THE citizen Theophilus was at points of discussion with a rather dissipated-looking phantom of respectability that had descended upon him at an extremely early hour.
“Let the citizen—and, moreover, monsieur the Englishman—rest assured,” he said, “that I accept his commission with a high sense of the compliment implied. But it is not specific: oh, mon Dieu Jésus! that is all I complain—it is not specific.”
“In what way?”
“For example, there is, for consideration, the toilette of Vesta, as well as that of Aurora.”
“Why, deuce take it, man; you don’t suppose I expect the girl to go to bed in her petticoats, if that’s what you mean?”
“C’est bien, monsieur. Je sais la carte du pays.” (He bridged his fingers, tapping the tips together to accent every item.) “I am to procure, then, the citoyenne a wardrobe, plain in character and of modest proportions. It is for the reason that the citoyenne may possess such attire as will not militate against her chance of obtaining respectable employment. Scrupulously so, monsieur. This wardrobe is to be for both day and night. Also, scrupulously so. Moreover, it is to be of the limitations that will not tend to encourage the idea of a prolonged sojourn in a present sanctuary, offered (I have monsieur’s word for it) on grounds of the most disinterested platonism. Finally, so long as mademoiselle remains under monsieur’s protection—I crave one thousand pardons!—under monsieur’s guardianship—she is to receive every ordinary consideration as to service and meals.”
He flourished his hands outwards, and bowed, his curls bobbing like wood shavings.
“I shall have the honour to punctually acquit myself of these commissions. Monsieur need give himself no further concern in the matter.”
“You are a treasure, my Théophile,” said Ned; and he stepped out into the morning.
It was very cold and bright and beautiful, for wind and cloud had dropped behind the horizon. The pavements, the roofs, the steeples were wrapped in white that looked as soft as swan’s-down. The whole city, it seemed, had put on its furs against the opening frost.
Ned stepped, without sound, over the flags. The hour was still so early that hardly a soul was abroad. His tired eyes felt the restfulness of the rounded beds of snow; his throat took in the stinging wine of the morning in grateful draughts. He had had but a little troubled sleep, and his wits seemed plugged and his brain sore. He wanted to think. He wanted to understand why it was that his thoughts—that should have been all of the tragic quenching of a flame that had for so long been his beacon in waste places—were unable to rescue themselves from a weary toing-and-froing before the closed door of his own bedroom. He wanted to understand, and he could not. Only it dully presented itself to him as a monstrous thing that the later image should dominate his mind. If he could recover but a little clearness of moral vision, he was sure he would see what a foul wrong to his own loyal heart he was being led into committing.
So he tried to reason—in the lack, as he felt, of reason itself. And still the cold air would not cleanse his brain of the impurity; and still the figure that haunted him as he walked was not Pamela’s.
Then he whispered aloud—as if to see whether spoken words would not prevail with him: “She is a murderess. I have given her scarcely a thought but of loathing. And now—because of a specious dumb appeal—Damnation! For all she has gone through, she is as sound of wind and limb as a pagan Circe—a perfect animal still. I think she cannot suffer without a soul.”
He strode on more rapidly.
“I must find her another lodging—at once, without delay.”
Walking preoccupied, unregarding his direction, he had made down one of the side streets that led into the Place Louis XV. Suddenly the sound of shrill jolly voices startled him. He looked up in amazement, to see close before him something, the fact of whose existence he had hitherto most shrinkingly ignored. Sanson and his satellites were engaged in washing down the guillotine. They were as voluble as grooms over a carriage—and, indeed, the machine had its wheels and shafts and splashboard—even its luggage-basket—all complete.
Now, committed involuntarily to view of it, Ned inspected the horrible engine with some curiosity.
“Hullo, then, my jackadandy!” cried one of the grooms boisterously. “Art thou seeking a barber?”
“No,” said Ned; “but the answer to a riddle.”
The man fondled a beam, grimacing.
“It is all one,” said he. “Here is the oracle.”
“I believe it is,” said Ned; “only I am not yet sure of the question;” and he turned away.
He breakfasted at a café, made a particular little purchase to which he was whimsically attracted, and returned about mid-day to his chambers.
They struck very cold and quiet. There did not seem a sound in the house. He entered his sitting-room and closed the door. The girl was crouched in her old place upon the rug. She looked up at him mutely as he went by her, without a word, to the fire.
He let a minute pass while he warmed himself. Then he said, not turning his head—
“You want to speak to me?”
“Oh yes, yes!” she answered at once and eagerly; “to thank you for these.”
“The clothes? You needn’t thank me. It was my own interests I consulted in giving them to you. Your rags would have been no recommendation to a possible employer.”
“An employer?—monsieur—an employer?”
“Certainly. Did you imagine I intended to keep you on here indefinitely?”
She made no reply.
“Have you breakfasted?” he said.
She answered “Yes” gratefully, in a low voice.
He twisted about then, and regarded her. The wise Theophilus had, he saw, acquitted himself sensibly of his order. The girl was clothed freshly and simply. Her own instinctive niceness of touch, her kitten-like cleanliness, had ministered daintily to the result.
The young man’s brain swam for a moment. He could have thought he was back again in the lodge at Méricourt, the unsullied, fragrant presentment of a little jelly-loving Madonna charming the luminous shade of the dairy in which she sat; the sun, blazing upon the garden phloxes without, touching this his natural child’s head softly with a single beam.
In the same moment he dashed his hand, so to speak, upon the struggling fancy. He would not have it rise further to confront him. It was undeserved of its subject at the least. The promise it had once suggested had never been vindicated, and he would insist upon that now as an actual aggravation of the girl’s demerits, seeing that, at this late hour of her practical punishment for a wickedness confessed, she could still so far look her old self as to inspire—and demoralise—a certain emotion of regard. Even the very hollows in her cheeks seemed filled since yesterday; and she wore her new shoes and stockings without a hint of their discomforting her wounded feet.
Was it then that a constitution could be so flawless as to be debarred, by ignorance of suffering, from suffering’s prerogative of moral exaltation—that the nerves of emotion inherited from the nerves of physical feeling? If it were so, it were idle in this case to be considerate of the former.
He put his hand into his coat pocket and, producing a small parcel, held it out to her.
“You have breakfasted,” he said; “but doubtless you will yet have an appetite for this?”
She took it from him wonderingly. If he had designed it as a grimly ironical test of her disposition, he had reason to be discomfited by her reception of the pleasantry.
She glanced at the superscription—it was a little box of guava jelly,—then suddenly let the packet fall, and threw herself on her face upon the rug.
She lay so long and so still without sound or movement that presently he grew uneasy.
“Get up!” he cried at last, touching her—and hating himself for doing so—with his foot.
She stirred—rose to a sitting posture. Her eyes had a dazed, stunned look in them.
“Nicette!” he exclaimed, a little troubled by the fixity of her gaze. He saw then that she was gulping, as though trying to speak.
“What is it?” he asked, mutinous against the gentler spirit that was possessing him. He had to bend his head to hear her.
“While they lived—it was always he—that received—the praise, the tit-bit, the love.”
“Who received?”
“Baptiste.”
He drew himself up with an astonished expression. What answer was to make here—what course pursue with a soul so inadequate? She spoke of her parents, it seemed; was pleading their favouritism in vindication of her crime. It was a confession of moral obliquity so ingenuous as to baffle argument. For the first time a shock of conscious pity for a thing so handicapped in the pursuit of the living principle shook him. He bent down, seized the box of sweetmeat, and flung it into the fire. The girl gave a strange little cry, and gazed up at him, her mouth breathless, her eyes glazed with the floating of sudden tears.
“What now?” said Ned.
Her voice broke in a quick sob.
“I thought there was no hope or forgiveness, that you meant to hate me for evermore.”
He turned away. How could he be other than moved and stricken? She had not, after all, so much sought to extenuate her crime as to plead for herself against the hatred she had thought his act was meant to express.
There was silence for a time; then he sat down in a chair apart from her, and spoke, gazing into the fire.
“How can you think it mine either to hate or to forgive? How—” (he struck his hand to his forehead—turned upon her in utter desperation). “Nicette! do you ever feel remorse for your deed?”
“I dare not think of it,” she whispered. Then suddenly she cried out, “I think the people of my dreams are often more real than the living about me. They come and go, sweet or terrible. Was it one of them left Baptiste to die in the tree! Oh, monsieur, monsieur! if I could learn it—that I was not guilty of his death! Or if I could die myself and atone!”
She buried her face in her hands.
“Now,” thought Ned, “shall I tell her the truth—that, practically, she is not guilty?”
“No,” muttered the little Belial voice in his ear; “what value lies in the practical significance? The moral is the truth. Besides, are you so sure that her imagination is not at this moment calculating its probable effects on you? Think of her consummate and enduring art in affecting a character, in playing a part.”
The frost of scepticism nipped his pretty burgeon of pity. He hardened his heart and drew back again.
“Die!” he said, with a little caustic laugh; “well, for one of your imagination, it should be easy in these days to devise a quite lawful means of introduction to Monsieur Sanson.”
She glanced up at him quickly, with a look of agony; then drooped her head and said no more. A second long silence fell between them. But by-and-by Ned found himself restlessly driven to open upon her again.
“What happened after I had left you that time?”
She seemed to wake to his voice, shuddering out of some scaring dream.
“My God! they sought for me; they burned my lodge; they killed my poor génisse. They would have crucified me like the thieves; but I hid, and escaped in the night.”
She paused. “Go on,” he said.
“I fled into the woods. There, when I was lost and near starving, I fell, by God’s blessing, upon the Cagots who had once before visited our parts. They were returned, making their way towards Paris because of the cry of equality. They had lost their child; it had been hunted by boys, and had died of the ill-treatment. They were alone, those two, and they took me in and fed me; and by-and-by, when it was safe for me to move, I went with them on their journey to the great city.”
“Great God!” cried Ned, striking in in sheer amazement. “And these were they upon whom you allowed suspicion of the murder to rest, whom the merest chance saved from suffering the consequences of a crime of which you alone were guilty!”
“But, monsieur—oh, monsieur, I knew, when the cry rose, that they were gone from the neighbourhood. And, indeed, they are always so execrated that it could make no difference.”
Ned sank back in his chair.
“Well?” he said, with a veritable groan.
“I went with them; and we were long, long by the way; and on the way the woman also died. I think it was of nothing less than starvation. Then the man and I came on alone to Paris, and Théroigne met us, and took me from him.”
“And the woman died of want, and it never occurred to you that you were a burden on those whom you had—oh, God, how to unravel this warp! Hold your tongue, Nicette! Let there be silence between us, in pity’s name!”
She shrunk down as if she had been struck. Her confidences, it seemed, were of no avail to move him.
But presently he spoke again—
“Why, last night—when I accused you before the woman, your friend—did you not give me the lie? She would have taken your word before mine.”
And she answered, in the very voice of desolation—
“Because, if I had lied, I should have lost you.”
He leapt to his feet.
“I cannot breathe or think!” he cried. “I must leave you—I must go out!”
As he hurried from the room, she dragged herself to his empty chair, and threw her arms about it with a moan of agony.
* * * * * * * *
All day he wandered through the streets, and only returned home when darkness had closed many hours upon the city. “She will be in bed by now,” he thought.
The firelight made a glow about the room, revealing it untenanted. He sat himself down before the hearth, feeling utterly weary and vanquished. He had done nothing, planned nothing as to the girl’s removal. His brain seemed incapable of concentrated thought.
“I should have lost you—should have lost you.” The cry had been drawn into his very veins. It adapted itself to his pulses—to the knocking of his heart. What was to be the answer?
This, it seemed—a white figure that stole from the bedroom—crept into the firelight—crouched down on the floor beside him and took his unresisting hand. He felt the tremulous clutch, and dared not move. He felt his hand kissed, pressed against warm, bare flesh—felt a hot trickle lace it.
The paroxysm of emotion ceased, and then suddenly she spoke, whispering—
“It can never be?”
“Never,” he said low.
He knew, through the utmost conviction of his stricken soul, that it was all wrong and impossible—that he must answer as he had done.
He felt a quiver pass through her frame. She spoke again in a moment.
“My sin—I know it—holds us apart. I have not atoned, and, until I have, it holds us apart. Do you think, monsieur, Baptiste has forgiven me?”
“I think he has, Nicette.”
“But you cannot—not yet, though I love you so dearly. Perhaps I should not love you so well if you could. Yet it seems a strange thing to me why you helped me at all.”
He half rose from his chair; but she gently detained him, and he sank down again.
“You must go back to bed, Nicette. We will talk it all over to-morrow.”
“To-morrow?” she said. “Shall we be any nearer one another to-morrow?”
He shook his head. A very little sigh escaped her.
“You will be kind and generous to me, I know; but you will give me no moment again such as this I have stolen. And I have stolen your bed too, monsieur; but you must take it from me now, and lie in the warm nest I have made for you—it is such a little of myself, it will not matter to you—and I will sleep here before the fire.”
He got now resolutely to his feet.
“Nicette, it is folly. You must return to bed, I tell you. I am going out again for the night. To-morrow, I say, we will try to settle matters for the best.”
She clung to him yet as he moved, letting him even pull her a step forward on her knees.
“One thing—just one last thing. I shall like you to know, when I am gone—some day, when I am gone—that I died a maid.”
Her face, in the shadow, was turned up to him. The firelight made an aureole of her hair. He could feel her whole body heaving against his hand.
“Will you kiss me once?” she said.
He was conscious of a choking in his throat, and beat down the emotion fiercely.
“No,” he muttered; “it would imply something that must not be.”
She sank back away from him. Without another word he turned and left her.
In the street the frost snapped at him like the very watchdog of desolation. He huddled his cloak about him with a shudder as he faced it.
“It is for the best,” he thought. “To be away—from the terror of my own weakness! Any auberge will serve for the night.”
He strode a few paces, crunching over the snow, and stopped.
“I might, at least, have quitted her of the worst of her remorse. It would have been a little return for such love—my God, such love!”
Should he go back at once and tell her that she was guiltless of the little brother’s actual death?
“Fool!” whispered Belial, still reasoning with him. “Does her love for you alter the moral? And will you, an emotional bearer of forgiveness, escape so easily a second time? The warm nest in the bed, fool!”
He turned, and refaced the chill emptiness of the night.
“I must not,” he thought. “She shall know the truth to-morrow.”