Admirable--eh?... A moment ago you spoke of his "harmless fancies."
Well: he gluts them. He gets what he wants. A fancy of pride? Behold him in his black coat and his lofty office! A fancy for blood? From time to time he stands to spill it publicly on the scaffold! A fancy for young and innocent flesh--a solace to his old age?... Do you imagine he would be balked of that? Or rather are you prepared to hear how--with official permission and even the clerical benediction--how he manages to bedevil and to win the particular young girl of his choice?"
In hammer blows she planted each phrase.
"How this same man has let no gra.s.s grow under his feet in his little rivalry with yourself, Bibi-Ri!"
She spared him nothing.
"How, having desired your Zelie without "ifs" or "buts" he found means to make his purpose good, Bibi-Ri!"
He could only gape at her.
"How he followed her to Fonwhary: how he followed her back: how he missed no trick of persuading and persisting: how he finally forced her consent like any true lover in this very house this morning!"
"It is not possible!" gasped Bibi-Ri.
"Eh? It is true of true!" she trumpeted. "Name of G.o.d--where do you think you are? This is Noumea!... Let her pa.s.s for a fool--half-mad with bitterness and chagrin though she be--and still you must admit it is not every poor orphan who gets such a chance hereabouts. What? To occupy a little manor outside the prison grounds. To enjoy the little benefits of official standing. To wear the pretty trifles of jewelry, the rings and keepsakes and lockets, that fall to the master"s share every time he strikes off a lucky head!... Dieu!... Can you picture to yourself the home-coming at that menage after a day"s honest labor? To be sure, she might require him first to wash his hands for fear of spoiling her new gown! But these stains of the trade--what do they matter? And so your Zelie, your sweet pigeon, your simple Caledonienne who was all too simple for you--whom you cast aside with "brotherly advice"--she chooses to embrace that ghoul, that h.e.l.l-hound, that old satyr of all the infamies.... To-morrow she weds with M. de Nou!"
In blind distress he stumbled to his feet and shied from her with hands outspread to fend away the monstrous thing. But skillfully she headed him around to the foot of the stairs and brought him face to face with the actual vision descending there.
"Ask her yourself!"...
You have seen those figures in a window of old stained gla.s.s which leap from the haze of color as if illumined of themselves. The girl who waited just above us on the step bore that same transparent loveliness, with all the fleshly promise of my glimpse of her in the market. She wore a single belted garment of some white peasant"s stuff, but nothing could have suited better in the somber light of that place, smoke-blued against smoky walls. In truth it might have seemed the subtlest coquetry to clothe such beauty in the coa.r.s.est garb. For she herself was delicate as a bud. Vital and lithe: with a close-set casque of jet hair, mouth like a crushed mulberry against satin, mutinous eyes and chin: the wild, slight, heavy-scented flower of these climes.
There she stood quite coolly: even languidly.
"Visitors?" she inquired, aware of us with impersonal gaze. "I wondered if any would stop to-night. It would be kind of them to come and wish me happiness."
Except that she spoke unsmiling and ignored Bibi-Ri, except for her deathly pallor, she seemed without the least consciousness of a terrible irony. And when my poor friend made some sound in his throat her pure brow clouded a bit: she pouted.
"Have you been making yourself tiresome again with the visitors, Maman?
Now where is the good of that? I wish you would not start fretting with everybody.... Yes, I shall be married. Yes, I shall be married to-morrow. By special civil license and by the priest from La Foa.
There! It is all settled.... I hope you can find something more amusing for our guests."
Incredible to see how quiet she was, how composed, how youthfully unstrained. Only when her heavy lids swept over Bibi-Ri and their glances crossed could you detect like electric charges the unacknowledged tension behind.
"Oh, for amus.e.m.e.nt," chuckled Mother Carron, with a savage humor, "Bibi-Ri is amused: right enough. Sacred stove--yes!... Only he says the affair is impossible."
For the first time Zelie regarded him fairly.
"I see no reason why any one should think so. Unless he forgets--as I never do any more--that I am the daughter of convicts."
Ah, there was steel in that girl! What? The way she said it! Very simply. Without rancor, you understand. Letting it bite of itself.
Without a quaver from that crisis of despair in which she must have learned to say it. In a flash I knew how the gleaming, soft, full-blooded slip of a creature had stood up against this tremendous aunt of hers. And could stand. And would!... And Bibi-Ri: he knew too.
His babbling protest died cold on his lips.
"My convict father married my convict mother in this convict country,"
she went on, evenly. "I was born here. I must live and die here. I could never look to marry outside--could I?... They would say I was tainted.... For the rest--well, I have only to please myself, I believe."
And mother Carron nodded like a grim showman.
"Eh? What do you think of that? A wise infant--eh? Could anything be more just and reasonable?"
And it was so. She was right. It was perfectly just: perfectly reasonable. There you had the stark and appalling fact. For this is Noumea--as Mother Carron reminded us in good season. This is Noumea--the Noah"s Ark toy of penology. If you expect your convicts to pair off and to breed like free folk, you must expect their children likewise to couple as they can--or will: free folks themselves. And with whom? Where do you draw the line? What kind of a social formula have you left for the second generation, reared in an out-door jail? Our wise philanthropists who devised the experiment: I wonder if they ever thought so far ahead. They should have been interested in Zelie--the perfect product.
Meanwhile there remained my companion--Bibi-Ri. Poor Bibi-Ri....
Whatever had pa.s.sed between him and that unhappy deluded child I could not know, you comprehend--in truth I never did know. But they must have been very close at one time: those two: before his great ambition nipped him. He was suffering. He writhed. Nevertheless I saw it was going to make no difference with him.... Not now. Not this late along. I sensed his effort. I heard him draw his breath sharp like a man who plucks the barb from the wound.
"One moment, Madame!" He avoided Zelie. In abrupt and flurried speech he addressed himself to Mother Carron. "A moment, Madame--I beg. This is mere madness. And painful. And unnecessary.... There is still one easy way out for her, you know--for Zelie, for me, for everybody. Still a way."
She unbent to him all at once as to a prodigal son.
"Tiens!" she cried. "You have perceived it?"
"I have remembered. I intended not to tell you: to let it come of itself. And truly--you drove it somewhat out of mind. But now--"
"At last!"
"If we can only get Zelie to listen--"
"Ha! Just look at her there!"
"It fits the need."
"She never had but one, my boy--to hear you speak out once like this: as if you meant it." "And besides," he stammered, "it should cancel any--any obligations you might still hold against me, myself."
"Parbleu! I should hope so!"
He labored on, with a kind of desperate snuffle.
"At the end, Madame, we can always turn for aid to the Church--the patient friend of us all.... This afternoon--uneasy about Zelie, I confess, and thinking a decisive step would be best for every one--this very afternoon I took myself to St. Gregory"s and there I saw--"
"Bibi-Ri: in a moment I shall kiss you!"
"For G.o.d"s sake let me speak, Madame!... I saw the Directress of the Order of St. Joseph of Cluny. She heard me readily. You know--these good nuns--how they rescue any they can of the children of Noumea.... Well: I arranged it.... To-night a travelling sister will visit you here. By great luck she is returning home very soon. If the dispositions are favorable she has promised to take Zelie at once, to guard her and to see her safe--pa.s.sage free--to France, where refuge and the consolations of religion, Madame, await her!"
In the silence that dropped you should have seen Mother Carron.
"Refuge!" she began, empurpled. "What is the fellow talking about?
Conso--.... Look here. Do you mean a convent?"
"Of course, Madame."
"A convent! In truth? Is this all you have to offer?"
"Yes, Madame."
She flung up her arms.