“No; that is to say, I think not.”
“No; that is to say, I think not,” he repeated slowly, word for word, adding, “I shall have to stay with you while you are together.”
Zachariah entered, the warder locking the door behind him, and seating himself on the edge of the bedstead, where he remained during the whole of the interview, jingling his keys and perfectly unmoved.
The three friends spoke not a word for nearly five minutes. Zachariah was never suddenly equal to any occasion which made any great demands upon him. It often made him miserable that it was so. Here he was, in the presence of one whom he had so much loved, and who was about to leave him for ever, and he had nothing to say. That could have been endured could he but have felt and showed his feeling, could he but have cast himself upon his neck and wept over him, but he was numbed and apparently immovable. It was Caillaud who first broke the silence.
“It appears I shall have to console you rather than you me; believe me, I care no more about dying, as mere dying, than I do about walking across this room. There are two things which disturb me—the apprehension of some pain, and bidding good-bye to Pauline and you, and two or three more.”
There was, after all, but just a touch needed to break up Zachariah and melt him.
“You are happier than I,” he cried. “Your work is at an end. No more care for things done or undone; you are discharged, and nobly discharged, with honour. But as for me!”
“With honour!” and Caillaud smiled. “To be hung like a forger of bank-notes—not even to be shot—and then to be forgotten. Forgotten utterly! This does not happen to be one of those revolutions which men remember.”
“No! men will not remember,” said Pauline, with an elevation of voice and manner almost oratorical. “Men will not remember, but there is a memory in the world which forgets nothing.”
“Do you know,” said Caillaud, “I have always loved adventure, and at times I look forward to death with curiosity and interest, just as if I were going to a foreign country.”