The Story of André Cornélis

by Paul Bourget

"I promise; and then?"

"When was he to come back here to see you?"

"On Saturday," he answered, with a shrug of his shoulders. "The bargain was concluded. He was determined to wait until the day came for me to set out for Havre before paying me the money, so that he might make quite sure I should not stay on in Paris.—The game is up," he added, "and now I wash my hands of it."

"Edmond Termonde," said I, rising, but not loosing him from the hold of my eye, "remember that I have spared you; but you must not tempt me a second time by putting yourself in my way, or crossing the path of any whom I love."

Then, with a threatening gesture, I quitted the room, leaving him seated at the table near the window. I had hardly reached the corridor when my nerves, which had been so strangely under my control during the struggle, failed me. My legs bent under me, and I feared I was about to fall. How was I to account for the disorder of my clothes? I made a great effort, concealed the torn ends of my cravat, turned up the collar of my coat to hide the condition of my shirt, and did my best to repair the damage that had been done to my hat. I then wiped my face with my handkerchief, and went downstairs with a slow and careless step. The inspector of the first floor was, doubtless, occupied at the other end of the corridor; but two of the waiters saw me and were evidently surprised at my aspect. They were, however, too busy, luckily for me, to stop me and inquire into the cause of my discomposure. At last I reached the courtyard. If anybody who knew me had been there? I got into the first cab and gave my address. I had kept my word. I had conquered.

[XVII]

What was I going to do with those letters of my stepfather's which I had bought so dear, since I had paid for them by the sacrifice of one-half of my vengeance? The letters placed him at my mercy, even as they had held him for long years at the mercy of his brother—what was I going to do with them?

I began to read them in the cab on my way to the Avenue Montaigne. The first, which was of great length, reminded Edmond of his past faults and the hopelessness of his actual condition, and then indicated, without entering into any particulars, a possible means of at least partially repairing all these disasters and once more gaining a fortune. The first condition was that the outlaw should scrupulously obey the orders of his brother. He was to begin by announcing his departure from New York to all his ordinary associates, and then to remove into another quarter of the city under a new name, and wait there for the next letter. That one, the second, made it evident that an answer from Edmond had been received prior to its despatch, and that he had accepted the offer. By this second letter the wretch was enjoined to go to Liverpool and to await further instructions there. These instructions, contained in the third letter—a mere note—were limited to an appointment at an early date, at ten o'clock in the evening, in Paris, on the portion of the footpath of the Rue de Jussieu which faces the Rue Guy-de-la-Brosse. At that hour, those two streets, situated between the old Jardin des Plantes and the buildings of the Entrepôt des Vins, are as solitary as the streets of a country town. There was no more mention in this note than in the two preceding letters of the plan that had been laid by Jacques Termonde, and which was to be discussed by the brothers at their first meeting after so many years; but, even if I had not had the false Rochdale's own avowal, extorted by his surprise and terror, the coincidence of date between this clandestine recall and the assassination of my father constituted an undeniable proof. I read and re-read those accusing pages—as I had read and re-read my father's letters written at the same time—first in the cab, and then in the solitude of my own apartment, and the horrible plot which had made me fatherless was fully revealed to me with all its terrible details.

It happened that I was well acquainted with the street in which Jacques played the part of tempter to Edmond; Joseph Dediot, my former schoolfellow at Versailles, had a lodging close to it in the Rue Cuvier for some years after he and I had left school, and I used constantly to drop in the morning or the afternoon to pass an hour or two with him, or take him to one of the restaurants on the Quay, from whence we could look out upon the green water of the Seine, the busy workmen on the Quay, and the long line of boats. Often and gaily had I trodden that pavement on which the two accomplices walked while they were keeping their rendezvous of crime. How plainly I saw them, coming and going between the gas lamps! I heard the sound of their footsteps, I distinguished the voice of the man who was to be my stepfather. That insinuating and impassioned voice uttered words fraught with consequences to the whole of my life, words which were the death-warrant of my father and also of my aunt; for the malady that killed her had its origin in grief. I, myself, had suffered severely in my childhood, was suffering cruelly at this very moment on account of the words spoken in that place. And then there came to me an equally distinct vision of the infamous scoundrel whose bite still made it painful for me to move my left shoulder. I saw him arranging his disordered dress after I had left his room, strapping his trunks, calling the waiter, asking for his bill, paying it with one of the notes which I had flung to him, and leaving the house. His luggage was hoisted up on the carriage, and he was driven off in haste to a railway station—no doubt that of Le Nord, because it is nearest to the frontier. He took the first train and departed, and never more should I hold him at my mercy. Again rage seized upon me! He had not yet had time to get very far away. What if I were to go to the Prefecture de Police? My description of him would be sufficient; he would be arrested. I had sworn to him by my father's memory that I would let him go free. Well, what then? An oath to such a wretch! He would be arrested; they would be arrested—and my mother? What of her? For the first time since the suspicion of the fatal truth had dawned upon me, I recoiled from the thought of her. At the moment my anger burned so fiercely at the image of the escaping murderer, that I reproached myself, as though it were a weakness, for the filial pity which had induced me to sacrifice one-half of my vengeance to the peace of my dearly-beloved mother. "Let her suffer," I said to myself; "let her be punished for her unfaithfulness to the memory of the dead!" But I was ashamed a little later of having allowed such a thought to flit across my mind; I repelled it as a crime. To have lived with an assassin for fifteen years, and borne his name! Ah, she never could endure such a discovery, or I the remorse of having revealed so hideous a truth to her. No, no, let him escape! I looked at the clock, and with each swing of the pendulum the chances of the villain's escape were increased. What route had he taken? Had he set out for England? A few hours more and he would be in London, secure, hidden, and lost amid the swarming multitudes of the great city. "Oh, mother, mother," I cried as I flung myself upon the sofa and writhed in mental agony, "what have I not done for you!" After a while I arose and resolutely put away the image of Edmond Termonde, substituting that of his brother. He at least could not escape me. If "vengeance is a dish to be eaten cold," I had full leisure to prepare mine at my case. My stepfather could not fly as his accomplice had done; his marriage with my mother, the successful result of his crime, made him my prisoner. I knew where to find him always, and should always be free to approach him and bring about the scene between us which the execution of my design demanded. What design? What but that which had already haunted me, that which had appeared to offer sufficient compensation, if I did not allow one of my two enemies to escape; the design that had taken the form in my mind of a resolution? I uttered aloud the words, "I am going to kill him." Several times I repeated, "I am going to kill him, I am going to kill him," with a kind of frenzy, as though I were intoxicated. So I was, by a vision of my mothers infamous husband, stiff, stark, dead; those, eyes whose glance I had suffered from so long, sightless; that mouth which had proposed the blood bargain, mute. Never would that body, whose movements I had so detested, move again. A strange wild delight came over me, while the vision born of my hate was before my mind's eye. "At last, at last," I again said aloud, "I am going to kill him!" Immediately after came the inevitable question: how?

I had to prevent at any cost my mother's learning the truth respecting the death of my father. I had not sacrificed my first vengeance, allowing the wretch who actually did the deed to go free, to permit the consequence of the second to wound the unhappy woman far more cruelly. I had therefore to plan this second act of justice so as to secure beyond all risk my own escape from the law. I should have to employ, in the killing of my stepfather, all the cautious precaution that he had employed in procuring the killing of my own father. Let me speak plainly: I was bound to assassinate him. Yes, to assassinate him; that is the name by which the act of killing a man who does not defend himself is called—and things would happen thus. No matter how ingenious the snare that I might lay for him, were I to poison him drop by drop, to wait for him at a street corner and stab him, to fire a pistol at him, there would be only one name for the deed. An assassination! I myself should be an assassin. All the base infamy the word represents was suddenly evoked in my thoughts, and for the first time I was afraid of the vengeance I had so much desired, on which I had counted since my childhood, as the sole and supreme reparation for all my misery. When I became conscious of the sudden failure of my courage in presence of the actual deed now it had become feasible, I was at first astounded. I closed my eyes that I might collect my mind and force it in upon itself, and I had to confess to myself: "I am afraid." Afraid of what? Afraid of a word! For it was only a word. My vengeance, to which I had sacrificed even the respect due to the wishes of the dying—had I not failed to fulfil the desire of my aunt in her last moments?—now caused me a thrill of terror, because the work that was to be done was repugnant. To what? To the prejudices of my class and my time. I am afraid to kill; but had I been born in Italy, in the fifteenth century, would I have hesitated to poison my father's murderer? Would I have hesitated to shoot him, had I been born in Corsica fifty years ago? Am I then nothing but a civilised person, a wretched and impotent dreamer, who would fain act, but shrinks from soiling his hands in the action? I forced myself to contemplate the dilemma in which I stood, in its absolute, imperative, inevitable distinctness. I must either avenge my father by handing over his murderer to be dealt with by the law, since M. Massol had prudently fulfilled all the formalities necessary to bar the limitation, or I must be my own minister of justice. There was a third alternative; that I should spare the murderous wretch, allow him to live on in occupation of his victim's place in my mother's home, from which he had driven me; but at the thought of this my rage revived. The scruples of the civilised man did indeed give him pause; but that hesitation did not hinder the savage, who slumbers in us all, from feeling the appetite for retaliation which stirs the animal nature of man—all his flesh, and all his blood—as hunger and thirst stir it. "Well, then," said I to myself, "I will assassinate my stepfather, since that is the right word. Was he afraid to assassinate my father? He killed; he shall be killed. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; that is the primitive law, and all the rest is a lie."