Louis looked very hard at his dirty, leering face as he took the pencil and paper, shrugged his shoulders, and turned away to the table. The man hastily placed a stool for him.
“Thanks,” said the Vicomte rather coldly, “but you need not supervise my composition. You can read it afterwards if you have a mind to.” And as his Mercury retired grumbling to the door he began to write to Gilbert—in English.
At the end of a line and a half he stopped dead. It was not the difficulties of a foreign tongue which gave him pause, it was the sudden unpleasant suspicion that he was walking into a trap, destined not, indeed, for his own undoing, but for that of the recipient of his missive, if he sent one. The demeanour of his would-be messenger, even now fidgeting with impatience, his eagerness to carry a letter, his convenient production of the means of communication, might indeed be due to cupidity, but were capable of a darker explanation. Another voice told him that his fear was born of imagination, and that when the Fates had put such a chance in his way he was a fool not to snatch at it. You are throwing away your life, perhaps, for a scruple, said Reason. Gilbert was not suspect. But Gilbert’s name, by accident or design, had figured with his own in the list of conspirators. Of what avail, too, to have refrained, in the face of strong desire, from leaving him a verbal message yesterday morning if he meant to compromise him now far more deeply by writing to him?—No, he dared not do it. He ran his pencil through the words, crushed the paper together in his hand, and rose.
“I have changed my mind, M. Figaro,” he said carelessly. “There will be no letter, after all. I have forgotten my correspondent’s address.”
The man looked for a second as if he were about to break out into a string of curses. Then, mastering himself, he picked up the shaving materials from the floor, observing acidly: “As the citizen pleases. I think he will be sorry before long that he refused an honest man’s offer of help.”
“The price was too high,” said Louis enigmatically.
“Nevertheless you will regret it, ci-devant,” repeated the other in a menacing tone. Watching the door close on him, Louis thought it very probable.
The morning dragged by. Last night's horror had not wholly relaxed its grip, but the presence of daylight had the effect of company, and the Vicomte de Saint-Errnay would rather have died a thousand times than allow any human eye to witness his private emotions. He walked up and down reflecting, till he tired himself by the constant turning that the narrow limits of his cell required. He wondered what Gilbert was doing—what he had done when he found out. And D’Aubeville, De Périgny, and the rest—what of them? How many of them had been taken? There might be some in La Force. He had not asked because he was sure that he would not be told the truth. At any rate, their scheme was shattered for ever.
And something else was ended too. Lucienne should be starting for England to-morrow. Would she go now? Why not? There was all the more reason for her departure. He should never see her again . . . and even in his hour of renunciation, the highest of his life, he had never contemplated exactly that. The jailor was right. He wished that he had sent a message—not to Gilbert, but to her. It might have been in her hands by now. He smoothed out the crumpled ball of paper, then threw it away with a gesture half anger, half regret. Of what use—of what use! With Lucienne he had had his chance—and had chosen not to take it. It looked now inconceivable folly; for when he had turned his back on what honour forbade him to take he had known—or at least he had recognised afterwards—that there were other things still left for him in life. But since he was to end like this the sacrifice seemed barren beyond the power of speech. He was to die without having known the best that life could give him. It would have been some comfort to remember at the last that he had had his heart’s desire. It was the very poorest kind of consolation to feel that he might have known it, and had not. It seemed to the young man that he could better have borne to see Gilbert and Lucienne together with his own living eyes (as indeed he had schooled himself to realise that he must see them) than that their union should date from an epoch when he, blown somewhere about the winds of the world, could no longer behold it. He had an extreme reluctance to die, in any case; but this thought stung him to the most passionate revolt. It raged in him for a little while, and then the very vehemence with which he dashed himself in thought against the implacable barrier of Death restored him to a former mood. He had to die like a gentleman. It was perhaps, after all, good that in this matter he had lived like one too. He had no other creed.