“Monsieur and mademoiselle, they are well—they are with you, I hope, madame?”
She looked at him in the eyes without flinching, and on the instant she was aware that he knew all, and that there had been talk with George Masson. She knew the little man to be as good as ever can be, but she resented the fact that he knew. It was clear George Masson had told him—else how could he know; unless, perhaps, all the world knew!
“You know well enough that I have come alone, my friend,” she answered. “It is no place for Zoe; and it is no place for my husband and him together,” she made a motion of the head towards the mastercarpenter. “Santa Maria, you know it very well indeed!”
The Clerk of the Court bowed, but made no reply. What was there to say to a remark like that! It was clear that the problem must be worked out alone between these two people, though he was not quite sure what the problem was. The man had said the thing was over; but the woman had come, and the look of both showed that it was not all over.
What would the man do? What was it the woman wished to do? The master-carpenter had said that Jean Jacques had spared him, and meant to forgive his wife. No doubt he had done so, for Jean Jacques was a man of sentiment and chivalry, and there was no proof that there had been anything more than a few mad caresses between the two misdemeanants; yet here was the woman with the man for whom she had imperilled her future and that of her husband and child!
As though Carmen understood what was going on in his mind, she said: “Since you know everything, you can understand that I want a few words with M’sieu’ George here alone.”
“Madame, I beg of you,” the Clerk of the Court answered instantly, his voice trembling a little—“I beg that you will not be alone with him. As I believe, your husband is willing to let bygones be bygones, and to begin to-morrow as though there was no to-day. In such case you should not see Monsieur Masson here alone. It is bad enough to see him here in the office of the Clerk of the Court, but to see him alone—what would Monsieur Jean Jacques say? Also, outside there in the street, if our neighbours should come to know of the trouble, what would they say? I wish not to be tiresome, but as a friend, a true friend of your whole family, madame—yes, in spite of all, your whole family—I hope you will realize that I must remain here. I owe it to a past made happy by kindness which is to me like life itself. Monsieur Masson, is it not so?” he added, turning to the master-carpenter. More flushed and agitated than when he had faced Jean Jacques in the flume, the master-carpenter said: “If she wants a few words-of farewell—alone with me, she must have it, M’sieu’ Fille. The other room—eh? Outside there”—he jerked a finger towards the street—“they won’t know that you are not with us; and as for Jean Jacques, isn’t it possible for a Clerk of the Court to stretch the truth a little? Isn’t the Clerk of the Court a man as well as a mummy? I’d do as much for you, little lawyer, any time. A word to say farewell, you understand!” He looked M. Fille squarely in the eye.
“If I had to answer M. Jean Jacques on such a matter—and so much at stake—”
Masson interrupted. “Well, if you like we’ll bind your eyes and put wads in your ears, and you can stay, so that you’ll have been in the room all the time, and yet have heard and seen nothing at all. How is that, m’sieu’? It’s all right, isn’t it?”
M. Fille stood petrified for a moment at the audacity of the proposition. For him, the Clerk of the Court, to be blinded and made ridiculous with wads in his ears-impossible!