Chapter 27
In the meantime, the long, trying scene had exhausted Daniel; and he lay there, panting, on his bed. The surgeon and the lawyer withdrew, to let him have some rest.
He certainly needed it; but how could he sleep with the fearful idea of his Henrietta--she whom he loved with his whole heart--being in the hands of this Justin Chevassat, a forger, a former galley-slave, the accomplice and friend of Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet?
"And I myself handed her over to him!" he repeated for the thousandth time,--"I, her only friend upon earth! And her confidence in me was so great, that, if she had any presentiment, she suppressed it for my sake."
Daniel had, to be sure, a certain assurance now, that Maxime de Brevan would not be able to escape from justice. But what did it profit him to be avenged, when it was too late, long after Henrietta should have been forced to seek in suicide the only refuge from Brevan's persecution? Now it seemed to him as if the magistrate was far more anxiously concerned for the punishment of the guilty than for the safety of the victims. Blinded by passion, so as to ask for impossibilities, Daniel would have had this lawyer, who was so clever in unearthing crimes committed in Saigon, find means rather to prevent the atrocious crime which was now going on in France. On his part, he had done the only thing that could be done.
At the first glimpse of reason that had appeared after his terrible sufferings, he had hastened to write to Henrietta, begging her to take courage, and promising her that he would soon be near her. In this letter he had enclosed the sum of four thousand francs.
This letter was gone. But how long would it take before it could reach her? Three or four months, perhaps even more.
Would it reach her in time? Might it not be intercepted, like the others? All these anxieties made a bed of burning coals of the couch of the poor wounded man. He twisted and turned restlessly from side to side, and felt as if he were once more going to lose his senses. And still, by a prodigious effort of his will, his convalescence pursued its normal, steady way in spite of so many contrary influences.
A fortnight after Crochard's confession, Daniel could get up; he spent the afternoon in an arm-chair, and was even able to take a few steps in his chamber. The next week he was able to get down into the garden of the hospital, and to walk about there, leaning on the arm of his faithful Lefloch. And with his strength and his health, hope, also, began to come back; when, all of a sudden, two letters from Henrietta rekindled the fever.
In one the poor girl told him how she had lived so far on the money obtained from the sale of the little jewelry she had taken with her, but added that she was shamefully cheated, and would soon be compelled to seek employment of some sort in order to support herself.
"I am quite sure," she said, with a kind of heartrending cheerfulness, "that I can earn my forty cents a day; and with that, my friend, I shall be as happy as a queen, and wait for your return, free from want."
In the other she wrote,--
"None of my efforts to procure work has so far succeeded. The future is getting darker and darker. Soon I shall be without bread. I shall struggle on to the last extremity, were it only not to give my enemies the joy of seeing me dead. But, Daniel, if you wish to see your Henrietta again, come back; oh, come back!"
Daniel had not suffered half as much the day when the assassin's ball ploughed through his chest. He was evidently reading one of those last cries which precede agony. After these two fearful letters, he could only expect a last one from Henrietta,--a letter in which she would tell him, "All is over. I am dying. Farewell!"
He sent for the chief surgeon, and said, as soon as he entered,-- "I must go!"
The good doctor frowned, and replied rudely,--
"Are you mad? Do you know that you cannot stand up fifteen minutes?"
"I can lie down in my berth."
"You would kill yourself."
"What of that? I would rather suffer death than what I now endure. Besides, I have made up my mind irrevocably! Read this, and you will see yourself that I cannot do otherwise."
The chief surgeon took in Henrietta's last letter almost at a single glance; but he held it in his hand for some time, pretending to read it, but in reality meditating.
"I am sure," the excellent man thought in his heart, "I am sure, in this man's place, I should do the same. But would this imprudence be of any use to him? No; for he could not reach the mouth of the Dong- Nai alive. Therefore it is my duty to keep him here: and that can be done, since he is as yet unable to go out alone; and Lefloch will obey me, I am sure, when I tell him that his master's life depends upon his obedience."
Too wise to meet so decided a determination as Daniel's was by a flat refusal, he said,-- "Very well, then; be it as you choose!"
Only he came in again the same evening, and, with an air of disappointment, said to Daniel,--
"To go is all very well; but there is one difficulty in the way, of which neither you nor I have thought."
"And what is that?"
"There is no vessel going home."
"Really, doctor?"
"Ah! my dear friend," replied the excellent man boldly, "do you think I could deceive you?"
Evidently Daniel thought him quite capable of doing so; but he took good care not to show his suspicions, reserving to himself the right of making direct inquiries as soon as the opportunity should offer. It came the very next morning. Two friends of his called to see him. He sent Lefloch out of the room on some pretext, and then begged them to go down to the port, and to engage a passage for him,--no, not for him, but for his man, whom urgent business recalled to France.
In the most eager manner the two gentlemen disappeared. They stayed away three hours; and, when they came back, their answer was the same as the doctor's. They declared they had made inquiries on all sides; but they were quite sure that there was not a single vessel in Saigon ready to sail for home. Ten other persons whom Daniel asked to do the same thing brought him the same answer. And yet, that very week, two ships sailed,--one for Havre, the other for Bordeaux. But the concierge of the hospital, and Lefloch, were so well drilled, that no visitor reached Daniel before having learned his lesson thoroughly.
Thus they succeeded in keeping Daniel quiet for a fortnight; but, at the end of that time, he declared that he felt quite well enough to look out for a ship himself; and that, if he could do no better, he meant to sail for Singapore, where he would be sure to procure a passage home. It would, of course, have been simple folly to try and keep a man back who was so much bent upon his purpose; and, as his first visit to the port would have revealed to him the true state of things, the old surgeon preferred to make a clean breast of it. When he learned that he had missed two ships, Daniel was at first naturally very much incensed.
"That was not right, doctor, to treat me thus," he exclaimed. "It was wrong; for you know what sacred duties call me home."
But the surgeon was prepared for his justification. He replied with a certain solemnity which he rarely assumed,--
"I have only obeyed my conscience. If I had let you set sail in the condition in which you were, I should have virtually sent you to your grave, and thus have deprived your betrothed, Miss Ville-Handry, of her last and only chance of salvation."
Daniel shook his head sadly, and said,--
"But if I get there too late, too late; by a week, a day, do you think, doctor, I shall not curse your prudence? And who knows, now, when a ship will leave?"
"When? On Sunday, in five days; and that ship is 'The Saint Louis' a famous clipper, and so good a sailor, that you will easily overtake the two big three-