Dorcas made motion as if to answer.
“Stop,” he said. “You can have nothing to say; it is I who must relieve my bursting heart. Do you know what this is?” laying his finger on the bright stains. “This is my life-blood, and you have spilled it. When I came over sea I had a cough, and they told me I needed care, but I laughed them to scorn, for I said to myself, when once I am there, where her gentle hands can smooth the pain away and her sweet smile bring back the light to my eyes, all will be well. Do you know how it was with me during these years? When, after being hunted like a wild beast from wood to cavern, from hill to seaport, at last I stood by my grandpère, his heart was filled with joy—for I was his only descendant left on earth, and on me he leaned feeble and childish. I could not leave him for an hour without reproach; how could I come to you? Year after year he lingered, and although I starved for your smile, I believed in you, and God knows, had I suspected the awful truth of your unfaithfulness, I should have done the same. Heaven itself could not have lured me from that poor man, whose dying blessing is sounding in my ears this day. When I had laid him away, scarce three months ago, and found that the old chateau with its thousands of meters of rich garden and tillage was mine, I bounded for my passport, I dreamed of naught else than a return to build a family worthy of the saintly dead.
“Would you know the rest? How I came in the dusk to the village street and crept in the shadow to your father’s door, feeling that I could not at once bear the blaze of your beauty. When I had seen the old man open the casement and sit in the moonlight with a child upon his knee, my heart misgave me. Fainting for food, for I had been too eager to eat, I crept back to the inn. Slowly I questioned the garçon concerning the people of the village, and gradually the truth dawned—you were untrue! I was like a madman that night. I wore a track in the floor, I doubt not, with my restless pacing, and when day broke I went forth with a wild intent to do murderous work. All through the hours of sunlight I examined the mill, and the dwelling-place where a false heart was beating, and at night I planned to carry out my work of destruction. I would fire the mill and the house and take care that, so quick would leap the flames, that no escape would be possible. And if, through some strange fatality, my plot was defeated, there, in the fierce distraction of a great conflagration, I would rush upon you with my knife and stab you to your death! Yes,” he leaned forward and hissed the words, “the woman who has taught me that there is no faith, that God and honor and love are myths, ought to die by the hand of the man whom she has wrecked.”
Again Dorcas stirred, and again he waved her into silence.
“And what was your excuse? Six years of silence. What were they to me? Six centuries might have waned, and I should have kept my faith. When I looked at this trysting string, I said alway and ever the same: ‘She is as strong as the threads she tore with so great an effort; she will never waver.’
“What was the good of nature’s brand that you bear: the mark of unyielding purpose, of faith and love as firm as God’s foundation, as broad as the firmament—you belie them all. There you stand now with your great eyes shining as if a soul dwelt behind them; your rich smooth skin blooming with the color and purity of nature, not artifice; your red lips curved with a smile you cannot repress, and yet I swear you are as false as hell!
“Only this”—he touched the crimson stains—“only this defeated my plan, and enabled you to breath the sweet spring air once more; only this has made it possible for me to die cursing you with my latest breath without dealing that blow at your heart that should have mingled our blood in one stream.”
The exhausted man fell back upon his pillows, and Dorcas crept to his side and smoothed the rich waves of jet-black hair, and with a wet sponge moistened his lips. Presently he opened his eyes, and before he could speak she said calmly:
“I am going to take thee to our home. George Townsend will help me to nurse thee back to life and peace. I will tell thee, now, that I never knew thy full intent in asking me for the cap string; had I known it I should not have given it, for thy reason and my own would have rebelled against an alliance wholly at variance with Nature’s laws. Thee did not love me, the girl; thee loved my faith, my trust in thy honesty; and I bid thee go on loving it, for I shall trust thee now, just as I trusted thee then. I believed thee innocent of the crime for which thee had been confined. I believed it only because thee said it was so, and thy face told the same story. I believe in thee now, in despite thy words, for thy soul is speaking more truly through thy glance, and that tells me that thy devotion to thy grandpère was no myth, while thy frenzy is. Thee shall find thy faith in me is rewarded, for thee shall live to be one of our household and to bless us all with thy goodness.”
She ceased speaking, summoned the jailer’s wife, and had the sick man borne to her carriage.