Hazelton’s little jewel-like eyes were blurred with unwonted sentiment. “I am a king in exile,” he muttered over and over. “A king in exile,” he repeated. This sentimental simile seemed to be a well of bitter comfort for him.
This story should end here, for stories should end like this, on the high note; but life is different. Hazelton was a man with a bad liver, and he got no joy from his sacrifice. Moreover, in real life one seldom fights a decisive battle with one’s lower nature. One goes on fighting; it dies hard when it dies at all. There are the high moments when one thinks the battle won, and the next day the enemy attacks again, with the battle to be fought over.
Hazelton had formed the habit of cursing fate and De Vilmarte, and, to revenge himself, of threatening De Vilmarte’s exposure, and he continued to do these things. And De Vilmarte let his mind stray far in contemplating Hazelton’s possible vileness, and in doing this he himself became vile. What he could not recognize was the definite place where Hazelton’s vileness stopped. His life was like a fair fruit rotten within.
It was the summer of 1914, and Hazelton, whose drunkenness before had been occasional, now drank always, and forever in the background of De Vilmarte’s mind was this powerful figure with its red face and black hair and truculent bearing, drunken and obscene, who carried in his careless hand the honor of the De Vilmartes. At any moment Hazelton could rob Raoul of his pride, embitter his mother’s last hours, and make him the laughing stock of his world. Raoul became like an entrapped animal running around and around the implacable barriers of a cage. It is a terrible thing to have one’s honor in the hands of another.
He thought of everything that might end this torment, and he found no answer. Madness grew in him. Wherever Raoul de la Tour de Vilmarte went, there followed him unseen a shadow, swart, dark, and red-faced. It followed him, mouthing, “Ra-o-u-l—Ra-o-u-l!” like a cat. “Ra-o-u-l! Ra-o-u-l!” from morning till night. When De Vilmarte was at a table in a café a huge and mocking shadow sat beside him, and it said, wagging its head in a horrid fashion, “There’s death in our little drama, hein, mon vieux?”
The fate that had made their interests one, bound them together. They sought each other out to spend strange and tortured hours in each other’s company, while in the depths of Raoul’s heart a plan to end the torture was coming to its own slow maturity, and grew large and dark during the hot days of July. He could not continue to live. The burden of his secret weighed him down. Nor could he leave Hazelton behind him, the honor of the De Vilmartes in his hands.
The bloody answer to the riddle leaped out at him. Hazelton’s death—that was the answer. Then De Vilmarte could depart in peace. For two mad, happy days he saw life simply. First Hazelton, then himself.
One day he stopped short, for he realized he could not go until his mother—went. He must stay a while—until she died.
He had to wait until she died. He watched her, wondering if his endurance would outlast her life. He tried not to let her see him watching—for he knew there was madness in his eyes—and he would go out to find his dark shadow, for often it was less painful to be with him than away from him—he knew then what Hazelton was up to. He spent days in retracing the steps which had brought him to this desperate impasse. They had been easy, but he knew that weakness was at the bottom of it—perhaps, unless he did it now, he would never do it—perhaps an unworthy desire for life—and love—might hold back his hand.
So De Vilmarte lived his days and nights bound on the torturing pendulum of conflict.