CHAPTER XIII
Cartouche, released, at the end of a week, from his inaugural business in the Le Prieuré Prefecture, returned forthwith to Turin—and to the re-encountering a problem, whose difficulties, one had thought, he might have studied more profitably at a distance. But a characteristic precipitancy, in deed and word—as much acquired as born of self-reliance in him—compelled him from hesitating on the brink of things. When angels and devils were at contest in his interests, he was not going to miss the excitement, nor the chance of applauding, or perhaps damning, the victors.
But he had had a more wearing time of it than he would have cared to admit, even to himself. He was not apt at moral conundrums; and one had come to consume his peace confoundedly. He felt it always smouldering in his breast, ready to break out into flame at any moment.
And he had really laid out its premises very impartially for his own consideration. He was an eclectic by nature; as, alas! is the case with a number of naughty people. It is unfortunate, indeed, that righteousness so often lacks the sense of humour, which is the faculty for seeing both sides of a question. The want seems to give obliquity such a superiority—though it is a specious one, of course.
He could admit, then, the inevitableness of a deed, which had preserved an honour most dear and sacred to himself. He could not admit a claim to that honour personified, as the price of blood. Louis, the slayer of a woman’s husband, could not take that husband’s place. Were she, knowingly, to let him, her honour would be forfeit: were he to take advantage of her ignorance, he would be doing a vile thing. She was not for Louis: could never be, in any scheme of moral purifications.
For whom, then? Why, scarcely less vile were he, Cartouche, to seek to take advantage of his friend’s hard fortune (It will be observed that he somehow inferred for that problematic vileness its problematic opportunity—the ineradicable instinct, perhaps, of an amoroso, experienced in the ways of audacity, to whom a rebuff had always stood, and likely been always justified in standing, for an incitement to fresh aggression).
As to another question, that of his own relationship to the dead man, he utterly declined to recognise it as one involving his personal interdiction. The marriage had been a mere conditional contract, of the essence of a betrothal, and the conditions had not been observed. No moral prohibition, such as touched upon the forbidden degrees, was implied by it, he told himself: and told himself so, he insisted, merely to emphasise the singleness of his renunciation. He would have the full credit for his self-sacrifice. His responsibility was not to a sentimental scruple, but to his ideal of an immaculate honour in the woman he worshipped.
Remained the question of his attitude towards the murderer of his father, and of his royal commission to hunt down that unknown assassin. Well, he had both discovered and exonerated him; but the offence was still officially un crime qualifié. To condone it were to make himself an accessory.
He would condone it, however, since by so doing he testified to his loyalty to his ideal. Yolande’s eternal fame should owe him that sacrifice of his duty to his nobler conscience. By so little, at least, he would justify himself in the thankless wardenship of her honour; by so little he would make himself the right to claim her into an association with himself.
So far and so good for his solution of the problem. This dear prize was not for Louis; it was not for him. What, then, was to be its destiny?
There was his ideal. Eternal maid, by virtue of her deathless bondage to the past, she was to exist the unattainable goddess of all desire. He might not reach to her; but he might enforce his own precedence in her worship. He would be the high-priest of that altar, winning to his place by heart’s-devotion. He pictured her, a virgin for ever unfulfilled, the flying figure on the vase, and himself, the passionate shepherd, stricken to an endless rapture of pursuit. What sweeter, more idealistic heaven?
“She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss;
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”
A pretty, pretty romance! But was it practical?
His soul, at least, flamed out to it. It gave him a mad wild joy to think that circumstance, and by no contrivance of his own, had removed the one mortal bar to its attainment.
Whence, now, and wherefore, his return to Turin—to make himself secure of his transfigured idol—to confirm Louis-Marie, if necessary, in his renunciation of an untenable claim. For knowing the man, he could not but have his doubts of his resolution. So much of him was based on emotion—a treacherous foundation.
And, for the rest—his own title, by way of redemption, to that priesthood? Why, Molly, of course, was to be included in the transcendent scheme. She was to share his atonement, and be appointed a vestal to the altar of his love. He would pension her off for that purpose; he would—
O, “a mad world, my masters,” where love could not legalise itself without making a scapegoat of somebody!
And there was even another flaw—his promise to Yolande. But he had been obliged to forget all about that.
As he walked, in a sort of sombre self-complacency (as of a martyr about to testify) through the streets, his mind was busy over those first practical solutions of his problem which he was about to face. It would be necessary, he had decided, to inform his friend—restored, he hoped, by now to reason—of the impossible situation which his appointment had brought about, and to urge him to resolve its insuperable difficulties by instant flight. That must be the first step. And, afterwards—?
Alert, perspicacious by instinct, his eyes had become aware, as he moved on, of something oddly inquisitorial, something droll and furtive, in the glances of friends and acquaintances whom he met, whether directed at himself, or slyly interchanged. He affected to pass all by unconcerned, nodding brightly here and there without stop or comment; but he made mental notes, abstractedly stroking his sword-hilt, as if it were a pet terrier’s head. He felt, quietly, a little wicked. His theory of self-reforms, it would appear, halted yet something short of meekness and the second cheek to the smiter. At the corner of a street he ran plump upon Dr Bonito.
The adverb is figurative. The Doctor was always as shrewd an encounter as an edge of north wind. He cut into one’s meditations like a draught. On the present occasion, it seemed, he cut to get home into an adversary unprepared. His lean face kindled to the unexpectedness and opportuneness of the meeting.
“Hail, hail, M. le Préfet!” he croaked, in hoarse glee. “Here’s a magnetic conjunction! What man so much in my mind!—and, lo! I look up; and the man himself! Have you despatched both rogues and measures in your new Province? But doubtless you are returned betimes to assay the truthfulness of the great report. Well, be satisfied; it is true.”
Cartouche balanced on his heel, imperturbably conning the face of his old familiar. He saw enough there to detain him a reflective moment. The two had not met since their parting “Under the Porticoes.”
“Father Bonito,” said he; “I do not want to possess your mind. You can stick up a bill for a new tenant. I have grown a little particular in my tastes. In the meanwhile, I am only this hour returned to Turin, and greatly pressed for time. What, in a word, is this report, of which you speak and I know nothing?”
The doctor sprawled up his hands in feigned astonishment.
“Gods! I believe he really hasn’t heard it! and the very stones of the town babbling with it these days past. Not to have heard it—the one most interested, with myself—he hasn’t! I’m my own first suitor to his gratitude for this.”
“Well; the devil give you brevity!”
“No, no—one moment—stop! The Marchioness di Rocco, Mr Trix—ah!”
He withdrew a detaining hand, grinned, took off his hat, and mopped his forehead with a ropey clout, eying his halted prey the while.
“A long throw that, Monsieur,” he said; “yet it hooked you. But, to be sure, she’s a killing bait.”
Cartouche, just lifting his eyebrows, vouchsafed him no other answer. He knew his man—was steeling himself quietly against some blow which he felt was preparing, and which he saw would be designed to take him off his guard. Let Bonito, in that case, extract what satisfaction he could out of his manner.
In fact, when the stroke actually fell, his reception of it was so apparently unconcerned as even to deceive the doctor into a doubt of the effectiveness of his own home-thrust, and to aggravate his malice proportionately.
“Yes, a killing bait—a—killing—bait,” he said; and threw his handkerchief into his hat, and covered himself—all deliberately. “Well,” he said, “congratulate me, Mr Trix. He was shy; but—he’s taken her at last.”
Cartouche yawned.
“In the name of patience—who’s taken whom?” said he.
“Who? Why M. Saint-Péray has taken his Marchesa, that’s all.”
“Well, those are news, to be sure.”
“Are they not—eh? He-he! You are looking worn, Mr Trix. I’m afraid you take your new duties too seriously. You shouldn’t forget that all social office is a compromise—a figure representing the balance between good and evil, to lower one of which unduly is to exalt the other unduly. Yes, we’ve married our couple.”
“Have we, indeed? And who are ‘we,’ my Bonito?”
“There! these low levels tell on one coming from the heights. You must be careful of your throat. I notice a huskiness in it already. Why, indeed, save for a natural diffidence, I might say, Monsieur, that ‘we’ stands for ‘I’; seeing that, as a fact, the initiative was mine. In any case, what we were one in desiring is, at this moment, an accomplished thing. The two are married—not, as you may suppose, a union regarded with favour in certain quarters.”
“No; I suppose not. And how did you bring it about?”
“Ah—ha! there’s the marrow! Why, how you flush and pale! I doubt the prudence of exciting you, Mr Trix, in this present turbulent state of your blood.”
“Exciting me? What do you mean? Why should I be excited? Have I been hanging rogues so few as to start at the mention of a noose? Tell me how you managed it, my dear excellent old devil.”
“Well, I will. There are points you mayn’t approve; but the end must justify the means. Listen, then. I could not make our friend eligible in the way I proposed. But still I was his matrimonial agent—you remember the term, it was your own? As such my duty to him, my duty to myself, demanded renewed enterprise on my part. You, who have expressed an eagerness no less than mine to secure this match, will, I hope, condone, even approve, the advantage I took of a report concerning yourself to realise our common wish.”
“A report? What was that?”
“Why, that you yourself was a suitor for the hand of the lady.”
“Yes? and the advantage you took of that same veracious legend?”
“It may have been a legend: it was certainly an opportunity. What did I do? Why—forgive me, sir—I simply went and repeated it, for what it was worth, to the Signorina Brambello, and left the leaven to ferment. The result was quite astonishing. She ran straight off, it appears, in a pet of jealousy to the lady; induced her to return with her to the bedside of her stricken gallant (by which, or thereabouts, it seems our Madam spent the night), and married the two incontinent the next morning at a neighbouring Chapel (called, somewhat appropriately, la Maddalena), giving herself and another for witness. Now, am I to be congratulated or not? A word in season hath accomplished what all your theories of pretty heartenings and reassurances had failed to. You appealed to the signorina’s sympathies; I to a baser but more practical sentiment. Acknowledge who was the better sophist.”
Cartouche clapped him on the shoulder.
“You, you, my Bonito. The credit is all yours, and the triumph. I will not forget it. I will not overlook your part in this happy consummation.”
Bonito grinned.
“Nor your innamorata’s, eh, Mr Trix? Egad! she’s a name in Turin to-day. She might command—but, there! these reports are not for my lips.”
“Her price, you mean? Well, she shall have it. Now I must go. I have business which can wait no longer.”
He went off, humming a little song. As once before, the doctor stood conning his receding figure, until it had vanished round a corner. Then he gave a short sudden laugh, and turned to his own way.
“Well acted,” he thought; “and well out of the reckoning, he; and well saved, my own skin—for the present—I’m a little afraid at the expense of the dear signorina’s. But, bah! if the wind were to hold its breath for fear a leaf or two might fall, there’d be no clearing the air in this world of scruples.”
* * * * * * * *
Cartouche walked straight to the little villa in the Lane of Chestnuts. It was a glowing, lustful day. The white curtains in the windows bosomed out to him like love’s own welcome; lizards basked on the walls; the flowers in the garden hung sweet drowsy heads. He was singing still when he reached the door: singing when he greeted Fiorentina with a chin-chuck: he walked, with a song on his lips, into the parlour. She was there, sure enough—a flushed palpitating beauty, with a brave front of greeting, and a quaking heart behind it. He had no idea of making many words about the thing. He stopped in the middle of the room, smiling at her.
“What!” said he: “no kiss for me?”
She had never realised until this moment the fulness of her daring, nor its madness. She gulped sickly, as she crept up to him without a word, and put her lips to his cheek.
He had a purse of gold ready, and held it out to her.
“There are your wages, Judas.”
As if her legs had been knocked from under her, she went down at his feet.
“No, no! He was dying, Cherry!”
“Better he had died.”
“O, don’t condemn me unheard!”
“Did you disobey me?”
“Yes; but—”
“That is enough.”
“O, my God! Am I to go?”
“Yes.”
“Think what it means to me?”
“I am thinking.”
“And you can do it?”
“And I can do it—a hundred times. And worse than that, if you tempt me. Take your price, and go—back to England, if you are wise. Do you see this in my hand? It’s my last mercy.”
He drew away from her, where she lay, cast upon her face and moaning.
“I am going,” he said. “But I shall return in the afternoon at three o’clock. If then I find you still here—understand what I say—your chance to save yourself is past. I’ll kill you on our bed—I mean it.”
A wild desolate scream broke from her throat. He threw the purse down beside her on the floor, and left the house without another word.
At three o’clock to the minute he returned. Not till he had searched into every corner of the villa, would he question the red-eyed cameristas, huddled awaiting him in their kitchen. Then he learned that she had gone indeed. They would have besieged his heart with tearful clamour, telling of the scene—its rending piteousness; but he stopped them peremptorily, paid them their wages, double and treble, and dismissed them.
He had already seen that the purse of gold lay untouched where he had thrown it down upon the floor. For all his gripping will, that gave his heart a wrench. He stooped and took it in his hand—hesitated—then, with a curse at his own weakness, thrust it into his breast. He went from room to room, bolting the windows. In one upstairs he paused—so long that ghosts began to stir and whisper in the empty house. Something, he thought, was moving the curtains of the bed to which his back was turned. Little slippers stole from underneath a chair and walked without sound upon the floor. He heard a sigh—it was himself sighing. With a mad oath, he turned and tramped downstairs, resolutely, making all the noise he could. The next moment he had clapped to the door behind him, and was in the open air.
That night, pacing the streets, he passed a hospital for Magdalens. A box, beseeching charity, was in the wall. He stopped, and taking the purse from his breast, dropped the coins from it, one by one, into the slit.
Then he turned and disappeared into the darkness.