CHAPTER II
She had seen something of this man before; had heard—to loathe—more of him than she had seen. He was not one to be forgotten, once encountered—least of all by gentle souls. Only her memory of him could not somehow reconcile his past and present habits. A threadbare pedant, dull-eyed and malefic; a godless truckler to the vicious, prostituting his learning for a dog’s wages, abject while starving—that was how knowledge and report had painted him to her. Here, indeed, was the frame, but how reinvested! Snuff as of old, seamed the wrinkles of the jaw; but now that wagged upon a lace cravat. The hands were as skeleton and unclean; but rings sparkled on their frowsy knuckles. The brown mouldy duds had given place to a gold-laced coat and breeches of black velvet. There was something evilly potential, something suggestive of chartered mischievousness in the change, she thought: so instinctively do we estimate all human authority by the quality of its cloth.
She curtsied, and stood up frigidly to await his explanation. This sinister vision did nothing to allay the tumult of emotions which had accompanied her from the bedroom. Her heart was foreboding she knew not what; the chill of her manner hid a nameless fear. She could not analyse its nature, nor trace it to its source in herself. She did not know how, during all these months, it had really existed in her as a germ, which had shrunk from its own quickening to some unspeakable disclosure. Whispers, perhaps, half heard and put away; shadows in conscience-troubled eyes, cast down on half-betrayals of their secrets—to the faint record of such faint percussions on her soul, maybe, was due that vague sense of uneasiness. And here, all in a moment, the seed in her was stirring—swelling—touched into life by what? and to what monstrous birth? Was this ominous presence accountable for the change—this dark spirit, associated solely in her mind with a dead and gone abomination? What spectre could he be, risen from that grave to curse her later peace? What power in his hand, to have struck her love with terror through that far recognition? For to that recognition, she could not doubt, was due her husband’s state.
He did not keep her long in suspense. The old dreary wolf in him was quick to sharp conclusions. His tooth was his special pleader, and he showed it at the outset, without a thought of compromise.
He just essayed to make a responsive leg to her; but, even in the clumsy act, grinned in derision of his own mockery, and flung his hands behind his back, humping his shoulders bullyingly.
“You know me?” he snapped.
“I have seen you, Monsieur,” she answered.
“I was physician,” he said loudly, “to your late husband. That is something to you. You owe me your present one. That is more to you.”
She held on to herself, bravely, a little longer.
“You asked to see me, Monsieur,” she said quietly. “I desire you will state your business.”
“You or your husband,” he answered. “It is all one to me. Thank my gallantry alone for this precedence. If you scorn it, send for him.”
She trembled, in spite of herself.
“Did he see me coming?” he continued. “I have reason to think so. He is shy of greeting me, no doubt; though, to be sure, we are quite old friends and confidants. It is not possible that you are his confederate?”
He saw her, poor helpless quarry, look towards the door; and he laughed out.
“Yes, summon assistance, if you want the truth blazoned. Many or one—it will not change my purpose.”
Then, in her fear, she became the serpent. Her eyes glittered; her lips parted in a conciliatory smile.
“Ah, monsieur!” she pleaded; “you rebuke me rightly for my cavalier reception of a guest. But there are memories—associations—cannot you understand it? that one would fain forget. Yet, if you were my husband’s friend—?”
“And yours, and yours, mistress,” he broke in violently. “Don’t overlook that. You owe one another to me—why should I conceal it? If I had not blown into flame a little spirit of jealousy in the bosom of a certain chère amie of—but you know his name—our admirable dear Prefect down yonder—”
She stopped him, flushing intolerably.
“Spare me that mention, at least, Monsieur. It is my humiliation ever to have been associated, even indirectly, with that infamous man.”
He sniggered hatefully.
“Why, it is true, by all reports,” he croaked, “that he has not taken salvation of his disappointment. Knowing him of old, as I do, that miracle, if it had happened, had converted even me, I think.”
“Monsieur!” she entreated, half weeping—“I beg you—”
She checked herself; disciplined her anguish anew; held out fawning hands to him.
“If you want thanks—recognition of that service—O, Monsieur! I am prepared to give them, to make it, to the utmost of your desire.”
“Are you?” he said. “We shall see. Perhaps your gratitude may take something less than full account of my claims on it. We shall see. For there is a deadlier claim yet to come.”
Her tears, her innocence, her beauty, moved him no more than a poor calf’s sobbings might move a butcher. Baiting made meat tender, in the opinion of his day.
She drew back a little.
“A deadlier claim!” she said faintly.
He looked about him a moment, then approached her closely. His evil eyes, his acrid tongue took instant command of her.
“Di Rocco was murdered,” he said.
She uttered a weak cry; caught at a chair to steady herself; stood with closed eyes, and her head fallen back a little.
“Murdered,” he repeated—“only I, and one other, know by whom.”
“What other?”
She did not speak it; but the horror of the question took shape on her lips.
“Your husband,” he said.
She never stirred nor cried out. In the crash of that agony her first instinct was not to betray her love.
He let the thrust sink home, watching, with some diabolical curiosity, the settling of the flesh, as it were, about that cruel wound. Suddenly she moved, and came erect, hating him, his inhumanity.
“Base and wicked! you say it to torture me, because to torture is the lust of devils. I will not listen to you. I will not even understand what you imply. Go, before I have you scourged out of my house!”
He never moved an inch.
“Your house!” he sneered. “Well bought at the price; only you left me out of your calculations—you and your confederate.”
She came at him then, this piety, with set teeth and clinched hands. She was like a tigress in that instant. But he waved his arm disdainfully, and she stopped.
“Are you not?” he said. “Then the other’s my sole quarry. I’ll make my terms with him.”
“No, no!”
The cry broke from her instinctively; and, having uttered it, she knew her own surrender. Pale and broken, poor lily, she drooped before him.
“Very well,” he said; “then with you. I care nothing for the deed; the terms are my concern. I’ll not be diffident about them. I’ll justify them, on your invitation, to the utmost of my desire. Your husband, mistress, killed di Rocco.”
“O, my God!”
“Why, he had his provocation. The man meant lewdly, and he knew it—knew of his intent, its method and occasion. Ask him, if you doubt me. Ask him what he was doing that night, crouched hidden by the glacier where the other was to cross. Ask him why he followed in di Rocco’s tracks, down upon the ice and further. Ask him why he returned alone, later, and slunk home in the storm and darkness, the brand of that on his forehead which he’ll never rub out to the end of time. O, believe me, I have a hundred eyes for things that touch my interests. This did, and closely. He murdered di Rocco. Ask him, I say, if you doubt me.”
Her ashy lips moved, but no sound came from them.
“Or ask him nothing,” the beast went on. “He did it for you; and maybe you’ll think you owe him that silence. Let him live on in his fools’ paradise, taking beatitude of grace, winning his redemption, as he views it. I’ll not interfere to damn him, so you gild my tongue from speaking.”
“He did not do it.”
“Ask him.”
“What do you want of me?”
“Money. Do you understand? Money. Why, as it is, I’ve arrears to make up. You’d have seen me before, if circumstances hadn’t interfered.”
“If I give you what you want, will you—will you take it in discharge of—of this fantastic—of this debt you say I owe you—now and for ever?”
He leered derisory, crooking his jaw to rub it back and forth with deliberate fingers on which a dozen gems sparkled.
“Will I? This fantastic debt?” he said. “Do you think there is any end to that, while he lives? No, no, mistress. I commute no pension paid to my silence. Why, I’ll be frank with you. I’m no common blackmailer for a personal gain. My vileness, as you deem it, aims at a world’s redemption. This Augean stable—filth of rotten governments—there’s no way to cleanse it but by flood. Pour socialism through the stench. But funds are needed to divert a river. You shall contribute—be great by deputy. I’ll not be hard. I’ll spare you what I can, so you’ll be amenable when I can’t.”
“You’ll come again?”
“Why, I understand you. Better risk all, you think, than face that prospect. No need to. Send when I ask, what I ask, and forestall my visitations. Money’s what I want—not lives. I’ll not kill my goose with the golden eggs unless I’m driven. You can keep me away.”
“Tell me, now, how much you want,” she said, like one half lifeless.
* * * * * * * *
It was dusk when, lamp in hand, she stole up the stairs to their bedroom. He was lying asleep, sunk in the reaction from emotion. But the light on his face awoke him. He opened his eyes, drowsily, without speculation at first; but in a moment wide apprehension sprung to them. He half started up.
“Yolande!”
“Hush!” she said. “It was nothing—somebody who had come on business, and is gone. Think no more about it. Husband—dear husband, have you prayed to-night?”
He whispered a negative. She threw her arms about his neck.
“O, Louis, we have been happy during this year, have we not?”
He returned her caresses. But his hands were damp; his throat was stiff; he could not answer. She released him feverishly.
“Get up and pray now,” she said. “We have forgotten God in our deep content—forgotten, in our bodies’ loves, the blows and anguish which His flesh suffered to redeem them.”
He rose, unquestioning, and knelt by the bedside. He prayed that she might not know, that his suspicions might be unfounded, that the burden of that knowledge might never be hers—not that he might find strength to ask her if it were. He prayed and prayed, until the chillness of the night air seized his frail body with a very ague of shivering. Then she, kneeling beside him, was smitten with remorse, and blamed her thoughtlessness, and got him into bed again with all speed, and watched beside him till he was once more warm and restful. Then, his comfort was so great, her beauty so pitiful, he held out rapturous arms to her, and wooed her to his heart. Shrinking, reluctant, she surrendered passively. Had he not wounded his soul to save hers? How could she deny him the fruits of that wild sacrifice. She was a murderer’s wife.
There was even a thrill of ecstasy in the delirium of that thought—a spark of new life struck out of a dead delusion. He could answer to a provocation, after all—for her!
But later, when he had fallen into a deep sleep, she rose softly from beside him, and crept to her oratory, and, kneeling on the icy stones before the statue of the Holy Virgin, broke into prayer, and a passion of tears,—
“O, Mother! show me how to love, and yet be clean!”