“I know the truth, my money-man. Do you think she’d have looked at me if you’d been to her what she thought I might be? No, bien sur! Did you take her where she could see the world? No. Did you bring her presents? No. Did you say, ‘Come along, we will make a little journey to see the world?’ No. Do you think that a woman can sit and darn your socks, and tidy your room, and bake you pancakes in the morning while you roast your toes, and be satisfied with just that, and not long for something outside?”
Jean Jacques was silent. He did not move. He was being hypnotized by a mind of subtle strength, by the logic of which he was so great a lover.
The master-carpenter pressed his logic home. “No, she must sit in your shadow always. She must wait till you come. And when you come, it was ‘Here am I, your Jean Jacques. Fall down and worship me. I am your husband.’ Did you ever say, ‘Heavens, there you are, the woman of all the world, the rising and the setting sun, the star that shines, the garden where all the flowers of love grow’? Did you ever do that? But no, there was only one person in the world—there was only you, Jean Jacques. You were the only pig in the sty.”
It was a bold stroke, but if Jean Jacques could stand that, he could stand anything. There was a savage start on the part of Jean Jacques, and the lever almost moved.
“Stop one second!” cried the master-carpenter, sharply now, for in spite of the sudden savagery on Jean Jacques’ part, he felt he had an advantage, and now he would play his biggest card.
“You can kill me. It is there in your hand. No one can stop you. But will that give you anything? What is my life? If you take it away, will you be happier? It is happiness you want. Your wife—she will love you, if you give her a chance. If you kill me, I will have my revenge in death, for it is the end of all things for you. You lose your wife for ever. You need not do so. She would have gone with me, not because of me, but because I was a man who she thought would treat her like a friend, like a comrade; who would love her—sacre, what husband could help make love to such a woman, unless he was in love with himself instead of her!”
Jean Jacques rocked to and fro over the lever in his agitation, yet he made no motion to move it. He was under a spell.
Straight home drove the master-carpenter’s reasoning now. “Kill me, and you lose her for ever. Kill me, and she will hate you. You think she will not find out? Then see: as I die I will shriek out so loud that she can hear me, and she will understand. She will go mad, and give you over to the law. And then—and then! Did you ever think what will become of your child, of your Zoe, if you go to the gallows? That would be your legacy and your blessing to her—the death of a murderer; and she would be left alone with the woman that would hate you in death! Voila—do you not see?”
Jean Jacques saw. The terrific logic of the thing smote him. His wife hating him, himself on the scaffold, his little Zoe disgraced and dishonoured all her life; and himself out of it all, unable to help her, and bringing irremediable trouble on her! As a chemical clears a muddy liquid, leaving it pure and atomless, so there seemed to pass over Jean Jacques’ face a thought like a revelation.
He took his hand from the lever. For a moment he stood like one awakened out of a sleep. He put his hands to his eyes, then shook his head as though to free it of some hateful burden. An instant later he stooped, lifted up the ladder beside him, and let it down to the floor of the flume.