"When I knew you were you. First I saw that ring—that ring on your hand. It was my wife's. I gave it to her the first New Year after we married. I saw it on your hand when you were drinking at the bar next door. Then I asked them your name. I knew it. I had read your letters to my wife—"
"Your wife once on a time!"
Jean Jacques' eyes swam red. "My wife always and always—and at the last there in my arms." Stolphe temporized. "I never knew you. She did not leave you because of me. She came to me because—because I was there for her to come to, and you weren't there. Why do you want to do me any harm?" He still must be careful, for undoubtedly the man was mad—his eyes were too bright.
"You were the death of her," answered Jean Jacques, leaning forward. "She was most ill-ah, who would not have been sorry for her! She was poor. She had been to you—but to live with a woman day by day, but to be by her side when the days are done, and then one morning to say, 'Au revoir till supper' and then go and never come back, and to take money and rings that belonged to her! . . . That was her death—that was the end of Carmen Barbille; and it was your fault."
"You would do me harm and not hurt her! Look how she treated you—and others."
Jean Jacques half rose from his seat in sudden rage, but he restrained himself, and sat down again. "She had one husband—only one. It was Jean Jacques Barbille. She could only treat one as she treated me—me, her husband. But you, what had you to do with that! You used her—so!" He made a motion as though to stamp out an insect with his foot. "Beautiful, a genius, sick and alone—no husband, no child, and you used her so! That is why I shall kill you to-night. We will fight for it."
Yes, but surely the man was mad, and the thing to do was to humour him, to gain time. To humour a madman—that is what one always advised, therefore Stolphe would make the pourparler, as the French say.
"Well, that's all right," he rejoined, "but how is it going to be done? Have you got a pistol?" He thought he was very clever, and that he would now see whether Jean Jacques Barbille was armed. If he was not armed, well, then, there would be the chances in his favour; it wasn't easy to kill with hands alone.
Jean Jacques ignored the question, however. He waved a hand impatiently, as though to dismiss it. "She was beautiful and splendid; she had been a queen down there in Quebec. You lied to her, and she was blind at first —I can see it all. She believed so easily—but yes, always! There she was what she was, and you were what you are, not a Frenchman, not Catholic, and an American—no, not an American—a South American. But no, not quite a South American, for there was the Portuguese nigger in you—Sit down!"
Jean Jacques was on his feet bending over the enraged mongrel. He had spoken the truth, and Carmen's last lover had been stung as though a serpent's tooth was in his flesh. Of all things that could be said about him, that which Jean Jacques said was the worst—that he was not all white, that he had nigger blood! Yet it was true; and he realized that Jean Jacques must have got his information in Shilah itself where he had been charged with it. Yet, raging as he was, and ready to take the Johnny Crapaud—that is the name by which he had always called Carmen's husband—by the throat, he was not yet sure that Jean Jacques was unarmed. He sat still under an anger greater than his own, for there was in it that fanaticism which only the love or hate of a woman could breed in a man's mind.