"Faith of G.o.d! You dare to make me ridicule like that? Animal low of ceiling!... But no, I tell you, but no! It is too much. My turn now.
Listen to me, both. Listen to my plan!... To-day I also went to St.
Gregory"s: do you hear? I also sought the aid of Holy Church, which never refuses in the cause of morality--Heaven be praised!--to perform a convict marriage where it can. I also obtained help. That good Father Anselm: he also promised. He also is coming here to-night!... And word of honor, I hope to be turned into a pepper-mill if I don"t have him marry the two of you on the spot."
One and the other, she challenged them.
"You think not; you wilful imp?" she roared. "I tell you it shall be so!... And you, Bibi-Ri--you grin in that sickly fashion? Wait, my gar: I"m not done with you yet! Thousand thunders!--in another minute you will be crawling at the crook of my finger.... Attend!"
And looming on us there, gigantic in the firelight like some ancient fury, she launched her climax.
"You recall that tale I started for your benefit? Well: there is more of it. I told you my sister knew all the story of "the wickedest man"?
Well: there was one thing she did not know and would have given much to hook up--like many another blackmailer, then and since.... Note!... From the murderous purpose with which that fiend pursued all in his power--wife, family, a.s.sociates--it appears he spared a single victim.
The creature, indeed, in whom he centered his whole affection--to call it so--his hateful pride, at least. A single one he set aside. But only to be the instrument of a last defiance.
"Brought to exposure, his course run out: what do you suppose he did?
Why he took measures to conceal that remaining heir of his house beyond recovery.... He put away that son. He lost him! Completely. In s.p.a.ce: in the world: in the crowd and the gutter. Where none should ever find him again--as none ever did, for all the rewards and all the police.
"Such cleverness--eh? Such logic. For observe.... They dared pa.s.s no death sentence while there appeared any chance of extracting his secret.
A vast estate was waiting on the person of that child--one of the finest fortunes in France: the heritage of a golden line. He kept it waiting.
At a stroke he saved himself before the judges: he hid away the only treasure he loved: he prolonged his own evil destiny through this unknown seed of his planted somewhere in the mud!"
Her regard flamed on Bibi-Ri.
"Unknown--my little dears. Unknown ever since!... Though it is said Heaven itself had set its seal on that race for a warning and a symbol: though the child himself was marked from birth: was marked about the neck--so the legend goes--with a thin red line like the print of a noose or the trace of strangling fingers!"
Bibi-Ri had propped himself by the table, one hand clutching the close collar of his jacket.
"How--how could you guess...!"
"Ah-ah! Now will you try to throw us over? Not so easily--eh? Now don"t you think you still have need of us? Until the depositions are made, at least?... Sac a papier! The very instant you showed me that old miniature and the initial it bears--I knew you, my boy! I could have read you your whole fortune then: only I saved the best of it for a wedding present! And for sure, I never expected you to try a bolt. A droll of an idea--that! To run away from your chief witness?... Why, stupid one!" She broke off to drop him a little mocking curtsey.
"Monsieur the Duke!... It was my own sister had had the honor to be Your Grace"s nurse!"
He was trembling. "Tell me the name of that family!"
"But certainly, my lad.... After you are married!" "Don"t torture me!
Tell me the name of that man!"
"But certainly, my love.... It is M. de Nou!"
Strange how like a sinister refrain that t.i.tle--that word--ran and recurred throughout the affair. But this time it had an impact as never before. Credit me! This time it came home to Bibi-Ri: and my little joker absolutely reeled under it.
"Eh?" cried Mother Carron. "Eh? How is your sacred ambition now? Is there any manhood to you? And what are you going to do about it?"
What indeed! She had reduced him to a rag. For this she had played upon a febrile nature, you understand: had battered it, dazzled it, wrung it of emotions: confirming his wildest beliefs: destroying his dearest illusions: tossing his hopes to the stars and smirching them in the mire with the same sweep:--that he might have no other will at the end....
And therein appeared the triumph of her masterful cert.i.tude. For presently raising his miserable and hunted eyes he looked at her: he looked for me in the shadow: he did not look at Zelie again--but he looked toward the door....
How easy it might have seemed, after all! Actually in his pocket he carried his release ticket, ready dated. His ship lay in harbor. His sentence expired some few days off. A step would take him into the night. He had simply to keep safe within police limits until the hour of sailing and march himself freely on board. And then ... he had won! You see? By his theory the world would open before him the most radiant of welcomes. By his faith he would have his life-long arrears to collect: his gorgeous dreams to realize. One must have been a felon--one must have eaten his heart in prison cells--and even in this widest and farthest of prison cells with its wall of painted horizons none the less alien and inexorable--to feel what those dreams meant to him.
Now again, as before, he had only to get himself off stage: he needed only the boldness to break once for all with the thief"s part--as he himself had said: the selfishness to stand to his game--as Mother Carron put it!
And in truth what was hindering him? No actual compulsion: none he need fear. Only impalpable things. Shame. Uncertainty, timidity, regret. The pressures of personality. The qualms of a poor juggler with life: fearful of missing--fearful of not seizing it featly.... Cobwebs all!
What he would have done about it the good G.o.d can tell. I have asked myself often enough. But he hesitated a bit too long: that little fool of fortune with his face of a rubber puppet squeezed by fate. Next moment the cue had been taken from him, for across the pause ran a thin, keen whistle. Mother Carron spun around. And as if dispatched on that breath--through the key-hole, perhaps--there blew in suddenly among us from the back of the house somewhere a tiny, gray-faced, white-haired wraith of a man.
"Well--idiot?... What"s up now?"
From her greeting, as from the blurred effacement of the apparition himself, one divined without trouble the person of that former redoubtable housebreaker: Carron. In a voice scarcely above the singing of the kettle he made his announcement.
"There are two coming by the road."
"Hey?" she bawled. "What two?"
"A priest and another."
Mother Carron smiled the only smile to pa.s.s upon her wintry front that night: she spread her hands before us.
"Enfin! What did I tell you? And in great good time, my word!... You hear that--you others?... Go and welcome Father Anselm, fool! And fetch out the wine, if you are able to stir your pins!"
The shadow sighed.
"It is not Father Anselm."
"Not Father Anselm?... Imbecile! Of course it is!"
"It is not Father Anselm."
"Who then--vaurien?"
"It is the fat priest from La Foa."
Impossible to doubt his steadfast whispering.
"La Foa!" she echoed, stricken. "You say? Not truly!... La Foa?"
"I saw him."
"And another? What other?"
"We think he is Bombiste."
I can swear that wretched individual never in his black past had handled a bomb with half the effect his mere nickname produced among us there.
"Bombiste! The executioner"s a.s.sistant?... From Ile de Nou?... Here?"
"They are at the gate."
"Thunder of G.o.d!... And above all, at this time!" She caught his arm.
"Delay that priest! Any way and anyhow: hold him!... Confess to him, if nothing else will do--Heaven knows you need it!... And let the other through at once. Be quick!"
She banished him like a puff of smoke and we waited in drawn suspense--we four--our eyes on the archway through which this visitant must now appear.