“I will spend an idle day in the fields of Passy,” he assured himself, “and forget it all, and return in the evening to find the storm blown over.”
He went out by way of the Place St Paul, walking along the line of quays, and watching, something with the tender feeling of a convalescent, the golden frost of sunlight that gemmed the waters of the Seine. It was a fair, sweet morning, too innocent, it seemed, to take account of human passions; and by-and-by its influence so far wrought upon him as that he was able to commit himself to it with some confidence of enjoyment. All about him, moreover, life seemed pleasurably normal—not significant of fear and apprehension, as his soul had dreaded to find it.
But with the approach of dusk his innate misgivings must once more gather force till they knocked like steam in his arteries; and, so dreading, he lingered over his return until deep dark had closed upon the town. At the barrier he heard enough to confirm his disquiet, though the reports of what had happened were so formless and contradictory as to decide him to refer inquiry to the evidence of his own senses. Therefore, in silence and heart-quaking, he made his way eastwards, and presently turned into the dark intricacy of squares that led up to the Rue Beautreillis.
The street, when he reached it, seemed given over to the desolation of night. The taller houses slept pregnant with austerity as vast Assyrian images; the lamps, rocking drowsily in their slings, blinked, one could have thought, to squeeze the slumber from their eyes. Distant sounds there were, but none proceeding from points nearer in suggestion than the far side of dawn.
By-and-by, however, one—a little gurgling noise like the sob of a gutter—slid into Ned’s consciousness, as, speeding forward, his footsteps rang out a very chime of echoes. Almost in the same moment he was upon it, or upon its place of issue—a ragged huddle of shapes pulled into the shadow of a buttress.
A clawing figure, gaunt and unclean, rose at him—recognised him in the same instant, apparently, and gave out a bestial cry.
“She is going, monsieur! May God wither the hand that beat her down, and may the soul of him that directed it scream in everlasting hell!”
He seized the young man’s sleeve and drew him reluctant forward. The huddle of frowzy things parted, that he might see.
The coarse large poissarde; the ally who had yesterday cherished his cause and sung his praises; the great breathing, truculent woman with the defiant voice! Here was the gross material of so much vigour, collapsed, mangled, and flung aside. The little choking noise was accounted for. There was a crimson rent in the woman’s throat. She died while Ned was looking down upon her.
And this mad thing that spat at the sky? Doubtless he was her husband; and he might have been a royal duke from the freedom of his language.