Chapter 23

LEROUX'S DIABLE

I went back toward the cave. But I could not bring myself to see Jacqueline.

Instead, I paced the tunnel to and fro, wondering what my life was going to be in future. Less than three weeks before no thought of love had stirred me, and Jacqueline was undreamed of. Now she had entered into my heart and twined herself inextricably around its roots.

That I should love her till I died I did not doubt at all.

Her last words had been in the nature of a farewell. There was no more to say. Not even good-bye. I must go before that old, insatiable longing for her arose in me again.

I saw her in my mind's eyes as clearly as though she stood before me. Her loving, gracious presence, her sweet, pure face, her courage, her tenderness--all these were for Leroux. Nothing remained for me, except my memories.

I should have to make a great deal of my life. I had always believed that life was only a prelude to greater and finer things. I was not sure; I am not sure to-day; but if the life that is to come is not the realization of our unfulfilled desires, then nothing matters here. I was thinking of that as I paced the tunnel. And in that way I felt that, in a measure, Jacqueline was still mine.

"Everything that is free," she had said to me, "thoughts, will and dreams." That part was mine; and that could never be taken away.

I had reached the verge of the cataract and stood beside the little platform, looking down. There was no star now like that which had guided me in the morning, but the sky was fair and the air mild. I gazed in awe at the great stream of water, sending its ceaseless current down into the troubled lake below.

How many ages it had done that! Yet even that must end some day, as everything ends--even life, thank God!

And then I saw Lacroix again. I was sure of it now. He was peering after me from among the rocks, and, as I turned, he was scuttling away into the tunnel.

I followed him. I had always mistrusted the man; more, even, than Leroux. I felt that his furtive presence there portended something more evil than my own fate and Jacqueline's must be.

I followed him hotly; but he must have known every fissure in the cliff, for he vanished before my eyes, apparently through the solid rock, and when I reached the place of his disappearance I could find no sign of any passage there.

Well, there was no use in following him further. I paced the tunnel restlessly. The sleigh ought to be at the mine in five minutes more. I turned back to take a last look at the cataract.

The sublime grandeur of those thousand tons of water, shot from the glacier's edge above, still held me in its spell of awe. I cast my eyes toward the _château_ and over the frozen lake toward the distant, unknown mountains.

Then I turned resolutely away.

And at that moment I heard Leroux's voice hailing me, and looked round to see him emerge from the tunnel at my side. He was staring in bewilderment at the cataract.

"Hewlett, I don't know what possessed me to take the wrong turn to-night!" he cried. "I have come through that tunnel a hundred times and never missed the path before."

He swung round petulantly, and at that moment a shadow glided out of the darkness and stood in front of him. It was Pierre Caribou, lean, sinewy and old. He blocked the path and faced Leroux in silence.

Leroux looked at him, and an oath broke from his lips as he read the other's purpose upon his face. Squaring his mighty shoulders and clenching his fists, he leaped at him headlong.

Pierre stepped quietly aside, and Simon measured his full length within the tunnel. But, when he had scrambled to his feet with a bellowing challenge, Pierre was in front of him again.

"What are you here for?" roared Leroux, but in a quavering voice that did not sound like his own. "Get out of the way or I'll smash your face!"

The Indian still blocked the passage. "Your time come now, Simon. All finish now," he answered.

Simon drew back a pace and watched him, and I heard him breathing like one who has run a race.

"You come here one, two year ago," Pierre continued. "You eat up home of M. Duchaine, my master. Old M. Duchaine my master, too. I belong here. You eat up all, come back, eat up some more. Then you sell Mlle. Jacqueline to Louis d'Epernay. You made her run 'way to New York. I ask your _diable_ when your time come. Your _diable_ he say wait. I wait. Mlle. Jacqueline come back. I ask your _diable_ again. He say wait some more. Now your _diable_ tell me he send you here to-night because your time come, and all finish now."

The face that Simon turned on me was not in the least like his own. It was that of a hopeless man who knows that everything he had prized is lost. He had never cowered before anyone in his life, I think, but he cowered now before Pierre Caribou.

"Hewlett!" he cried in a high-pitched, quavering voice, "help me throw this old fool out of the way."

I spoke to Pierre. "Our quarrel is at an end," I said. "I am going away. You must go, too."

Pierre Caribou did not relax an inch of ground.

Then a roar burst from Leroux's lips, and he flung himself upon the Indian in the same desperate way as I had experienced, and in an instant the two men were struggling at the edge of the platform.

It was impossible for me to intervene, and I could only stand by and stare in horror. And, as I stared, I saw the face of Lacroix among the rocks again, peering out, with an evil smile upon his lips.

Whether they fought in silence or whether in sound I do not know, for the noise of the cataract rendered the battle a dumb pantomime.

Pierre had pulled the Frenchman out to the middle of the ledge and was trying to force him over. But Leroux was clinging with one hand to the cliff and with the other he beat savagely upon his enemy's face, so that the blood covered both of them. But Pierre did not seem to feel the blows.

Leroux, one-handed, was at a disadvantage. He grasped his antagonist again, and the death-grapple began.

It was a marvel that they could engage in so terrific a fight upon the ice-coated ledge and hold their balance there. But I saw that they were in equipoise, for they were bending all the tension of each muscle to the fight, so that they remained almost motionless, and, thigh to thigh, arm to arm, breast to breast, each sought to break the other's strength. And I saw that, when one was broken, he would not yield slowly, but, having spent the last of his strength, would collapse like a crumpled cardboard figure and go down into the boiling lake.

The cataract's half-sphere of crystal clearness framed them as though they formed some dreadful picture.

They bent and swayed, and now Leroux was forcing Pierre's head and shoulders backward by the weight of his bull's body. But the Indian's sinews, toughened by years of toil to steel, held fast; and just as Leroux, confident of victory, shifted his feet and inclined forward, Pierre changed his grasp and caught him by the throat.

Leroux's face blackened and his eyes started out. His great chest heaved, and he tore impotently at his enemy's strong fingers that were shutting out air and light and consciousness. They rocked and swayed; then, with a last convulsive effort, Leroux swung Pierre off his feet, raised him high in the air, and tried to dash his body against the projecting rock at the tunnel's mouth.

But still the Indian's fingers held, and as his consciousness began to fade Leroux staggered and slipped; and with a neighing whine that burst from his constricted throat, a shriek that pierced the torrent's roar, he slid down the cataract, Pierre locked in his arms.

I cried out in horror, but leaned forward, fascinated by the dreadful spectacle. I saw the bodies glide down the straight jet of water, as a boy might slide down a column of steel, and plunge into the black cauldron beneath, around whose edge stood the mocking and fantastic figures of ice. The seething lake tossed them high into the air, and the second cataract caught them and flung them back toward the Old Angel.

Their waters played with them and spun them round, caught them, and let them go, and roared and foamed about them as they bobbed and danced their devil's jig, waist-high, in one another's arms.

At last they slid down into the depths of the dark lake, to lie forever there in that embrace. And still the cataracts played on, sounding their loud, triumphant, never-ending tune.

I was running down the tunnel again. I was running to Jacqueline, but something diverted me. It was the face of Lacroix, peering at me from among the crevices of the rocks with the same evil smile. I knew from the look on it that he had seen all and had been infinitely pleased thereby.

I caught at him; I wanted to get my hands on him and strangle him, too, and fling him down, and stamp his features out of human semblance. But he eluded me and darted back into the cliff.

I followed him hard. This time I did not mean to let him go.

Lacroix was running toward the gold-mine. He made no effort to dodge into any of the unknown recesses of the caves, but ran at full speed across the open space and plunged into the tunnel leading to the shore by the _château_.

I caught him near the entrance and held him fast.

He struggled in my grasp and screamed.

"Go back! For the love of God, go back, _monsieur_!" he shrieked. "Let me go! Let me go!"

He fought so desperately that he slipped out of my hands and darted into the mine again, taking the tunnel which led toward the Old Angel, and thence wound back toward the _château_.

I caught him again before the cave where Jacqueline lay. I wound my arms around him. A dreadful suspicion was creeping into my mind.

He made no attempt to fight me, but only to escape, and his face was hideously stamped with fear.

"Let me go!" he howled. "Ah, you will repent it! _Monsieur_, let me go! I will give you a half-share in the gold. What do you want with me?"

What did I want? I did not know. It must have been the same instinct that leads one to stamp upon a noxious insect. I think it was his joy in the hideous spectacle beneath the cataract that had made me long to kill him.

But now a dreadful fear was dawning on me.

"Jacqueline!" I screamed.

"I have not seen her," he replied. "Now let me go! Ah, _mon Dieu_, will you never let me go? It is too late!"

Suddenly he grew calm.

"It is too late," he said in a monotonous voice, "You have killed both of us!"

And, with the sweat still on his forehead, he stood looking maliciously at me.

"If you had let me go," he said, "you would have died just as you are going to die."

I saw the face of the cliff quiver; I saw an immense rock, half-way up, leap into the air and seem to hang there; then the ground was upheaved beneath my feet, and with a frightful roar the rocky walls swayed and fell together.

And the rivulet became a cataract that surged over me and filled my ears with tumult and sealed my eyes with sleep.