought
of you--that you wanted me, and that I wanted you. What the world
thought was nothing, if you were as when we parted last night. . . .
I could not face Jean Jacques' forgiveness. To stay there, feeling that
I must be always grateful, that I must be humble, that I must pretend,
that I must kiss Jean Jacques, and lie in his arms, and go to mass and to
confession, and--"
"There is the child, there is Zoe--"
"Oh, it is you that preaches now--you that tempted me, that said I was
wasted at the Manor; that the parish did not understand me; that Jean
Jacques did not know a jewel of price when he saw it--little did you
think of Zoe then!"
He made a protesting gesture. "Maybe so, Carmen, but I think now before
it is too late."
"The child loves her father as she never loved me," she declared. "She
is twelve years old. She will soon be old enough to keep house for him,
and then to marry--ah, before there is time to think she will marry!"
"It would be better then for you to wait till she marries before--
before--"
"Before I go away with you!" She gave a shrill, agonized laugh. "So
that is the end of it all! What did you think of my child when you
forced your way into my life, when you made me think of you--ah, quel
bete--what a coward and beast you are!"
"No, I am not all coward, though I may be a beast," he answered.
"I didn't think of your child when I began to talk to you as I did. I
was out for all I could get. I was the hunter. And you were the finest
woman that I'd ever met and talked with; you--"
"Oh, stop lying!" she cried with a face suddenly grown white and cold.
"It isn't lying. You're the sort of woman to drive men mad. I went mad,
and I didn't think of your child. But this morning in the flume I saved
my life by thinking of her, and I saved your life, too, maybe, by
thinking of her; and I owe her something. I'm going to try to pay back
by letting her keep her mother. I never felt towards a woman as I've
felt towards you; and that's why I want to make things not so bad for you
as they might be."
In her bitter eagerness she took a step nearer to him. "As things might
be, if you were the man you were yesterday, willing to throw up
everything for me?"
"Like that--if you put it so," he answered.
She walked slowly up to him, looking as though she would plunge a knife
into his heart. "I wish Jean Jacques had opened the gates," she said.
"It would have saved the hangman trouble."
Then suddenly, and with a cry, she raised her hand and struck him full in
the face with her fist. At that instant came a tap at the door of the
other room, and the Clerk of the Court appeared. He saw the blow, and
drew back with an exclamation.
Carmen turned to him. "Farewell has been said, M'sieu' Fille," she
remarked in a voice sombre with rage and despair, and she went to the
door leading to the street.
Masson had winced at the blow, but he remained silent. He knew not what
to say or do.
M. Fille hastily followed Carmen to the door. "You are going home,
dear madame? Permit me to accompany you," he said gently. "I have to
do business with Jean Jacques."
A hand upon his chest, she pushed him back. "Where I go I'm going
alone," she said. Opening the door she went out, but turning back again
she gave George Masson a look that he never forgot. Then the door
closed.
"Grace of God, she is not going home!" brokenly murmured the Clerk of
the Court.
With a groan the master-carpenter started forward towards the door, but
M. Fille stepped between, laid a hand on his arm, and stopped him.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often
Enjoy his own generosity
Had the slight flavour of the superior and the paternal
He had only made of his wife an incident in his life
He was in fact not a philosopher, but a sentimentalist
He was not always sorry when his teasing hurt
Lacks a balance-wheel. He has brains, but not enough
Man who tells the story in a new way, that is genius
Missed being a genius by an inch
Not content to do even the smallest thing ill
You went north towards heaven and south towards hell