CHAPTER VII
He bowed to her gravely as she entered. She responded with the iciest salutation. Throughout their interview they both remained standing.
He noticed, with dark ruth, how wan her face had grown, how sharpened from its blunt youthful curves, how prematurely aged even—like a late-blown lily, shrunk, in its first lovely opening, to a freezing wind. The nearer thereby, the more pathetic, to his own barren passion. He could claim his pallid kinship with this sorrow, as never he might have done with insolent felicity. He was so changed by love, he could have prized dead beauty in this woman above all the living graces of her happier sisters. Had she waned like the moon, his arms had lusted for the last shred of her.
His heart beat thickly. For whatever reason, he was to have speech with her once more—was to reclaim her to some interest in his own. So that that might be, he cared little how she wounded him.
“You asked to see me, Monsieur,” she said frigidly. “I am here. To what importunate circumstance, may I ask, do I owe this—yes, this insult, Monsieur, of your visit?”
She had hardly intended to be so explicit; but her indignation took her, irresistibly and on the instant, off her feet. Cartouche slightly shrugged his shoulders.
“Importunate, Madame?” he said. “You shall judge. I come as Prefect. The insult is official.”
His eyes, fastened on her, feeding gluttonously after their long abstinence, saw how she started slightly at his words—how she looked at him in sudden fear. To whatever offensive motive she had thought to attribute his visit, the possibility of its impersonal character had evidently not occurred to her. He was become master by that disillusionment; and would have been less than human not to have recognised it—not to have held her frightened heart fluttering for one moment in his hand. It was fierce ecstasy to feel it beat—to have it own him lord of itself through terror—if only he might reassure it in the end, and release it to fly away on wings of poignant gratitude!
She struggled for the self-composure to answer him after his kind.
“I have no right, then, Monsieur, to resent it. The law exacts its privileges, however represented. You come, I am to understand, on business. Business, Monsieur, demands the fewest words to be effective.”
“That is perfectly true, Madame,” he said quietly. “This of mine, though its processes have extended over years, is summed up in a sentence. You are in the habit of sending, periodically, large sums of money to one who is well known by me to be conspiring against the Government.”
She stood as rigid as stone. Every atom of colour had fled from her face. He longed to cry out on its moveless agony, “O, woman! on the merit of my hopeless passion, believe in me, trust in me! I am here to save, not ruin!” But he must strike deeper, before he could seek to heal.
“This fact, Madame,” he said, “has been made known to me through the ordinary secret channels of my office. It is indisputable. I do not ask you to dispute it. I ask you simply, I give you the opportunity of answering privately, a single question. Does M. Saint-Péray, who is my friend, identify himself also with this movement? Is he, in short, in your confidence in this matter of your supplying it with funds?”
She tottered towards him, holding out frenzied hands.
“O, no, Monsieur! O, no, no!”
He knew it all now; he had her at his mercy; for one moment this soft cruel thing should yield herself to his will, its abject slave. He lingered out the rapture, as one condemned to death might hang on the lips of his soul’s love. His dark cheek flushed; he backed before her approach, unresponsive.
“You reassure me, Madame,” he said coldly. “I had been concerned for him, I own. It is enough that friendship has helped to exculpate, where a closer relationship, it seems, had found its better interest in deceiving. For the rest, you are doubtless prepared, for yourself, with a sufficient answer to the law.”
“The law!”
She whispered it, aghast.
“As its representative, Madame,” he said, “I have no choice but to demand one of you. You can refuse to give it, referring your defence to a public occasion.” (He would not see how her anguish entreated him.) “In that event, I make my bow, my apologies, and I withdraw. The issue then is very simple. You will be called to account for your subsidising of a dangerous conspirator against the State, and will probably be put on your trial with him. As Prefect of this Province, I can guarantee the case at least an impartial hearing. My presence, Madame, does not insult the law, however offensive it may be to the criminal.”
She hurried nearer to him—broke out, and down, in an instant.
“Before God, Monsieur! You must believe me—you must. I know nothing of this man’s use of what he wrings from me; I am not his confederate, but—”
He interrupted her, sharp and sudden,—
“But his victim.”
She cried: “O, Monsieur, Monsieur! O, my God!” and buried her face in her hands.
Now at that his gluttonous moment passed. Henceforth his heart was hers to sport with. It had only played the tyrant hitherto to nurse to ecstasy its own compunction. He spoke in a strangely softened tone,—
“He is black-mailing you?”
“No!” she cried, looking up in quick miserable panic. “I have not said it.”
He smiled slightly.
“No need to. Well, I suspected as much.”
She seemed to strive to speak; but nothing came from her.
“I say,” he repeated, “I suspected it. Do I not know this man of old, his craft, his villainy—how he will go long ways about to reach an end—traverse the world to stab an enemy in the back? Most to be feared when most he feigns benevolence—Bonito—that old dreary misanthrope to play the Benthamite! Why, I never doubted but that he had his deep reasons for scheming to marry you to—I never doubted it, I say, Madame; and here’s the proof. He was playing for hush-money.”
She stared at him, as if her very soul were paralysed.
“How he discovered the truth?” he continued—“by cunning or coercion?—” He paused, questioning her at a venture with his eyes. She made no answer; and he went on, shrugging his shoulders: “Like enough ’twas he himself who laid the train—who first supplied the insidious damning information to my friend, and—but it matters little; he discovered it.”
He questioned her face again. Still she was silent.
“If I had guessed in time,” he said, in a deep passionate voice, “this should never have been. It shall be no longer. Madame, I have twice before offered you my services, and twice been rejected with scorn. Once again I lay them at your feet. It was for this, in truth, I sought you. I entreat you, do not refuse me.”
It was not in her nature to do justice to this man. So far as his devotion touched her, it was to nothing but a sense of humiliation. The thought uppermost in her mind was of his cognisance, not his chivalry.
“You know?” she whispered. Her white lips could hardly frame the words.
“I know,” he answered. “He had confessed to me before you married him.”
An irrepressible moan came from her, pitiful, heart-rending. He broke upon it passionately,—
“I told him, what I tell you now—that, on my soul, he had done right; but that, having done what he had done, the prospect of his union with you had become impossible. To me, though what I am, the thought was horrible. Believe me, Madame—before God, believe that I had no thought of myself in so urging him.”
She drew a little away. Her eyes were already freezing to him. But his emotion made him blind.
“I am not to blame for what followed,” he hurried on. “The villain—that same dog Bonito over-reached me. He took advantage of my absence to practise on one—there I will not pain you with the record. You know who came to you. She had been warned by me against abetting him she nursed in any designs upon your ignorance. I do not blame him. If you can do me any justice in your woman’s heart, you will guess why. He staked his soul against a chance for which I would have sacrificed a thousand heavens. But, with her—it was different. She paid for her temerity with my curse.”
He ended, greatly agitated. His eyes were lowered before her. He did not see the new abhorrence of him spring and flame in hers. He did not see how the majesty of her womanhood rose to answer and reject him.
“You cursed her for my sake, Monsieur?” she said quietly.
“If you will have it so,” he answered low.
“And this, her suborner, her confederate;—you say he shall trouble me no longer?”
“Not while I have hands to strike, and teeth to hold.”
She sprang away from him.
“That I have fallen to this!” she cried—“To be asked to approve myself the instrument of that poor creature’s ruin! to applaud the wicked deed and crown the doer of it with my gratitude! Would you murder also for my sake—smear the feet you profess to worship with a fellow-creature’s blood? O, go from me, go from me, Monsieur! you are horrible in my sight. We take the burden of our sin—will atone for it as heaven wills. Better a hundred cruel witnesses than one advocate like you. She thought to save your soul, poor child, by winning it to justice done to hers. ‘One marriage brings another’—those were her pretty words—and so for your requital of her love. Love! O, I am fouled in having heard you—humbled myself before you. Go—say—do what you will, Monsieur. We refuse your help! Why will you for ever impose your hateful favours on me?”
He listened to her, standing quite still and ghastly pale. Then he bowed slightly, and walked to the door. Turning at it, he spoke,—
“I have made it my mission in life, Madame, to protect the shrine of my devotion from sacrilegious hands. No scorn, no misconstruction, no wounding hate will deter me from that purpose while I live. The idol of it shall owe me, at least, that debt of fidelity. If she hungers for the opportunity to retaliate, as debtors will, there is the precedent of Lazarus in heaven to reassure her. I will be sure to call to you for that drop of water, Madame.”
He opened the door, and was gone.
She stood quite motionless for minutes after he had left her; then suddenly flung herself, exhausted, into a chair. No grace, no pity towards him was in her heart. If they had been possible to its pure narrow code, his parting words, in which she read a scoff at religion, would have alienated them finally.
For hours she lay in wretched thought, half-hypnotised by misery. No tender sprig of hope could ever again be hers. Her uttermost fears were confirmed. He had confessed his guilt. The road stretched dark and endless now before her.
The house was deadly quiet. She was quite alone, and very desolate. Louis-Marie had gone into France, on business concerning his patrimony, and would not be back for some days. She had not even God to help her.
With dusk, as she still lay unstirring, came a quick step, which she recognised, in the hall outside. She caught herself up, making some effort towards composure, as it hurried towards the room in which she sat; and the next instant young Balmat entered.
He shut the door upon the servant who had announced him. He was so agitated, so breathless, that he could scarce stammer an apology for his freedom. He came towards her, hat in hand, at an eager run. His eyes were shining, his chest heaving in the prospect of some wonderful announcement.
“Mon Dieu! Madama, Madama,” he whispered excitedly: “What news! Christ in heaven, what news!”
She rose, trembling. Her heart, she felt, could not bear much more.
“What is it, Jacques?” she said faintly.
Balmat, iron-nerved, made but a sorry Mercury.
“It is only,” he said, “that the Marquess your husband was murdered—that is little—there was more than one of us had suspected it—but by whom? God be praised for enlightening us—for vindicating the innocent—it has all come out; and who do you think is the guilty one? No other than M. le Préfet himself, who is lying at this moment under arrest. Ah, ah! what have I blundered, great oaf! Madama, Madama!”
* * * * * * * *
That same night an express was despatched by Madame Saint-Péray to her husband in France, bidding him, for reasons of her own, not to return until he heard further from her.