Part 5

Yet is he going to speak? His lips have opened, his face has assumed a terrible expression, he has even advanced two paces toward the door to meet the expected comer, when suddenly he pauses. The face he sees before him is not the one he anticipated. It is that of his brother, to be sure, but it does not wear the look he had schooled himself to meet, the triumphant look that goes with happy love, however wrongfully it may be won. The surprise upsets him, and for a moment the words falter on his tongue, then all his manhood re-asserts itself, and imperiously beckoning his brother to enter, he closes the door and stands with the handle still in his grasp, looking at Camille.

“You are in trouble,” said he shortly. “What is it?” Then as he saw his brother start and uneasily drop his eyes, added bitterly: “Have you told her what you are, and does she refuse to marry you?”

Camille, who was of a fiery nature, but who for certain reasons stood somewhat in awe of his brother, looked for a moment as if he could have leaped at his throat; but he restrained himself, and while the veins swelled on his forehead and his face grew fiery red, he stammered:

“Whom do you mean by her? I do not understand you.”

“That is not true; you understand me perfectly,” was the rude but brave Jean’s straightforward response. “But if you must have names I allude to Elise, the pure, innocent, high-minded girl whom by arts I do not profess to understand you have succeeded in pleasing, till, for aught I know, she considers you a model of virtue and goodness.”

“And if she did?” broke in the other impetuously.

Jean drew a deep breath and stepped slowly back.

“I should undeceive her,” he declared, “if by the act I alienated her good-will forever.”

Camille, who for some cause did not resent the first clause of this sentence, started at the second, and gave his brother a sharp look.

“_Mon Dieu!_” exclaimed he, with as much wonder as jealousy in his tone. “Do you love her too?”

The look which Jean turned upon his brother made that other’s weak and selfish heart stand still.

“I love her,” said he, “I will not say _too_, for you do not love her. Had you loved her you would have fled from her instead of using all your arts secretly to win her. A criminal——”

“Hush!” exclaimed the other, with a terrified look around him that for some reason made Jean quail with a sense of apprehension. “Do you want to draw the police upon me?”

With a stride Jean advanced upon his brother, and, laying his strong hand on his shoulders, uncompromisingly turned him towards the light.

“You tremble,” he muttered under his breath. “You shrink, and your face is like marble. _Mon Dieu!_ Camille, is there anything new?”

With a suppressed cry Camille tore himself from his brother’s hands.

“Who has given you the right to question me?” he cried. “I will not have it. I have had enough of your spying.” And flinging himself violently towards the door of his own room, he was on the point of disappearing from Jean’s presence, when the latter, with another movement of his strong arm, drew him back and himself entered the apartment.

In an instant he came back. His face was like stone, and he had in his hand a valise fully packed, which he set heavily down on the table before Camille’s eyes.

“What does this mean?” he asked. “Where are you going and why have you kept your departure a secret from me?”

For a moment the stricken Camille did not reply; then he broke down, and flinging himself on his knees, burst forth with the cry:

“I am a ruined man, Jean; I——I tried it again, and this time it will be found out. To-morrow, to-night, possibly, my employer will look over his books, and——”

“How much is it?” broke in Jean, in a low, strained voice.

“Ten thousand francs,” murmured the other. “All gone.”

“Lost at play?”

Camille nodded his head.

Jean drew back, covering his face for a moment with his hands.

“I have just that amount,” he said, “saved up. Your employer shall have it to-morrow. As for you,” he added bitterly, “I wash my hands of you. This is twice.”

His voice broke, and he hurriedly withdrew to the window, as if the sight of his brother’s face maddened him.

He returned almost instantly, however, and walking straight up to Camille, demanded:

“What were you doing there?” pointing sternly below. “This bag shows you intended to abscond to-night. Were you bidding her farewell or——”

He had not strength to finish, but his look filled up the hiatus left in his speech.

Camille faltered beneath that glance. If he could have seen a way to escape, his furtive, worried look showed he would have availed himself of it. But his brother’s eye held him and would have the truth. With a gasp he broke forth:

“I have bidden her farewell. She does not know why I go. She loves me and she trusts me. I——I would have persuaded her to go with me if I could. I love her, I say, whatever you may call it. I love her, do you hear, and if I could have induced her to leave her father you would not have caught me in this box. It was my despair.”

He stopped. There was something in Jean’s face which told him that silence was better than speech at this moment. The first words of Jean convinced him of it.

“You are a villain,” said he, “and the punishment of your villainy shall be a confession. I hope to marry Elise Lepage,” he went on, raising his hand for silence as he saw his brother about to protest, “and I do not intend she shall waste her life in useless regrets over the loss of one so unworthy as yourself. Come, then, and in her presence, if not in that of her father, proclaim yourself the criminal that you are or——”

“Or what?” asked the other, with a wild gleam, half of defiance, half of fear.

“Or I keep my ten thousand francs and leave you to the tender mercies of a man whose justice, you have reason to know, is stronger than his mercy.”

A cold sweat broke out on Camille’s face. He looked at his brother with great staring eyes as if he could hardly believe in the alternative that was offered him. Seeing it, Jean continued:

“It is three years since the day I first awoke to the knowledge that I had for my brother a man who had provoked the justice of the law, and only escaped by the ignorance or blindness of those he had defrauded. In those three years I have spared nothing, either in the way of money or effort, to give you what you wanted and save you, if possible, from the repetition of your dastardly crime. How have you repaid me? By stealing the fancy of the woman I loved, or,” as Camille faintly objected, “the fancy of a girl whom you knew I respected, and whom you also knew would never have given you her regard had she known your real character or suspected the shadow that hung above you. She thinks you true, you say, and trusts you. That means she will remember you lovingly in your absence, possibly wait for your return, when return you never will. Elise is too fine a girl to be thus sacrificed,” asserted Jean, “and if I did not love her I should still say, ‘Come below, and show yourself to her for what you are.’ Better she should suffer this one shock, that in itself carries healing, than linger on for years a prey to a pain of longing that will be none the less keen because it will be so bravely hidden.”

But Camille had sunk before this prospect.

“I cannot,” he murmured, “I would rather go to the galleys.”

Meantime, in her own little room below, Elise was bitterly weeping. She had loved Camille almost unconsciously. Not till she saw him about to leave her did she realize how deeply he had entered into her dreams and hopes. Then the mystery of his departure heightened its effect. Though the ready tale he told of the fine position which had been offered him in a mercantile house in Peru was plausible enough, there was something in his manner and the fact that he wished to carry her away with him secretly that struck an icy doubt to her heart, and, devoted as she was to him, she felt as if she would give all the world, were it hers, to throw herself into her father’s arms and ask him for his sympathy and counsel. But that was expressly forbidden. Her father must know nothing of her sorrow or her love; her wilful lover would not have it. And young as she was, innocent as her thoughts were of wrong or deception, there was something in this ban laid between her and the father she so idolized, that awakened strange doubts and fears in her otherwise trusting bosom.

Her room adjoined that of M. Lepage, and more than once during her grief and tears she had heard his restless foot approach the door of communication, as though he were about to call her to him. But he did not; she was so quiet he evidently thought she was asleep, and finally all became as still in his room as it was deathlike in hers. And Elise wept on.

Suddenly there came a tap, not on the door she had been so fearful of seeing open, but on the one which led into the hall. Astonished, frightened almost, she crept to it and faintly asked who was there. A woman’s voice answered. It was the _concierge_, who handed her a small note. Hurriedly lighting her candle, Elise unfolded it and read:

“MADEMOISELLE——It is indispensable that I should have a few minutes’ conversation with you to-night. It is 10 o’clock, therefore your father has retired and your little sitting-room will be free. I shall not come alone.

“Respectfully, JEAN PICARD.”

A whirl of thoughts swept through Elise’s brain. She felt dizzy, almost sick, but she did not hesitate. Opening the door into her father’s room, she glided in. All was quiet. The good man was evidently asleep. Hastily crossing the floor, she gained the little sitting-room beyond, and, closing the door behind her, struck a light. Then, stopping but a moment to regain breath and still the nervous beatings of her heart, she approached the hall door and softly opened it. A low cry escaped her as she did so, the two men standing on the threshold bore in their countenances such signs of subdued agitation.

“What is it?” she faintly breathed, falling back with a slow step as they entered. “Why are you here so late? And together?” she could not help adding, as her eyes roamed from the one face to the other, both so white, both so drawn, both so filled with that strange look which a woman only sees on the countenance of the man who loves her.

As Camille did not answer, Jean replied:

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I have come here on a very disagreeable duty. I have come to hear my brother tell you the truth. Camille, speak.”

Camille, thus abjured, cast one glance of burning anguish at his brother, then in a voice so unnatural Elise could scarcely believe it his own, exclaimed bitterly:

“He wishes me to tell you I am a villain. It is not a pleasant thing to say of one’s self, Mademoiselle, but it is true. I am a villain, and——and I advise you to forget me.”

The deep misery expressed in his tones shook Jean a little, but he was inexorable. Giving one glance at Elise, who, seemingly turned into stone by the terrible nature of her lover’s words, stood breathless and pale before them, he said:

“It is not enough, Camille; tell her why you go away to-night. Tell her it is a flight.”

“You have said it,” murmured the other, half savagely; then as Jean remained unchanged in look and attitude, cried harshly: “Mademoiselle, I am unworthy of your attention. I——I am no longer an honest man. I——have——”

“Stolen,” added a deep, firm voice.

The silence that followed this word was such as could be felt.

“And you wished to take me with you!” were the words that first interrupted it.

“I love you,” murmured Camille in a broken, miserable tone.

Elise turned slowly away.

“My father! my father!” burst involuntarily from her lips, and she held out her arms in dumb entreaty to the door that separated her from her beloved parent.

Instantly and as if in answer to her appeal, a strange murmur arose from that room, an inarticulate, almost an agonized murmur that struck terror to the hearts of those who heard it.

“My father!” again cried Elise, and this time she rushed at the door and tore it widely open. Her father lay stretched before her on the floor, having evidently fallen in his efforts to answer her summons.

* * * * *

It was midnight, two hours after the fatal event recorded in the above lines. Around the bedside of M. Lepage were grouped a physician, a priest, the _concierge_, Jean Picard, and his daughter. Camille was already far away.

The physician had given them no hope. In an hour or less the poor musician’s soul would be far away. He was sensible of it himself. Upon his first return to consciousness he had said:

“This is death.”

Elise, overwhelmed as she was, could not weep. Her one thought seemed to be: “Supposing I had listened to Camille’s entreaties, and had been flying from Paris in this terrible hour!”

Jean Picard, on the contrary, shed more than one tear. Perhaps the restraint he had put upon himself in the tragic scene which had preceded this catastrophe was having its revenge upon him now, or perhaps the look of peace with which the old man surveyed him and his daughter, standing, as they were, side by side, struck him by its contrast to the sad reality. It was midnight, as I have said, and the clock was striking. As it ceased, the dying man spoke:

“May I not see your two hands joined?” he asked, gazing tenderly at Jean and Elise.

As though a thunderbolt had fallen at her feet, Elise started and fell back. Jean hastily cleared the room and then leading her gently up to the bedside, he said solemnly:

“Mademoiselle, you must pardon your father. Three hours ago I had the honor to ask of him your hand in marriage, and he had the goodness to accord it to me. He does not know that we have had no conversation on this matter since, and that therefore such words must fall upon you with a shock.”

“Did you——were you——” she stammered, “thinking of this when you——”

“Mademoiselle,” interrupted Jean, “whatever I have ever done or said has been more for your sake than my own; believe that.” And he threw a glance at M. Lepage which she could not fail to understand.

Hiding her face in her hands, Elise knelt by the bedside. She could feel her father’s hand fall on her head, caressingly, lingeringly. In a minute more she heard him say:

“He is a good man; you will marry him, Elise?” Then as she did not answer, he added softly, “I should die so happy.”

With a spring she stood upright. “Jean Picard,” she said, “do you wish me for your wife?”

A great light which she could not help noticing in that solemn hour settled slowly over all his face.

“There is nothing I wish so much,” he answered; “it has been my dream for months.”

“After what you know of my heart?” she murmured, but so low the dying man could not hear her.

“Elise,” was the equally low answer, “I do not expect you to love me just yet, but you need a protector; let me be that protector. You need some one to comfort you and provide you with a home; let me be that friend, and I will trust my love to make you satisfied in the end.”

“You are a good man,” she murmured, in unconscious repetition of her father’s words; and, scarcely knowing what she did, she laid her hand in his, seeing more clearly the smile that parted her poor father’s lips at the action than the solemn look above with which Jean Picard accepted the trust thus imparted to him.

And so it was that Elise Lepage became the wife of Jean Picard, and a tragedy of the heart was begun which ended, as we have seen, in her death. For Elise was a conscientious woman, and once married set all her hopes on the prospect of some day becoming as much a wife in heart as she was now in name. But that heart was at first too sore with the violent wrench it had sustained to experience much beyond gratitude, and months rolled by without Jean Picard discovering in his young wife’s studiously kind manner any token of that passion which informed his own life. Yet the germ if not the flower of it was in her breast. Unconsciously to herself her husband was becoming all in all to her, but the feeling she experienced for him was so different from that she had given to his unworthy brother that she did not recognize it for what it was, and called it simply friendship.

The stirring events of the war and the opening days of the Commune did not alter matters. A numbness seemed to settle upon Elise as she saw her husband gradually identifying himself with a cause she both mistrusted and feared. That her coldness drove him into the savage warfare of the barricades she did not think. She knew him well enough to perceive that, however it was with others, with him it was a matter of conscience to uphold what he called the rights of the people. And perceiving this, she did not lose her respect for him, though her terrors accumulated and an element of dread came into her regard for him which caused her less and less to suspect the true nature of the emotions he inspired.

Nor did the culmination of his career and his subsequent downfall fully awaken her. Like a dream the dreadful days passed in which he was tried, condemned, and sentenced to exile; like a dream came the time of parting. And not till she felt herself torn from his clasping arms did she realize that life was ending for her, that the moment of death had come and she had never told him she loved him. Making a vigorous effort, for her senses seemed to be leaving her, she turned, all tremulous with passionate feeling, and holding out her arms to him, was about to utter what would have illumined his exile, when doubt, that black shadow of the soul, glided again across her spirit, and, saying to herself, “’Tis but a boundless regret at the loss of his goodness,” she permitted herself only to cry:

“Good-by, Jean. I will be true to you in your absence, and work if need be with my own hands, to sustain myself till you come back.”

His sad smile told her, when too late, what she had done, or rather had omitted to do.

The memory of that smile never left her. It haunted her day and night. The struggle into which she was forced for her daily bread only served to perpetuate her remorse. From a somewhat practical woman she became a dreamer of dreams. All her soul centred in the one wish, the one hope of seeing him again, if only to whisper in his ear the truth that was every day becoming more and more apparent in her own heart. She dared not write it to him. The first few dutiful letters she had sent had never been answered, and she was of a temperament that made it impossible for her to risk the chance of her heart’s story falling into alien or unsympathetic hands. But she could not entirely smother her desire for utterance. So the letters came to be written, which, though never sent, contained the beatings of her heart through that long and dreary separation, letters which she evidently fully expected would meet his eyes, and tell him in sweetest language what her own tongue had failed to do on that memorable day of their parting.

But hope cherished to the last, went suddenly out like a candle extinguished. The ship which was to bring the exiles home arrived in safety, and she saw it and saw them, but did not see him. The blow was fatal. Without asking a question, or doubting the doom which had fallen upon him and therefore upon her, she returned home and put, as we have seen, a desperate end to her own life. Love long repressed had had its full revenge. She could not live without its object.

Such was the story of Elise Picard, told me in substance by the good woman who had befriended her and in detail by the letters she had left behind her in this same woman’s charge. I had scarcely reached the end, that is, had scarcely laid the last letter down, when a sudden hubbub rose in the hall without, followed by a pitiful low moan which somehow or other awoke in me a peculiar apprehension. Springing to the door I flung it open. Never shall I forget the picture that met my eyes. Frozen each in his place by some great emotion, the eager crowd before me stood silent, aghast, gazing at a figure that, emaciated almost beyond the semblance of a man, crouched against the wall which led towards the room of death.

The hush, the intolerable anguish expressed by that form, bent almost double by the sudden weight of woe which had fallen upon it, touched me to the quick. Grasping the hand of the first person I could reach, I asked:

“Who is he? What does this mean?”

But I did not need an answer to my question; I knew without words that Jean Picard stood before me.

* * * * *

I learned afterwards that he was among the men that passed before her eyes on the wharf, but he was so changed by disease and grief she had not recognized him. He had been spending the last two hours in a search for her.

Transcriber's Notes

Added a table of contents.

Inconsistent punctuation corrected.