CHAPTER XI
So, the end was near at last! And here, high up among the flying winds and shadows, like old Stylites on his pillar, he stood poised to take his flight. Not self-glorified like that grim evangel; but none the less a martyr to his faith. A martyr, he! He could join in the mad laughter evoked by that image—the laughter of damned spirits down in the basement. It came reeling and echoing up the stairs to him—the old Belfry stairs. To what would he descend those next?
There was a frightful humour in the prison nomenclature of his time and country. Speranza, Purgatorio, Costanza, Pazienza, Penitenza—such were the mocking names they gave their noisome cells, like eating cubicles in a devil’s cook-house. They spelt a devouring cruelty. The moral of them all was shattered nerves. They substituted filth and misery for the old “first question,” and were scarcely, by design, less demoralising. He who entered one of them had always this much more than his trial to face—the weapons of his brain blunted against self-defence. They were careful to dull and befoul the wits committed to them.
Cartouche’s cell, by comparison with custom, was an angel’s loft—a fitting hutch for pigeons, he told himself—wherefore, perhaps, it was called Il Paradiso. There is always, at least, an advantage in having the upper berth. It had once been actually the belfry of the tower, though the holes where the great beams had entered into the walls were now plugged with bricks. The old lights, too, across which the luffer-boards had stretched, were all filled in save one. That gaped unglazed and unbarred. He might escape by it if he would. The wall below went down clean and precipitous seventy or more feet to the pavement.
Yet—after his doom was pronounced—he was tempted more than once to take the plunge—to jump and cheat the gallows. There was something, perhaps, even a little characteristically attractive to him in the thought. To trick his enemies out of their triumph—to despoil them of their vulgar profits won of a gentleman, an ex-Prefect, a Court favourite! There was a gambler’s whimsey in the reflection—always not a little of the chevalier d’industrie’s calculating recklessness in his attitude towards his fellows. Towards all save one. She was his saving faith. To her strict soul self-destruction was a deadly sin, hopelessly damning. To leap would be to leap for ever out of her thoughts, her prayers. He could not do it then. He’d wait and hang, to win a place in her remorse. That was his only hold on her at last. It even gave him an exquisite joy to believe he was secure of it—secure in his utter abandonment by her to the fate from which she might have saved him only at the uttermost cost to herself. He would not have it otherwise—not be cheated of that place by any barren compromise of hers. None could suffice him in this pass—only his life for her and hers. He’d give it without a murmur.
For the rest, he told himself he did not much care. Life was a farce without this Yolande—impossible with her. It was strange how his thoughts clung about that one figure. It was only of a woman, bigoted and foolish—not even now with beauty supreme in her to redeem the lack of liberal qualities. And she could let him die upon a falsehood—her piety was not proof against the last temptation. So much the madder, truer lover she! He worshipped not her, perhaps, but love in her. He worshipped her, at least—would die to save her.
What was his life worth! Sometimes, leaning looking from his window, old dreams would come to him—a far back retrospect, like that which opens out its vista to the drowning. He could see a little figure at the end, leaping in green sunlight. It came dancing along, and jumped into his breast. He wept, nursing it—nursing the little image of himself. “If she could see me now!” he thought. And yet he was no traitor to his father’s memory. The old dog had been kind to him. “Sanctity and self-indulgence!” he sighed. “I could never tell the decent way between. Only she might have taught me.”
His view commanded the market-square. He wondered when they were going to begin. The people went their busy way below, seemingly unconcerned. They looked squat things—ridiculously foreshortened—Lilliputians to the giant he felt himself to be by contrast. Why should he let such absurdities hang him? No matter, so he died for her.
Always she. The other’s claims he hated. She vexed him in the night with her eternal weeping. Weeping, weeping, for an irremediable sorrow? What use in this invertebrate lament? Let her come and save him, if she wished to prove herself the nobler soul. Not that he would concede her that triumph. But he loved deeds, not tears—would rather that love defied than petitioned him. And so one night she came.
It was pitch dark without. He had been dozing on his pallet; but some cessation in the sentries’ monotonous tramp across the landing, to and fro, brought him wide awake. The door opened, and shut again. Something was in the room. He listened curious.
“Cherry!” whispered a voice.
He was on his feet on the instant. The shock had half unnerved him. He stood straining his eyes, his elbows crooked, his heart hammering.
“Who are you?” he muttered.
He heard her panting softly—weeping. Then he knew it was she. He made a mad effort to compose himself—to stand up in the breach this sudden ghost had torn in his defences. The voice sighed on,—
“O, love! don’t you know me? Cherry, I have come to save you.”
“Not you?”
He could not help his tone—would not, if he could.
She gave a little very bitter cry.
“Hush! speak low! She sent me.”
“Yolande?”
“Yes. O, my God!”
He felt for her, touched her in the darkness. His heart was on a sudden kind and pitiful.
“Poor child! poor child! How did you hear—come—find the means? These long years—I’ve no right to ask you of them.”
“No need to, neither. They find me what I always was—your woman. Well, I’ve got a rope about me. Will you take it?”
“Not I.”
“O, O! Why not?”
“Owe my life to her whose life I’ve ruined.”
“She found the rope, I say; and the pass to let me bring it to you private—paid for it, too.”
“Paid? Whom?”
“Bonito. There!”
“Paid Bonito?”
“With a bond that just spells her ruin. He’s got it on him now.”
“I understand. Where is he?”
“At Loustalot the blacksmith’s. I left him there not two hours since. I went to kill him, Cherry, for what he’d done to you; and, to save his life, he sent me on to her. She’d only lain close a bit for lack of such a messenger. And I’m to say there shall be a horse waiting for you in the road by the gate.”
“Give me the rope.”
“Let me have your hand—only that. There, it’s on the floor. Put it away somewhere till I’m gone.”
He obeyed, and groped his way back to her—felt for her poor face, and took it in his hands. She stood quite passive.
“Molly, I’m not worth a thought.”
Only her low heart-rending sobs answered him.
“Thank God,” he said, “we cannot see one another’s faces—never shall again.”
“Cherry!”
“Yes, call me that.”
“Cherry, mayn’t I hope? I’ve been good.”
“I may not, Molly.”
“She told me to—to save your soul. Perhaps when you’re gone away, and safe? I could wait until you changed to me.”
Her words wrung his heart. This child, so true and faithful to him to the last! and his own immeasurable baseness to her—in thought and deed alike! What could it matter now? Let love be still a casuist for love’s sake.
He put his arms about her; set his lips upon her face, with some new rehearsal of an ancient passion.
“Before God, Molly, if I live, I will marry you.”
* * * * * * * *
An hour later he stood at the window, waiting to descend. The rope was in place; he had fastened it to a beam; deep mid-night slept upon the village.
“She has done this thing for me,” he thought—“given the bond—risked all to right her fault. What else or greater could she do? God make her happy!”