Reeling back with the agony of her murderous blows he made a fierce effort to tear the knife from her hands, but she suddenly threw it a long way from her towards the river, where it fell with a light splash, and rushing at him twined her arms close about his neck, while her mad laughter, piercing and terrible, rang out through the quiet air.
"Together!" she said, "That day at the fair we were together, and now—we shall be together again! Come!—Come! I have waited long enough!—your promised letter never came—you have kept me waiting a long long while—but now I will wait no longer! I have found you!—I will never let you go!"
Furiously, despite his wounds, he fought with her,—tried to thrust her away from him,—and beat her backwards and downwards,—but she had the strength of ten women in her maddened frame, and she clung to him with the tenacity of some savage beast. All around them was perfectly quiet,—there was not a soul in sight,—there was no place near where a shout for help could have been heard. Struggling still, dizzy, blind and breathless, he did not see that they were nearing the edge of the slippery bank—all his efforts were concentrated in an endeavour to shake off the infuriated creature, made more powerful in her very madness by the just sense of her burning wrong and his callous treachery—when all at once his foot slipped and he fell to the ground. She pounced on him like a tigress, and fastened her fingers on his throat,—clutching his flesh and breathlessly muttering, "Never!—never! Never can you hide away from me any more! Together—together! I will never let you go!—" till, as his eyes rolled up in agony and his jaw relaxed, she uttered a shout of ecstasy to see him die! He sank heavily under her fierce grasp which she never relaxed for an instant, and his dead weight dragged her unconsciously down—down!—she not heeding or knowing whither she was moving,—down—still down!—till, as she clung to his inert body, madly determining not to let it go, she fell,—fast grappling her betrayer's corpse,—into the ominous stillness of the river. The flood opened, as it were, to receive the two,—the dead and the living—there was a slight ripple as though a mouth in the water smiled—then the usual calm surface reflected the moon once more, and there was no sign of trouble. Nothing struggled,—nothing floated,—all was perfectly tranquil. The bells chimed from all the churches in the city a quarter to midnight, and their pretty echoes were wafted across the water,—no other sound disturbed the silence,—not a trace of the struggle was left, save just one smeared track of grass and slime, which, if examined carefully, might have been found sprinkled with blood. But with the morning the earth would have swallowed those drops of human life as silently as the river-quicksand had sucked down the bodies of the betrayed and the betrayer;—in neither case would Nature have any hint to give of the tragedy enacted. Nature is a dumb witness to many dramas,—and it may be that she has eyes and ears and her own way of keeping records. Sometimes she gives up long-buried secrets, sometimes she holds them fast;—biding her time until the Judgment Day, when not only the crime shall be disclosed but the Cause of the crime's committal. And it may chance in certain cases, such as those of men who have deliberately ruined the lives of trusting and loving women, that the Cause may be proved a more criminal thing than the crime!
That night Martine Doucet slept badly, and had horrible dreams of being dragged by force to Rome, and there taken before the Pope who at once deprived her of her son Fabien, and ordered her to be shot in one of the public squares for neglecting to attend Mass regularly. And Jean Patoux and his wife, reposing on their virtuous marital couch, conversed a long time about the unexpected and unwelcome visit of Claude Cazeau, and the mission he had declared himself entrusted with from the Vatican,—"And you may depend upon it," said Madame sententiously, "that he will get his way by fair means or foul! I am thankful that neither of OUR children were subjects for a Church-miracle!—the trouble of the remedy seems more troublesome than the sickness!"
"No, no," said her husband, "Thou dost not judge these things rightly, my little one! God worked the remedy, as He works all good things,—and there would be no trouble about it if it were not for the men's strange way of taking it. Did ever our Lord do a good or a kind deed without being calumniated for it? Did not all those men-fools in Jerusalem go about 'secretly seeking how they might betray him'? That is a lesson for us all,—and never forget, petite, that for showing them the straight way to Heaven He was crucified!"
The next day a telegram was despatched from the Archbishop of Rouen to
Monsignor Moretti at the Vatican:—
"Claude Cazeau visited Hotel Poitiers last night, but has since mysteriously disappeared. Every search and enquiry being made. Strongly suspect foul play."
XXVI.
November was now drawing to a close, and St. Cecilia's Day dawned in a misty sunrise, half cloud, half light, like smoke and flame intermingled. Aubrey Leigh, on waking that morning, had almost decided to leave Rome before the end of the month. He had learned all that was necessary for him to know;—he had not come to study the antiquities, or the dark memories of dead empires, for he would have needed to live at least ten years in the city to gain even a surface knowledge of all the Romes, built one upon another, in the Rome of to-day. His main object had been to discover whether the Holy See existed as a grand and pure institution for the uplifting and the saving of the souls of men; or whether it had degenerated into an unscrupulous scheme for drawing the money out of their pockets. He had searched this problem and solved it. He had perceived the trickery, the dissimulation and hypocrisy of Roman priestcraft. He had seen the Pope officiate at High Mass in the Sistine Chapel, having procured the "introduction from very high quarters" which, even according to ordinary guide-books, is absolutely necessary,—the "high quarters" in this instance being Monsignor Gherardi. Apart from this absurdity,—this impious idea of needing an "introduction" to a sacred service professedly held for the worship of the Divine, by the Representative of Christ on earth, he had watched with sickening soul all the tawdry ceremonial so far removed from the simplicity of Christ's commands,—he had stared dully, till his brows ached, at the poor, feeble, scraggy old man with the pale, withered face and dark eyes, who was chosen to represent a "Manifestation of the Deity" to his idolatrous followers;—and as he thought of all the poverty, sorrow, pain, perplexity, and bewilderment of the "lost sheep" who were wandering to and fro in the world, scarcely able to fight the difficulties of their daily lot, and unable to believe in God because they were never allowed to understand or to experience any of His goodness, such a passion of protest arose in him, that he could have sprung on the very steps of the altar and cried aloud to the aged Manager of the Stage-scene there, "Away with this sham of Christianity! Give us the true message of Christ, undefiled! Sell these useless broidered silks,—these flaunting banners;—take the silver, gold, and bank-notes which hysterical pilgrims cast at your feet!—this Peter's Pence, amounting to millions, whose exact total you alone know,—and come out into the highways and byways of the cities of all lands,—call to you the lame, the halt, the blind, the sickly, and diseased,—give comfort where comfort is needed,—defend the innocent—protect the just, and silence the Voce de la Verita which published under your authority, callously advocates murder!"
And though he felt all this, he could only remain a dumb spectator of the Show in which not the faintest shadow of Christianity according to Christ, appeared—and when the theatrical pageant was over, he hurried out into the fresh air half stupefied with the heavy sense of shame that such things could be, and no man found true enough to the commands of the Divine Master to shake the world with strong condemnation.