M. Fréron, I was told, was again out. Yes, again. He had come back punctual to his appointment, and had been almost immediately fetched away by a sergent de ville. The man had come, and they had left together, in a great hurry. No one knew what was his errand; it was impossible to say how long the musician would be gone. He had departed without a word, but looking certainly very pale and agitated.
Obviously it was no good my remaining; the interview must be postponed. I was not much concerned over that; at the worst it represented no more than a formal necessity, about whose issue I had not the slightest doubt. Fifine was what she was; not what her father had made her. I knew that much. He would not object to a paying son-in-law, on the strength of whatever irregularities provided. He had been known even to comment a little peevishly on the rigidity of his daughter’s code—not rebuking it, but only feebly wondering. The “professional” class is always a little apt to indefiniteness in these matters; and when one is very poor——!
I turned my face for home. That should have been an occasion for joy; yet somehow a dense oppression sat on me. I could not master it; it increased with every step I took. It was the weather, no doubt—or was it that sort of moral dyspepsia, common to those, I had heard, who are realising for the first time their committal to the matrimonial lottery? Were we really wise in throwing this sop to the social Cerberus? And for what? Why, for nothing but that we might penetrate into the dismal regions he guarded. What a fool I had been, maybe! She had given me everything: the law would take away the loveliest part of that gift, its spontaneity. Yet, if she wished it; if it would make her happier? And, then, the tender thought she had implied—the promise——!
No, she was right, God bless her! Dismiss that as settled. But the oppression would not lift. Damn that sergent de ville! Somehow he had been there all the time, hurrying and hurrying through the background of my brain; I recognised it now—
I recognized him, or his like, in the flesh the next moment. He stood at the entrance to the archway in the Rue de Fleurus, officially barring the way to a crowd of people who pressed and gloated to look in. They hovered there, a vulturine swarm, fulsome and unclean in the soaking twilight. What was the matter? What carrion had attracted them? For some instinctive reason they parted to let me through; but the man challenged me. A thought of the tragedy that I had so often mocked at as a stage illusion had caught at my heart like a physical agony, and it was with a thick gasp that I gave my name. He murmured “Continuez,” looking at me curiously, as he moved to let me by, and I went on into the dancing shadows. There were others congregated there—officers, strangers—a confused indefinite group; but only and for all eternity to me the white aghast face of Madame Crussol, hung up in the dim gaslight and staring my way like a stone gargoyle.
“Comment?” I said, with an insane little giggle. “What is all this about; and why do you look at me like that?”
And thereat the gargoyle seemed to detach itself from the wall, and to spring at me with a shriek:—
“Go to her—she is hurt—she is dying—she has called for you!”
Go to her? Where? There was a roaring in my brain: somebody was leading me by the arm: we were in a running cab, and a whirl of mud and water flashed incessantly outside the windows. It was a brief race: the Hospital was somewhere in the Boulevard de Port Royal close by: but if it had extended over hours, I could have found no word to say to my escort—no question to put to him. What was that moment for idle discussion? and he could have nothing essential to tell me that I did not know already. There was a subconscious voice going on in me all the time, whispering of an inviolable hush; a dark soft hand seemed to steal itself over my eyes. I never thought of vengeance. What did the motive or the method concern me? This tragedy was one not of the living hate but of the living love. I thought I kept saying to myself, “But she fell asleep in my arms—but she fell asleep in my arms,” over and over again, in a protesting monotonous amazement; but no doubt I uttered nothing articulate.
In a moment the flash and whirr of the mud had ceased; and a muffled throbbing and drumming succeeded. And then suddenly we were in a dimly-lighted vestibule, and as suddenly moving on by cold clean passages, always cold and always clean, yet intricate and eternal, and a soft-stepped woman went eternally with us. Her soundless upspringing had been quite in keeping with the churchlike atmosphere of the place; she might have been the verger especial to its ghosts and tombs. And presently we passed an open doorway from which exhaled an essence thinly sweet and shuddering, and glancing mechanically in I saw the flitting of dusk shapes, and shadows pierced with gleams, and a vortex of wooden forms, going down in concentric rings to a shining altar. But we went by, and did not stop—not until the end came in the little quiet room with its truckle bed.