Part 24

“I have heard it said that you are indifferent to women. If so, you are lucky. We bring nothing but misery--even to those we love!”

She swept her little hands upwards through the mass of curls upon her temples, with her favorite gesture:

“I was leaving the Hotel--where my husband was dining with M. Guizot--when the great crowd of people, led by the drum and the Red Flag, filled the Boulevard, and seemed as though about to charge the soldiers, who were drawn up along the railings motionless as statues, with their muskets at the present.... Upon a gray Arab, in command of the half-battalion was a young officer who interested me much....”

Invisible, red-hot needles pricked the listener all over. Then something icy cold seemed to trickle down his spine and escape through the heels of his spurred military boots. The speaker did not look in his direction. Her downcast eyelids fluttered, a faint mysterious smile hovered upon the eloquent mouth.

“He sat his horse like a young Bedouin of the Desert, or such a warrior of ancient Greece as one has seen sculptured on the walls of the Parthenon at Athens. His skin was the ground-color of an Etruscan vase.... Cold though I am--ah! you cannot dream how cold I am!--I have never been insensible to the beauty that is male.”

Under the covert of her eyelashes she stole a glance at the victim.

* * * * *

“I guessed who you were, of course!--you had been minutely described to me.... But it pleased me to pretend ignorance. I said, pointing you out to M. de Moulny: ‘That must be the officer who has newly joined us from Africa. His type is rare--at least in my experience. It is a reincarnation of the Young Hannibal. He has the rich coloring, the bold features, the slender shape.... De Roux must present him. He will bring me purple stuffs and golden ingots and the latest news from Tyre.’ And de Moulny answered, looking at you coldly: ‘He has millions of ingots, but he cannot give you them--unless he cares to break a vow.’ I said: ‘So, then, you know my handsome Carthaginian?’ He answered: ‘I used to, when we were boys at a military institute. It was he who induced me to give up my intention of entering the Army.’ I asked: ‘How, then, Monsieur?... Are you so easily persuaded? What means did your friend employ to alter your determination?’ And de Moulny answered, looking at me oddly: ‘_A false step, and a broken foil!_’”

The spider-web of fascination she had woven about Dunoisse was weakened, perhaps, by the mention of de Moulny’s name. He looked at Henriette with eyes that had become harder and brighter. He waited for the rest.

“Naturally, so strange an utterance roused my curiosity. I wanted to hear the story, if there is one? But M. de Moulny stuck out his underlip--perhaps you remember a trick he has;--and I thought: ‘Some day you shall tell me the rest.’ We talked of other things--standing there under the portico. Of ourselves, France, the political crisis that loaded the air with the stifling smell of garlic, of old clothes, of unwashed human beings--that filled it with those cries of, ‘Down with the Ministry! Long live Reform! Give us no more thieves in velvet!’ and drowned them in the bellowed strophes of ‘The Marseillaise.’ And as the crowd surged and roared and the Red Flag waved like a bloody rag in the light of their torches, I asked of M. de Moulny--I cannot tell you why I asked it.... Perhaps one is fated to say these things....”

Real emotion was beginning to mingle with feigned feeling. She lifted the chain of rubies that encircled her round white throat as though its light weight oppressed, and tiny points of moisture glittered on her temples and about her lips. She said, touching the lips with a filmy handkerchief edged with heavy Spanish lace:

“I asked of Alain, as the great crowd seemed about to rush upon the gates of the Hotel: ‘What would be, at this juncture, the greatest misfortune that could befall the House of Bourbon?’ He answered: ‘That your young Hannibal should give the word to fire!’”

She imposed silence upon Dunoisse, who was about to break into impetuous speech, by laying a little velvet hand upon his lips, as she had once laid them upon de Moulny’s. She kept the hand there as she said:

“Do not interrupt--it takes all my courage to tell this! I carry a loaded pistol upon all occasions--it is a habit I learned in Spain--in Algeria I found it of use. And I drew the weapon from its hiding-place,--I can hear my own voice saying as I did so: ‘_One shot might hasten the crisis.--What if I fired?_’... And M. de Moulny said: ‘No, no! You must not!’ _And I did!_ I pulled the trigger, and before the echo of the shot had died, and the salt blue smoke cleared from before my face.”

* * * * *

She was at his feet, weeping, clinging to the shaking hands with which Dunoisse strove to raise her, choking with sobs, burying her face upon his arm, wetting the blue cloth with real tears, entangling silken shining strands of night-dark hair in the rough gold embroidery of the Staff brassard on the Assistant-Adjutant’s sleeve.

“This is my place! Let all the world come and find me here! I do not care! What is humiliation if I can atone? Make no allowances or excuses for me.... Do not say: ‘It was a moment of madness!’ Think of me as your enemy and your destroyer! Ah! what a heart I must have to have smiled in your eyes, as I did when we met this evening, and not have cried out at the first look: ‘Pardon! Forgiveness!--you whom I have wronged!’”

She drew some sobbing breaths, and said, lifting beautiful tear-drenched eyes like pansies in a thunder-shower:

“Hate me for the cold, calculating selfishness--bred of the base desire to save myself from the taint of all that blood--the cowardly fear of the possible vengeance of Red Republicans--that led me to say to you: ‘_Take the advice of a sister. Say that you were guilty of this crime!_’ For it is a crime. It has defiled my soul with stains that cannot be wiped away.”

The supple red hands of Dunoisse tightened upon the little hands they clasped. He said, looking in her eyes:

“The pistol-shot was yours. But _he_ cried, ‘Fire!’”

She moved her lips soundlessly and nodded.

“I recognized his voice.... I should recognize it through the noise of battle--above all the tumult of the Judgment Day. It claimed payment for the false step--indemnity for the broken foil. Well, let him have both, and find his joy in them!”

He laughed harshly, and his grip was merciless. Yet she bore the pain of it without crying out. His eyes had quitted her face--they were fixed upon the portrait of the nun-Princess of Orleans. And as though some subtle, evil influence had passed from those proud voluptuous painted eyes into his blood, he was conscious of the shaping of a purpose within him and the surging of a flood that was to carry all before it and undo the work of years.

“But one joy he shall not have....”

He hardly knew whether his own lips or another’s had uttered the words. But he looked down and saw Henriette at his feet, between his hands. And as his eyes fell upon the creamy treasure of the fair bosom that heaved so near, Monsieur the Marshal, had he been enabled to look into the gray boudoir at that particular moment, would no longer have been able to say to Hector:

“You are an iceberg. You have Carmel in your blood!”

For the son of Marie Bathilde--carried away by a tidal wave of passion, such as had swept Sister Thérèse de St. François out from among the pallets of the Lesser Ward of the Mercy-House at Widinitz, out of her nun’s cell into the wild, turbulent ocean that rolled and billowed outside the convent walls--was to yield, and take, and eat as greedily as any other son of Adam of the fruit of the Forbidden Tree.

How it matures, the first bite into the sweet, juicy pulp! He had seemed to Henriette a brilliant boy; obstinate and stiff-necked, scrupulous and absurd. Now she saw him transformed to a new being. Vigorous, alert, decisive, masterful, a man to be reckoned with, to be feared while you deceived. And on the boiling whirlpool of passion her own light fragile craft began to dance, and rock, and spin in ever-narrowing circles, as he said, with a strange smile that showed the white teeth gleaming under the small black mustache, but set no gay light dancing in the brilliant, cold black eyes:

“Have no fear. Try to believe me when I promise you, upon my word of honor, that no harm shall come to you from--this that you have done.”

He stooped and kissed the little white hands, and said to their owner:

“Blood on these exquisite hands would be a horror. Well! from henceforth I take their stains on mine.”

She faltered in real agitation:

“What are you going to do?”

The lovely lips were very near his own, as he said, still smiling in that curious way:

“I shall take the advice--not of a sister!”

She panted, shuddering closer.

“No, no! You must not----”

His eyes were fastened on her lips. Instinctively his own were drawn to them. His hot kiss would have burned them in another moment, but that a chill breath seemed to flutter at his ear, and in a flash, he saw the thing he was about to do in its true, ugly colors, and shame stung through and through him, and he drew back.

He had gathered of the fruit of Pleasure and plucked its gaudy flowers in the parterres where these things can be had at a price. He had emptied the frothy cup of Passion and paid its exorbitant bill. But though he may have coveted the mistress of another man, he had never yet desired his neighbor’s wife.

De Roux might be a reprobate and a libertine, but he was Henriette’s husband. And she was not the pure, unattainable planet, the chaste, immaculate divinity he had imagined her; but yet she was a wife. She felt the change in him--saw the fierce, eager light die out in his black eyes, and rose up, saying hurriedly:

“How good you are!--how good! I shall rely upon your promise. We must join the others now. It will not do to be missed!”

So they went out together and mingled with the spinning rout of dancers, as the neglected wax-lights burned out in their silver branches, and the waning moon peeped through the curtains of the gray boudoir. One pale ray touched the portrait of the witch-Princess of Orleans, grasping the Crucifix in the dimpled hand that had never scrupled to pluck Sin’s reddest flowers--treading crowns and scepters under the dainty, naked feet so many lovers had kissed as gayly they danced downwards along the hellward path. And surely the proud, sensuous eyes leered with wicked triumph, and could it be that the smile upon the painted mouth had given place to laughter?

XXXVII

The General Court-Martial of Inquiry into the conduct of the junior Staff-officer left in command of the half-battalion of infantry detailed to guard the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upon a day to be marked with red upon the calendar, was held at the Barracks of the 999th in the Rue de l’Assyrie, between the official hours of Eight in the morning and Four in the afternoon.

One may suppose the pomp and solemnity of the affair, the portals guarded by sentries, Monsieur the Judge-Advocate and his subordinates in official robes, Monsieur the President and other stately cock-hated, plumed, bewigged personages of the General Staff, with the various officers convened as witnesses, solemnly filing in behind the Provost-Marshal and his guard--taking their seats, right and left according to rank, at the =T=-shaped arrangement of tables, covered with the significant Green Cloth; everyone arrayed in full Review-uniform, making the whitewashed mess-hall brilliant as a garden of flaunting summer flowers.

They took the votes according to the time-honored custom, beginning with the youngest person present. The Provost-Marshal and his merry men brought the Prisoner in.

Dunoisse, without sword or sash, went calmly to the place of dread at the bottom of the leg of the =T= of tables. Reporters for the Press were accommodated with a bench behind a board on trestles under the high window at the bottom of the hall. The Orders and Warrants were read, with clearing of throats and official hawking. And at each pause, from a balcony high up upon the plain bare wall behind the President’s table, came the silken frou-frou of ladies’ dresses and the rustling of ribbons and bonnet-plumes. And one heart among all those that throbbed there, under its covering of silken velvet and sable-fur, was sick with hidden apprehension and cold with secret dread.

There was no challenge on the part of the accused officer when the President-General asked the question: “Do you object to be tried by me or any of these officers whose names you have heard?” He bowed and replied, “No!”.... He had no suspicion of prejudice or malice lurking under any uniform present. And then, erect, in a rigid attitude of respect and attentive deference, the Prisoner listened to the reading of the Charge.

This occupied time, the process of Courts-Martial very successfully emulating the pompous prolixity of tribunals of the Civil kind. And while the python-periods dragged their tortuous length from sheet to sheet of official paper, Dunoisse found himself mentally traveling back to those early days at the Royal School of Technical Military Instruction, when de Moulny was Redskin’s hero and faithful Achates, Mentor and Admirable Crichton all rolled into one. And butt on occasions, it is to be added. For sometimes it is sweet to laugh at one you most sincerely love.

Thinking thus, he began to realize how in his loneliness he had clung to the memory of the old affection. How always,--always he had been hoping that the barriers of estrangement and silence might be broken down one day. That Alain might yet come to him with outstretched, eager hand, saying:

“I have withheld my friendship all these years, that I might be able to give you my esteem and my admiration. You have been tried by me as no friend was ever yet tried, tested to the utmost, and proved as none has ever been proved before you.... Was it not worth while to bear something to earn such praise from me?”

And now Dunoisse saw the god of his old boyish, innocent idolatry stripped of the false jewels and tawdry robes that had adorned him, his nimbus of gilt plaster knocked away. He began to understand how he, Hector Dunoisse, had been his whole life long the slave, and tool, and puppet, and victim of this cold, arrogant, dominating nature; and resentment glowed in him, scorching up the last green blade of lingering kindness; and hatred leaped up in a little flickering tongue of greenish flame, soon to become a raging prairie-fire of vengeance, traveling with the speed of the wind that urged it on.

He clenched his hands and set his teeth, remembering his long arrears of injuries. He saw himself economizing uniforms, doing without necessaries and comforts, slaving in spare hours to earn the money to buy books and instruments--bound and fettered always by that egregious vow.... Then a conviction started through him like the discharge from an electric battery. Malice was the missing key-word of the cipher that had been so difficult to read.

Revenge for the spoiled career had prompted everything. No pleasure foregone, luxury denied, but had paid off some item of the old score that had been carved with the end of the broken fencing-foil. That the false step had been deliberately planned, de Moulny must have always believed. He had told the story everywhere. And the taint of that supposed treachery had always clung about Dunoisse’s footsteps. It had followed him through life.

Now he lifted up those glittering black eyes of his to the balcony where bonnet-plumes were nodding as their wearers whispered of him.... And he met the eyes of Henriette de Roux.

Those beautiful eyes!... Their owner had seemed to him upon that first night of their meeting a star and a goddess--something to dream of and worship from a long way off.

But before gray dawn had peeped in between the window-curtains upon the whirling crowd of weary, hot-eyed dancers, he had learned to know her better. The star was no celestial sphere, but an earthly planet, glowing with fierce volcanic fires; the dazzling robe of the divinity, now that she had descended from her pedestal, was seen to be stained with frailties of the human kind. But brought within reach, she was not less desirable. He thrilled at the recollection of that night in the gray boudoir.

Ah! those sweet lips that mingled Truth and Falsehood in such maddening philters! Ah! those bewitching eyes, how they promised, and coaxed, and cajoled! A shudder went through the man. For he saw again, more clearly by their light, the pleasant pathway that went winding downwards between banks of gorgeous, poison-breathing flowers. And a soft, insinuating voice seemed whispering, prompting; telling him that with a tithe of the great sum of money that had lain growing for so many years at Rothschild’s, could be purchased the sweet, heady vengeance that is wreaked in the satisfaction of desire.

And then ... he became aware that the labyrinthine verbosities of the Charge had reached a final period, and that Monsieur the Judge-Advocate had a question to ask.

“Are you, Lieutenant Hector-Marie-Aymon von Widinitz-Dunoisse, Certificated of the General Staff, and Attached as Assistant-Adjutant to the 999th Regiment of the Line, Guilty or Not Guilty of the Charge brought against you, and which I have now read in the hearing of this Court?”

The reply left little excuse for prolonged investigations. The arraigned officer simply said:

“Monsieur, I gave the order to fire. I believed it necessary. I have no excuse to offer--no plea to make. I submit myself absolutely to the jurisdiction of the Court.”

Which Court, at the end of this First Assembly, declined to continue the proceedings, the prisoner having acted with a certain degree of rashness, yet with the very best intentions, in the face of an emergency of the gravest kind. And, furthermore, having been severely reprimanded in orders by his Colonel; and placed in and kept under close arrest by the said commander, the said Court did ultimately find Further Proceedings under the circumstances would be Unjustifiable, and recommended that the said Prisoner be immediately Released, the charge against him Not Having Been Proved.

And the grave farce was ended--the solemn jest played out, amidst the rustling of draperies, and the nodding of bonnet-plumes, and the clapping of little kid-covered hands up in the gallery where the Band played on guest-nights, and where at least one heart beat with infinite relief.

Amidst a universal rising, saluting, putting on of plumed cocked hats and white gloves, after official congratulations and some bowings and hand-shakings, the Assistant-Adjutant, _plus_ his sash and sword, was free to go about his business, without that haunting sense of being a marked man, under ban of the Second Republic of France. And Dunoisse put on his shako and went out into the sanded barrack-yard, walking with the step of the free. And an orderly of the Colonel’s presently brought him a little lilac note, addressed in violet ink, in the small, clear character, exhaling a perfume that had haunted him, of late, persistently. And the little lilac note said:

“_Come!_”

XXXVIII

Perhaps you know how Henriette received him? She took his hands and looked long and softly in the clear-cut, vivid face, and said, while great tears brimmed her white underlids and fell softly down her cheeks:

“Oh, you are noble! Why have I not known you before? Why must we only meet as late as this?”

And presently:

“What other man would be capable of such generosity? And you ask nothing--you who might demand so much!”

De Roux was absent on official business. Dunoisse remained some hours, went away, and returned to dinner. Madame de Roux had a box at the Italiens for that evening. It was perfectly proper that the sub-Adjutant of the 999th should escort his Colonel’s wife.

* * * * *

The opera was “Semiramide.” Carnavale was in the stalls, wearing the crimson dress-coat dedicated to that special opera. On nights when “Der Freischütz” was given he appeared in apricot,--when “Lucia” was performed you saw him in pale blue. Giulia Gigi sang,--upon that night of all the nights the glorious artist reached the apex of her triumph. The great pure voice flowed forth, the soul was caught upon and carried away by wave upon wave of wonderful music; the Opera-House was filled with them; the atmosphere, saturated with mille-fleurs and frangipani, was electrical with human passion. Dunoisse looked, not at the beautiful singer, who trod the stage and sang as one inspired, but at Henriette.... Her head was thrown back, her transparent eyelids were closed, her delicate nostrils quivered, her throat throbbed and swelled. The curve of it suggested the swan dying in melody. For Dunoisse the music was she. She sat forwards upon her chair of velvet, and the diamond cross upon her bosom wakened into vibrant light and sank into soft suggestive shadow as she drew and exhaled deep, sighing breaths. Below the line of her short glove a blue vein leaped in her delicate wrist. To see it was to long to kiss it. Dunoisse’s eyes could not keep away.

And Gigi sang more and more divinely, and at the end of her greatest _scena_, sweeping off the stage like a human tornado, you might, had you been sitting in the shadow of velvet curtains, in a certain box upon the Grand Tier, occupied by two people who hardly looked at the stage, have seen her seize from the grasp of a giant fireman in a shining helmet, tight shell-jacket with enormous shoulder-straps and cavalry trousers, a glittering pewter--pour down that statuesque throat of hers a copious draught of English porter, frothing, mellow, and mild; kick out her imperial train with one backward movement of a foot too solid for a fairy’s, and storm back again amidst the thundering cries of “Bis!” and “Brava!” to grant the demanded encore.

Who grudges the Gigi her porter? I have seen the nightingale, that unrivaled soloist, at the finish of a marvelous series of runs and trills, a fine frenzy of jug-jug-jugging, look about him, preen his snuff-colored breast-feathers, and presently hop down to a lower branch and help himself to a snack. Why, then, should we chide the prima-donna for her draught of stout, or cavil at the grilled lobsters, risotto, or macaroni dressed with chillies and tomatoes, that her soul loves? For are not these, by the alchemy of digestion, equally with the earwig, woodlouse, or grub of the other singer, transmuted into heavenly sounds?

Henriette said to Dunoisse, as the great waves of melody broke over them:

“You said that night in the boudoir that you would not take advice from me as a sister. But I am your sister!--nothing but your sister! Let us make a compact upon that?”

Dunoisse agreed, without enthusiasm. She thanked him in a velvety whisper. Presently she said:

“If all men were as noble as you, this world would be a happy place for women. How wonderful to have met a nature such as yours! Another man would have kissed me--that night when I made my terrible confession. But I knew that I was secure,--I rested upon your honor. Let it be always thus between us. Let me always feel when I am with you that I am a soul without a body--a pure spirit floating in clear ether with my friend.”