"Naturally. But it was an uncommon case. Maxime Dalahaide was condemned to death for murdering a beautiful young actress, with whom he was in love--jealousy alleged as the cause. However, powerful influence saved him from death and sent him to us. I do not know that he was properly thankful."
Virginia showed a little decorous interest, such as a stranger might legitimately take in the hero of such a tale. "This story ought to make a splendid anecdote for our book," she exclaimed. "Is the man handsome?"
"You might not think so if you saw him now. The costume of the _forcat_ is not becoming. But he is still quite young, between twenty-eight and nine. You can see his portrait if you like, mademoiselle, at the Bureau of Anthropometry, where each convict"s photograph is taken, with every possible view of his face, when he first becomes an inmate of the prison."
"I would rather see the man himself," answered Virginia. "If you would _only_ let my brother and me have an interview with him; think how it would help our book! Ah, monsieur, that _would_ be kind. I should never forget your goodness in giving me such a chance."
The gallant Commandant hesitated. But--the permit in the possession of these three favoured visitors was very explicit. They were to have privileges scarcely ever granted before, and he had therefore the best of excuses for obliging the beautiful American girl.
"Do say yes!" persuasively added Virginia.
"I really think I may conscientiously do so," replied the old Frenchman, delighted to please the most radiant being he had seen for many a long year. "Number 1280 has acted for some time as secretary in one of the bureaux; but another convict, displaced for Dalahaide because of carelessness and inaccuracy, was jealous of the favour shown the aristocrat (ah, I a.s.sure you they know all about each other"s affairs and circ.u.mstances here!), contrived to make a rough knife out of a piece of flint, and stabbed his rival in the back, narrowly missing the lungs.
As it was, the wound was a serious one, and Dalahaide is in the hospital.
The would-be murderer is now undergoing punishment in what we call the Black Cell."
"The wound was not actually dangerous?" Roger hastened to inquire, seeing that Virginia"s lips were white.
"He ought not to be dangerously ill," said the Commandant. "He is young, and quite one of our athletes--or was. The life he had led here, though not what he would choose, has not been unhealthful. But the doctor, with whom I have discussed his case, says that the wish to recover is lacking.
The man is hopeless. He would rather die than live; and his physician thinks it exceedingly likely that he will do so."
"That is sad," said Sir Roger, his eyes still on Virginia.
The Commandant shrugged his shoulders. "We are accustomed to sadness here," he replied. "But the exile and degradation of Noumea are no doubt harder of endurance to a man like Dalahaide--proud, sensitive, refined, intellectual, accustomed to every luxury. He was like a madman when he first came, four or five years ago. Several times he attempted escape and suicide. Then he became sullenly despairing; but I began to take an interest in him, believing that he was not at bottom such a desperate character as the surveillants had grown to consider him. I did what I could to soften his lot, having him introduced to more congenial work in the bureau; but this was not until he had known three months in the Black Cell. Some men lose their minds in the _Cachot Noir_, though its horrors have been mitigated of late years. But Dalahaide"s brain did not fail; and he has proved a valuable man at secretarial work. Also during the plague, three years ago, he volunteered as a nurse, and was admirable.
You shall see him in hospital, since you wish it, and even talk with him; but you must not leave New Caledonia with the impression that all convicts are like this man. Now we will finish the inspection of the prison here, and then my carriage shall drive us to the hospital, which is at a little distance."
How Virginia got through the next half-hour she did not know. If she had dared, she would have begged to go on at once to the hospital; but she did not dare. It was necessary to submit to the delay of being guided through the prison, to be shown the galleries and the cells, the Pretoire, and to hear patiently the explanation of the Bertillon system.
At last, however, they were once more in the carriage which had been kept waiting for them; but even then they must still exercise patience, for a Disciplinary Camp was on the road along which they must pa.s.s, and to betray too much eagerness to reach their journey"s end (when avowedly they had come to New Caledonia for information) would have been dangerous. At the camp they must perforce squander twenty or thirty minutes, Virginia and George pretending to take notes of what they saw and heard; and then they turned westward. Before them stretched a long avenue of strangely bent and sloping palms. It was the avenue of the hospital.
They drove down it to a stone archway, glittering white in the sun, and saw beyond a green and shaded garden, jewelled with gorgeous flowers, and heavy with richly mingling scents.
"If Dalahaide is no worse to-day, we shall probably find him in the garden here," said the Commandant. "He must have read at least half a dozen times an old copy of Dante which I lent him; the books in the prison library are not much to his taste."
No one answered, not even Roger. In fact, at the moment Roger was more anxious, perhaps, than any other member of the party, for he realized the existence of a certain danger which Virginia and her brother had apparently lost sight of, although long ago it had been discussed by them all. It had also been provided against; but the suggestion that Maxime Dalahaide might be met here in the garden, the thought that at any moment they might come upon him suddenly and unexpectedly, upset these prudent calculations.
As Maxime and Roger had known each other five years ago, it had been decided that a meeting must be avoided at first, lest in his surprise at seeing a familiar face--like a ghost from another world--the prisoner should cry out, and involuntarily put those who watched upon their guard.
The three had planned among themselves, when this day was still in the future, that if they should succeed in their first step, and gain access to Maxime Dalahaide, Roger must keep in the background until his mind had been prepared by Virginia and George Trent for what was to come. The other two, as strangers to him, could approach the prisoner without risk.
But they had expected to see him, if at all, in some room or cell, to which certain members of the party might be conducted by request; while here, in this vast garden, with its ambushes of trees and shrubs, any one of the half-hidden gray figures which they could distinguish in the green shadows might prove to be Dalahaide.
Roger did not know what to do. He might offer to stop behind and wait in the carriage outside the garden gates. But if he did this it would seem strange and even ungracious to the Commandant, who was taking so much trouble to entertain them, and to "seem strange" was alone enough to const.i.tute danger. He compromised, keeping behind with George, while Virginia walked ahead with the old Frenchman.
In the midst of the garden stood the quadrangular building of the hospital, the steep roof forming broad verandahs. There were gray figures sitting or lounging there also, but the Commandant said that Number 1280 would not be found among these, for he fled as much as might be from the society of his fellow-convicts.
They turned the corner of a shaded path and came out under a green canopy made by four large palms. A man lay underneath, his head pillowed on his arm, his face upturned--a man in the sordid prison gray. Virginia Beverly grew giddy, and, brave as she had been so far, for an instant she feared that she was going to faint like an ordinary, stay-at-home girl. She started, and caught at the arm of the Commandant, who turned to her in concerned surprise.
"One would think you had guessed that this was our man," he said in a low voice, for the convict, whose face was ghastly pale in the green dusk, seemed to sleep.
"I beg your pardon," whispered Virginia. "I stepped on a stone and twisted my foot. Is this, then, the man we have come to find?"
How well she knew that it was he! How well she knew, though the terrible years had changed the brave young face in the portrait almost beyond the recognition of a stranger. All the gay audacity was gone, therefore much of the individuality which had distinguished it for Virginia. The strong, clear features of the man looked, as he lay there asleep, as if they had been carved from old ivory; the lines were sharpened, there were hollows in the cheeks and under the black lines of the lashes. Even in sleep the dark brows were drawn together in a slight frown, and the clean-cut lips drooped in unutterable melancholy. The figure, lying on its back and extended along the gra.s.s, appeared very tall, and lay so still that it might have been the form of a dead man.
Roger, without seeing the sleeping face, guessed by the abrupt stop and the low-spoken words of the two in front that Maxime Dalahaide was found.
He drew back slightly, with a meaning glance at George, who stepped forward to join the others.
Suddenly the black line of lashes trembled; a pair of dark, tragic eyes, more like those of Madeleine Dalahaide than the laughing ones of the portrait, opened and looked straight into Virginia"s. For a few seconds their gaze remained fixed, as if the white vision had been a broken dream; then a deep flush spread over the thin face of the young man, and he rose to his feet.
"This lady and her brother have come a long way to see New Caledonia,"
said the Commandant kindly. "They wish to talk to you."
Maxime Dalahaide bowed. Virginia saw that he pressed his lips together, and that the muscles of his face quivered. She guessed how he must suffer at having to gratify--as he supposed--the morbid curiosity of a girl, and it hurt her to think that she must be the one to give him this added pain.
She turned to the Commandant, and, with a voice not quite steady, asked if she and her brother might speak to the man alone. She felt that she should be less embarra.s.sed in her questions, she said, if no one listened. With a smile the old Frenchman consented, bowing like a courtier, and joined Roger Broom, who stood at a little distance out of sight of the convict.
"I thought there was no use embarra.s.sing the poor fellow with any more strangers," Roger explained to the Commandant, as they moved further away down the path by which they had come. "After all, my place in this expedition is only to take a few photographs, wherever they are permitted"; and he touched the camera, slung over his shoulder, of which he had already made ostentatious use on several occasions. "May I have a snapshot of the hospital, with all those chaps on the verandahs? Thanks; we must go a little to the right, then. By Jove! what a lot of gray figures there are about. How do you make sure they can"t escape, if they choose, out here where they don"t seem to be guarded?"
"It is only "seem,"" retorted the Commandant, laughing. "All these men are invalids; we make short work of malingerers. Very few could run a dozen yards without falling down, and most of them are well contented as they are. But, if any one should be mad enough to attempt a dash for freedom, four or five surveillants would be on him before he could count twenty. They do not make themselves conspicuous here, that is all."
Sir Roger Broom looked across the eastern wall of the hospital garden, over the green expanse of the great lagoon, and thought much; but he said nothing. Quietly he prepared to take the suggested photograph, and the hand that held the camera did not shake, though he could guess of what, by this time, George Trent and Virginia were talking with the convict under the palms.
When the Commandant had left them alone with him, Maxime Dalahaide remained silent, Virginia"s beauty filled him--not with happy worship of its perfection, but rather with an overwhelming bitterness. He was a Thing, of whom this exquisite, fresh young girl wished to ask a few questions, so that she might go back to her world, thousands of miles away, and say, "Only fancy, I talked to one of the convicts--an awful creature. He had murdered a woman, but he was quite quiet, and, as my brother was close beside me, I was not one bit afraid."
Just because he was a Thing, with no right to pride and self-respect, she could ask what she pleased, and he would answer her; but she must begin, not he.
She did begin, yet so differently from the cut-and-dried beginning which he had scornfully expected, that a flash of vivid amazement swept the hardness from the exile"s face.
"Be very careful," she said rapidly in English. "Don"t speak, don"t show anything you may feel. Perhaps we are watched. You are Maxime Dalahaide.
We haven"t come here for curiosity, as you think, but to save you. We have come thousands of miles for that."
"Why?" It was as if the question fell from his lips without volition. The man did not believe his own ears. He thought that he must have been seized with delirium.
"Because we believe in you and because we are friends of your sister"s,"
Virginia answered. "A man you once knew is with us--Roger Broom. Do you remember?"
"Roger Broom!" Maxime repeated dazedly. "It is like an echo from the past. Yes--yes, I remember."
"It is through him that we have been able to reach you. He is close by, but dared not let you see him, until you had been warned. Now, we must arrange everything in a few minutes for your escape; the Commandant has been kind, but he may not give us long together."
"I think I must be dreaming," stammered Maxime, all his bitterness forgotten. "I"ve been ill. I don"t understand things as quickly as I used. Escape! You have come here to--help me to escape. Yes, it is certainly a dream. I shall wake up by and by!"
"You will wake up free," said Virginia not daring to raise her voice above a low monotone. "Free, on our yacht, that has brought us from France to take you home."
Suddenly a glaze of tears overspread Maxime Dalahaide"s dark eyes.
"Home?" he echoed wistfully. "Home! Ah, if it might be!"
"It shall be," returned Virginia. "George, tell him our plan. You can do it better than I."
"The thing is to get you on board the yacht," said Trent. "After that, you"re all right. We can show our heels to pretty well anything in these parts."
Dalahaide shook his head. "There are no words to thank you for what you have done, and would do for me," he answered. "But it is impossible. Once I thought of escape. I tried and failed, as others have tried and failed.