Servants of Sin: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

Desparre was now awful to gaze upon.

Unsheathing his own sword, Clarges advanced towards him, uttering only one word, the word "Draw." Then he stood before the other, waiting, watching what he would do, while determined that, if he did not draw as he bade him, he would thrust his weapon through his craven breast and so put an end to his vile life.

At first Desparre did nothing, but stood stock and motionless before him with always that drawn-down look upon one side of his face, though now his lower jaw seemed, as seen through the dusk, to be working horribly, and his teeth, one or two of which were discoloured, showing like fangs.

Then he put his hand to his sword--it appeared as though that hand would never reach the hilt, as though it were numbed or dead--and with what looked like extreme effort, drew forth the blade. Yet only to let it drop listlessly by his side directly afterwards, the point clicking metallically against the cobble stones of the street as he did so.

Was the coward struck lifeless with fear? Almost, it seemed so. Yet but a moment later, Clarges knew that it was something worse than fear that possessed him. For now the sword he had held so languidly fell altogether from his hand and clattered upon the stones as it did so, while Desparre stood shaking before the man who was about to slay him, his arms quivering helplessly, his face appalling in its distortions, his body swaying. Then he, too, fell heavily, and lay, as it seemed, lifeless before the other, his arms stretched out wide.

And Clarges, bending over him, regarding him as though he still doubted whether this were a ruse or not, yet knowing, feeling certain, that it was not so--did not perceive that the skulking form of the galley-slave had drawn nearer to them--that the man was now crouching in a stooping posture on the other side of the street regarding him and Desparre, while his starting, eager eyes observed all that was happening.

"Has he died of fright?" Clarges whispered to himself, while he bent over the prostrate man. "Died of fright or by God's visitation? Or is he dead? Anyway, he has escaped me for the present. So be it. We shall meet again, unless this scourge which is over all the place takes him or me, or both of us, before we can do so."

Whereupon, he left Desparre lying there. He could not stab him now, helpless as he was and dead or dying? Yet, as he remounted his tired steed which had stood tranquilly in the road where he had left it, he remembered that, during the many weeks he had lain in the Paris Hospital, and while the wounds administered at that craven's instigation were healing, he had seen men brought into it who had fallen almost lifeless in the street from paralysis and apoplexy. From paralysis! Yes, that must be what had now stricken this man; he felt sure it must. He remembered that there was one so brought in who had dropped in the street suddenly--the doctors said from a great shock he had received--whose face had been drawn down as Desparre's was, whose jaws had twitched, even in his insensibility, in much the same way.

Yes, he reflected, it was that, it must be that which had stricken this man thus at the moment when he had meant to slay him. One death had saved him from another, since now he must surely be near his end. If he did not perish of the stroke, the fever would doubtless lay hold upon him. His account was made. And musing thus, thanking God, too, that he had been spared from taking the life of even so great a villain as Desparre, and from having for ever the burden of the man's execution upon his head, he slowly rode off from the street of the Barefooted Carmelites, to learn, if possible, whether the cordon of women from Paris had yet arrived. But scarcely had his horse's hoofs ceased to echo down that mournful, deserted place in which now lay two bodies stretched upon their backs--the one, that of the poor dead woman at the lower end of it, the other, that of the wealthy and highly descended Armand, Duc Desparre--than forth from the porch across the street there stole the form of the skulking convict,--the convict who had been tracking Desparre from long before he entered the street, the galley-slave who had stood, or crouched aside, to see what should be the result of the meeting with the man who had dismounted from his horse to parley with him.

With almost the sinuous crawl of the panther, this convict--old, and with his close cropped hair flecked with grey--stole across the wide street to where the form of Desparre lay; then, reaching that form, he went down on one knee beside it, and, in the dark, felt all over it, lifting up his own hands now and again and peering at them in the night as though to see if they glistened with anything they might have come against, while feeling also one palm with the fingers of the other hand to discover if it was wet. Yet such was not the case.