"How I have hated you, Monsieur le Marquis!" he muttered thickly, "How I have hated you! Yes—as Cain hated Abel! For we—we are brothers as they were—born of the same father—ah! You start!" for Fontenelle uttered a gasping cry—"Yes—in spite of your pride, your lineage, your insolent air of superiority—YOUR father was MY father!—the late Marquis was no more satisfied with one wife than any of us are!—and had no higher code of honour! YOUR mother was a grande dame,—MINE was a 'light o' love' like this feeble creature!" and he turned his glance for a moment on the shuddering, wailing Jeanne Richaud. "YOU were the legal Marquis—I the illegal genius! . . . yes—genius—!"
He broke off, struggling for breath.
"Do you hear me?" he whispered thickly, "Do you hear?"
"I hear," answered Fontenelle, speaking with difficulty, "You have hated me, you say—hate me no more!—for hate is done with—and love also!—I am—dying!"
He grasped the rank grass with both hands in sudden agony, and his face grew livid. Miraudin turned himself on one arm.
"Dying! You, too! By Heaven! Then the Marquisate must perish! I should have fired in the air—but—but the sins of the fathers . . . what is it?" Here a ghastly smile passed over his features, "The sins of the fathers—are visited on the children! What a merciful Deity it is, to make such an arrangement!—and the excellent fathers!—when all the children meet them—I wonder what they will have to say to each other I wonder . . ." A frightful shudder convulsed his body and he threw up his arms.
"'Un peu d'amour,
Et puis—bon soir!'
C'est ca! Bon soir, Marquis!"
A great sigh broke from his lips, through which the discoloured blood began to ooze slowly—he was dead. And Fontenelle, whose wound bled inwardly, turned himself wearily round to gaze on the rigid face upturned to the moon. His brother's face! So like his own! He was not conscious himself of any great pain—he felt a dizzy languor and a drowsiness as of dreams—but he knew what the dreaming meant,—he knew that he would soon sleep to wake again—but where? He did not see that the woman who had professed to love Miraudin had already rushed away from his corpse in terror, and was entreating the cabman to drive her quickly from the scene of combat,—he realised nothing save the white moonbeams on the still face of the man who in God's sight had been his brother. Fainter and still fainter grew his breath—but he felt near his heart for a little crumpled knot of filmy lace which he always carried—a delicate trifle which had fallen from one of Sylvie's pretty evening gowns once, when he had caught her in his arms and sworn his passion. He kissed it now, and inhaled its violet perfume—as he took it from his lips he saw that it was stained with blood. The heavy languor upon him grew heavier—and in the dark haze which began to float before his eyes he saw women's faces, some beautiful, some devilish, yet all familiar,—he felt himself sinking—sinking into some deep abyss of shadows, so dark and dreary that he shuddered with the icy cold and horror, till Sylvie came, yes!—Sylvie's soft eyes shone upon him, full of the pity and tenderness of some divine angel near God's throne,—an angel of sweetness—an angel of forgiveness—ah!—so sweet she was, so childlike, so trusting, so fair, so enticing in those exquisite ways of hers which had pleaded with him, prayed to him, tried to draw him back from evil, and incite him to noble thought; "ways" that would have persuaded him to cleanse his flag of honour from the mud of social vice and folly, and lift it to the heavens white and pure! Ah, sweet ways!—sweet voice!—sweet woman!—sweet possibilities of life now gone forever! Again that sinking,—that icy chill! His eyes were closing—yet he forced himself to open them as he sank back heavily on the turf, and then—then he saw the great white moon descending on him as it seemed, like a shield of silver flung down to crush him, by some angry god!
"Sylvie!—Sylvie!" he muttered, "I never knew—how much I loved you—till-now! Sylvie!"