“Never let a woman see that you cannot be serenely happy without her,” says Lorrimer. “I’d do anything for Rougette (short of marrying her), yet I never let her know it. And so she’s faithful to me. Others have tried to steal her from me; have offered her luxury; but no, she’s the same devoted, unspoiled girl. Just look at her, Madden, a pure lustrous pearl. Think what a life such a girl might have in this Paris, where men make queens of beautiful women! What triumphs! what glories! Yet there she is, content to follow the fortunes of an obscure painter. But come on and join the girl. They’re going to do a little silhouette drama.”
As we sit by Rougette, who smiles radiantly, the lights go out, and beyond the stage a little curtain goes up, showing a fisher cottage in Brittany. The scene is early morning, the sea flooded with the coral light of dawn. Then across the face of the picture comes the tiny silhouettes of the fishermen carrying their nets. The cottage is next shown in the glow of noon, and, lastly, by night, with the fisher boats passing over the face of the moon.
Then the scene changes. We see the inside of the cabin—the bed, the wardrobe of oak and brass, the great stone fireplace, the ship hanging over it, the old grandmother sitting by her spinning-wheel. To her come the children begging for a story, and she tells them one from out the past—a story of her youth, the rising of the Vendée.
All this is made clear by three singers, who, somewhere in the darkness, tell it in sweet, wild strains of Breton melody. There is a soprano, a tenor, a bass; now one takes up the story, then another; then all three voices blend with beautiful effect. And as they sing we see the tiny silhouettes of the peasants, vivid and clear-cut, passing across the face of the changing scene. Those strong, melodious voices tell of how the farmer-soldiers rose and fought; how they marched in the snow; how they suffered; how they died. It is sad, sweet, beautiful; and now the music grows more dramatic; the action quickens; the climax draws near.
And as I sit there with eyes fixed on that luminous space, I feel that something else, also terrible, is about to happen. Surely some one is moving in the darkness behind us? Even in that black silence I am conscious of a shadow blacker still. Surely I can hear the sound of hard, panting breath? That dreadful breathing passes me, passes Lorrimer, comes to an arrest behind Rougette.
Then I hear a scream, shriek on shriek, such as I never dreamed within the gamut of human agony. And in the hush of panic that follows the lights go up.
Rougette is lying on the floor, her head buried in her arms, uttering heart-rending cries. Lorrimer, with a face of absolute horror, is bending over her, trying to raise her as she grovels there in agony.
What is it? A hundred faces are turned towards us, each the mask of terror and dismay. I will always remember those faces that suddenly flamed at us out of the dark, all so different, yet with the one awful expression.
Then I see a tiny bottle at my feet. Almost mechanically I stoop and pick it up; but I drop it as if I had been stung. I fall to rubbing my fingers in agony, and everywhere I rub there is a brown burn. Now I understand the poor, writhing, twisting girl on the floor, and a similar shudder of understanding seems to convulse the crowd. There comes a hoarse whisper—“Vitriol!”
Turning to the door, I am just in time to see a girl in black make her escape, an olive-skinned girl with beetle-black hair and the eyes of an odalisque. And Lorrimer looks at me in a ghastly way, and I know that he too has seen.