Part 6

“My dizziness, my bewilderment, were the sensations of a moment, and in a trice I was myself again. The wound was nothing--a nicely calculated stroke through the fleshy part of the arm. I laughed when they talked of honour satisfied and of our return to the barracks. I said I never felt better in my life. It was true, for I was possessed with a berserker rage, as they call it in the old Norse sagas; a bullet through my heart could not have hurt me then. The seconds demurred; they told me that I was in their hands; that I was overruled; repeated, like parrots, that honour was satisfied. This only made me laugh the more. I went up to the marquis and asked him was it necessary for me to strike him again? I called him a coward, and swore I would post him in every salon and club in Paris. I slapped him in the face with my bare hand--my right, for my left felt numb and strange. There was another scene. De Gonse appeared discomposed for the first time; the seconds were pale and more than perturbed. One had a sense of death being in the air. There were consultations apart; appeals to which I would not listen; expostulations as idle as the wind. De Gonse, trembling with wrath, left himself unreservedly to his seconds, walking up and down at a little distance like a sentinel on duty. I also strolled about to show how strong and fit I was--the angriest, the bitterest man in France.

“At length it was decided that we might continue the combat. De Gonse solemnly protested, bidding us all take notice that he had been allowed no alternative. My colonel was almost in tears. Repeatedly, as a favour to himself, he besought me to apologise for that second blow and retire from the field. But I was adamant. ‘_Mon colonel_,’ I said to him, in a whisper, ‘this is a quarrel in which one of us must fall. Let me assure you it is not about a trifle.’

“Again we ranged ourselves; again we grasped our rapiers, saluted, and stood ready for the game to begin. The marquis’s coolness had somewhat forsaken him. The finest equanimity is ruffled by a buffet in the face; one cannot command calm at will. His friends said afterwards that he showed extraordinary self-control, but I should rather have described it as extraordinary uneasiness. No duellist cares for a berserker foe. De Gonse was, moreover, of a superstitious fancy. There are such things, besides, as presentiments; I think he must have had one then. God knows, perhaps he was struggling with remorse. The handkerchief fell; we crossed swords, and the combat was resumed with the utmost vivacity. The air rang with the shivering steel. The doctors smoked no longer, but looked on with open mouths. A duel in grim earnest is seldom seen in France, though I venture to say there was one that morning. It lasted only a minute; we had scarcely well begun before I felt a stinging in my side, and saw, as in a dream, my enemy’s triumphant face, red with his exertions. The exasperation of that moment passes the power of words to describe. This was my revenge, this a villain’s punishment on the field of honour! He would leave it without a scratch, to be lionised in salons, to relate in boudoirs the true inwardness of the quarrel! Remember, I felt all this within the confines of a single second, as a drowning man in no more brief a space passes his entire life in review. Imagine, if you can, my rage, my uncontrollable indignation, my unbounded fury. What I did then I would do now,--by God, I would,--if need be, a dozen times! I caught his rapier in my left hand and held it in the aching wound, while with my unimpeded right I stabbed him through the body, again and again, with amazing swiftness--so that he fell pierced in six places. There was a terrible outcry; shouts of ‘Murder!’ ‘Coward!’ ‘Assassin!’ on every side looks of horror and detestation. One of the marquis’s seconds beset me like a maniac with his cane, and I believe I should have killed him too had not the old colonel run between us.

“The other second was supporting de Gonse’s head and assisting the surgeons to staunch the pouring blood. But it was labour lost; any one could see that he was doomed. From a little distance I watched them crowding about him where he lay on the grass; for I had drawn apart, sick and dizzy with my own wounds, conscious that I was now an outcast among men. At last one came towards me; it was Clut, the doctor. He said nothing, but drew me gently towards the group he had just quitted. They opened for me to pass as though I were a leper. A second later I stood beside the dying man, gazing down at his face.

“‘He wishes to shake hands with you,’ said the other doctor, solemnly, guiding the marquis’s hand upward in his own. ‘Let his death atone, he says; he wishes to part in amity.’

“I folded my arms.

“‘No, monsieur,’ I said. ‘What you ask is impossible.’ With that I walked away, not daring to look back lest I might falter in my resolution. I can say honestly that de Gonse’s death weighs on me very little; yet I would give ten years of my life to unsay those final words--to recall that last brutality. In my dreams I often see him so, holding out the hand, which I try to grasp. I hear the doctor saying, ‘He wishes to part in amity.’

“I fainted soon after leaving my opponent’s side. I lay on the ground where I fell, no one caring to come to my assistance. When consciousness returned I saw them lifting the marquis’s body into a carriage, and I needed no telling to learn that he was dead. My colonel and Van Greef assisted me into another cab, neither of them saying a word nor showing me the least compassion. I suppose I should have been thankful they did so much. Was not I accursed? Were they not involved in my dishonour? They abandoned me, wounded, faint, and parching with thirst, to find my own way to Paris. Alone? No, not altogether. On the seat beside me my colonel laid a flask of brandy and a loaded pistol. The first I drank; the revolver I pitched out of window. I never thought to kill myself. For cheating at cards, for several varieties of dishonour, yes. But not for what I had done--never in all the world. My conscience was as undisturbed as that of a little child; excepting always that--why had I not taken his hand!

“I was arrested, of course, and tried--tried for murder. You see, there were too many in the secret for it to be long kept. It was a _cause célèbre_, attracting universal attention. The quarrel concerned the Spanish Succession; as to that they could not shake me. There were many surmises, many suspicions, but no one stumbled on the truth. To a single man only was it told--Maître Le Roux, my counsel. Him I had to tell, for at first he would not take up my case at all. There was a great popular outcry against me, the army furious and ashamed, the bourgeoisie in hysterics. I was condemned; sentenced to death; reprieved at the particular intercession of the Marquise de Gonse, the dead man’s mother, who threw herself on her knees before the Chief Executive--reprieved to transportation for life!

“You will be surprised I mention not my mother. Ah, mademoiselle, there are some things which will not permit themselves to be told--even to you. She went mad. She died. My military degradation is another of those things unspeakable. The epaulets were torn from my shoulders, the _galons_ from my sleeves, my sword broken in two; all this in public before my regiment in hollow square. Picture for yourself, on every side, those walls of faces, scarcely one not familiar; my colonel, choking on his charger, the agitated master of ceremonies; my former friends and comrades trying not to meet my eye; in the ranks many of my own troopers crying, and the officers swearing at them below their breath. My God, it was another Calvary!

“At Havre they kept me long in prison, waiting for the transport to carry me to New Caledonia. It was there I heard of my sister’s death, the news being brought to me by a young French lady, a friend of Berthe’s. My sister had poisoned herself, appalled at what she had done. There was no scandal, however, no sensational inquiry. She was too clever for that, too scientific; it was by no vulgar means that she sought her end. Assembling her friends, she bade them good-bye in turn, and divided among them her little property, her money, jewels, and clothes. She died in the typhus hospital to which she had volunteered her services--a victim to her own imprudence, said the doctors; a martyr to duty, proclaimed the world. She was accorded the honour of a municipal funeral (though her actual body was thrown into a pit of lime): the _maire_ and council in carriages, the charity children on foot, the _pompiers_ with their engine, a battalion of the National Guard, and the band of the Ninth Marine Infantry! What mockery! What horror!

“Here in New Caledonia I looked forward to endure frightful sufferings, to be herded with the dregs of mankind in a squalor unspeakable. But, on the contrary, I was received everywhere with kindness. The rigours of imprisonment were relieved by countless exemptions. I found, as I had read before in books, that the sight of a great gentleman in misfortune is one very moving to common minds; and if he bears his sorrows with manly fortitude and dignity, he need not fear for friends. To my jailers I was invariably ‘Monsieur’; they apologised for intruding on my privacy, for setting me the daily task; they would have looked the other way had I been backward or disinclined. I was neither, for I was not only ready to conform to the regulations, but something within me revolted at being unduly favoured.

“At the earliest moment permissible by law I left the prison to become a serf, the initial stage of freedom, hired out at twelve francs a month to any one who required my services. I fell into the hands of Fitzroy, here, the mine-owner, who treated me with a consideration so distinguished, so entirely generous, that when I earned my right to a little farm of my own I begged and received permission to settle near him. The government gave me these few acres on the hill, rations for a year, and a modest complement of tools and appliances, exacting only one condition: my _parole d’honneur_. It is only Frenchmen who could ask such a thing of a convict, but, as I told you before, I was regarded as an exception, a man whose word might safely be taken.

“Never was one less inclined to escape than myself; my estates, which are extensive and valuable, would have instantly paid the forfeit; and though I am prohibited from receiving a sou of their revenues, I am not disallowed to direct how my money shall be used. You will wonder why I weigh possessions so intangible against a benefit which would be so real. But the traditions of an old family become almost a religion. To jeopardise our lands would be a sacrilege of which I am incapable; we phantoms come and go, but the race must continue on its ancestral acres; the noble line must be maintained unbroken. So peremptory is this feeling that you will see it at work in families that boast no more than three generations. The father’s château is dear; the grandfather’s precious; the great-grandfather’s a thing to die for! Think what it is among those, like ourselves, whose lineage and lands go back to Charlemagne! Though I can never return to France myself, though I shall die on my little hillside farm and be buried by strangers, still, it is much to me that the estates will pass to those of my blood. I have cousins, children of my uncle, who will succeed me--manly, handsome boys, whose careers are my especial care. Their children will often ask,--their children’s children, perhaps,--of that portrait of a man in chains, in the stripes of a convict, that hangs in our great picture-gallery at Nemours, beneath it this legend: ‘Paul de Charruel, painted in prison at his own request.’ At the prompting of vanity, of humility,--I scarcely know which to call it,--I had this done before I quitted France for ever, the artist coming daily to study me through the bars; and ordered it hung amid the effigies of my race. I suppose it hangs there now, slowly darkening in that empty house. It shall be my only plea to posterity, my only cry.

* * * * *

“It is nearly sixteen years ago since these events took place. For more than twelve I have lived like a peasant on my little farm, the busiest of the busy; up at dawn, to bed by nine o’clock. Blossoming under a care so sedulous and undivided, it has yielded me a rich return for my labour. My heart it has kept from breaking; my hands it has never left empty of a task to fill. There is a charm in freedom and solitude, a solace to be found in the society of plants, beyond the power of words to adequately express. Our government is right when it gives the convict a piece of land and a spade, leaving him to work out his own salvation. I took their spade; I found their salvation. On that hillside there I have passed from youth to middle age; my hair has turned to grey; my talents, my strength, all that I have inherited or acquired in mind or body, have been expended in hoeing cabbages, in weeding garden-beds, in felling the forest-trees which encumbered my little estate. Yet I have not been unhappy, if you except one day each year, a day I should gladly see expunged from my calendar. Once a year I receive from the Marquise de Gonse a letter in terms the most touching and devout, written in mingled vitriol and tears. This annual letter is to her, I know, a supreme sacrifice; every line of it breathes anguish and revolt. To forgive me has become the touchstone of her religion, a test to which she submits herself with agony. I cannot--I do not--blame her for hating me; I would not have her learn the truth for anything on earth: but is it a pleasure for me to be turned the other cheek? Is it any consolation to be forgiven in terms so scathing? It is terrible, that piety which deceives itself, which attempts to achieve what is impossible. And she not only forgives me: she sends me little religious books, texts to put upon my walls, special tracts addressed to those in prison. She asks about my soul, and tells me she wearies the President with intercessions for my release. Poor, lonely old woman, bereft of her only son! In the bottom of her heart, does she not wish me torn limb from limb? Would she not love to see me in the fires of hell?

“This, mademoiselle, concludes my story. To-morrow, in your father’s beautiful yacht, you leave our waters, never to return. You will pursue your adventurous voyage, encircling the world, to reach at last that far American home, receiving on the way countless new impressions that will each obliterate the old. Somewhere there awaits you a husband, a man of untarnished name and honour. In his love you will forget still more; your memories will fade into dreams. Will you ever recall this land of desolation? Will you ever recall de Charruel the convict?”

He had not looked at the girl once during the course of his long narrative. He felt that she had been affected--how much or how little, he did not know, a certain delicacy, a certain fear, withholding him. When at last he sought her face he saw that she had been crying.

“I shall never forget,” she said.

They walked in silence until, at a parting of the paths, he said: “This one leads to my little cabin. Come; it will interest you, perhaps--the roof that has sheltered me for twelve irrevocable years. You are not afraid?” he asked.

She made a motion of dissent, drawing closer to him as though to express her confidence.

A few hundred yards brought them to a grassy paddock fenced with limes, through which they passed to reach a grove of breadfruit and orange trees beyond. On the farther side the house itself could be seen, a wooden hut embowered in a bougainvillea of enormous size. It looked damp, dark, and uninviting. Not a breath stirred the tree-tops above nor penetrated into the deep shade below; except for the drone of bees and a sound of falling water in the distance, the intense quiet was untroubled by a sound. De Charruel led the way in silence, with the preoccupation of a man who had too often trod that path before to need his wits to guide him. Reaching the hut, he threw open the door and stood back to allow his companion to enter before him. The little room was bare and clean; a table, a book-shelf, a couple of chairs, the only furniture; the only ornaments a shining lamp and a vase of roses. Miss Amy Coulstoun took a seat in the long canvas chair which the convict drew out for her. The air seemed hot and suffocating, the perfume of the orange-blossoms almost insupportable. She was possessed, besides, with a thought, a fancy, that bewildered her; that made her feel half ashamed, half triumphant; that brought the tears to her eyes repeatedly. De Charruel did not speak. He was standing in the doorway, looking down at her with a sort of awe, as though at something sacred, something he wished to imprint for ever in his mind.

“I wish to remember you as you are now!” he exclaimed--“lying back in my chair, your face a little in profile, your eyes sad and compassionate. When you are gone I shall keep this memory in my heart; I shall cherish it; it shall live with me here in my solitude.”

“I must go,” she said, with a little thrill of anger or agitation in her voice. “I have stayed too long already.”

He came towards her.

“I want first to show you this,” he said, drawing from his pocket a jewel-case, which he almost forced into her hands. “You will not refuse me a last favour--you who have accorded me so many?”

She avoided his glance, and opened the box, giving, as she did so, an exclamation of astonishment.

It was full of rings.

“They were my poor mother’s,” he explained. “By special permission I was allowed to receive them here; I feared they might go astray.”

There were, perhaps, ten rings in all, every one the choice of a woman of refinement and great wealth--diamonds, rubies, pearls, and opals, sparkling and burning in the hollow of the girl’s hand. No wonder she cried out at the sight of them, and turned them over and over and over with fascinated curiosity.

“Each one has its history,” said de Charruel. “This and this are heirlooms. This was a peace-offering from my father after a terrible quarrel, the particulars of which I never learned. This he gave her after my birth--are the diamonds not superb? This ruby was my mother’s favourite, for it was her engagement ring, and endeared to her by innumerable recollections. She used to tell me that at her death she wished my wife to wear it always, saying it was so charged with love that she counted it a talisman.”

Miss Coulstoun held it up to the light, turning it from side to side.

“It is like a pool of fire,” she said.

“Won’t you try it on?” he asked.

She did so, and held out her hand for him to see. The ring might have been made to the measure of her finger.

“You will never take it off again,” he said. “You will keep it for a souvenir--for a remembrance.”

She shook her head. “Indeed, I will not,” she returned, with a smile. “Besides, is it not to be preserved for your fiancée? You cannot disregard your mother’s wish.”

“Why should we pretend to one another?” he broke out. “You know why I offer it to you, mademoiselle. It would be an insult for me to say I love you--I, a convict, a man disgraced and ruined past redemption. But I can ask you to keep my poor ring. Wear it as you might that of some one dead, some one of whom you once thought with kindness, some one who had greatly suffered.”

The girl looked away.

“What you ask is impossible,” she said at length, in a voice so low and sweet that it was like a caress. “I don’t think you understand.”

“It is your pride that prevents!” he cried. “I understand very well. If I left it you in a testament you would not scruple to take it; you would see a difference! Yet, am I not dead? Is this not my grave you see around me? Am I not the corpse of the man I once was? Trample on your pride for once, for the sake of one that loves the very ground you tread upon. Take my ring, although it is worth much money, although the _convenances_ forbid. If questions are asked, say that it belonged to a man long ago passed away, whose last wish it was that you should wear it.”

“I shall say it was given me by the bravest and most eloquent of men, the Comte de Charruel!” she exclaimed, with a deep blush. “You have convinced me against my will.”

He cried out in protest, but even as he did so he heard the sounds of footsteps on the porch, and turned in time to see the door flung open by Fitzroy. Behind the Irishman strode the tall figure of General Coulstoun, his face overcast with anxiety.

“Thank God!” he cried when he saw his daughter. “You’ve been gone an age, my dear, and I’ve been uneasy in spite of Fitzroy, here. It’s very well to say ‘It’s all right, it’s all right’; but in an island full of con--”

“I felt quite safe under M. de Charruel’s protection,” interrupted Amy, striking that dreadful word full in the middle. “I thought you knew I was with this gentleman.”

“I don’t know that that made me feel any more--” began the general, recollecting himself in the nick of time. “Why, Amy, child, what are you doing with that ring?”

“M. de Charruel has just presented it to me, papa,” she returned. “Is it not beautiful?”

“Good God!” cried the general, “it is a ruby! I could swear it is a ruby! It must be worth a fortune!” Between each of these remarks he stared de Charruel in the face with mingled suspicion, anger, and surprise.

“I am told that it is worth about twelve thousand francs,” said the Frenchman.

The general started. Fitzroy hurriedly whispered something into his ear. “You don’t say so!” the former was overheard to say. “In a duel, was it? I didn’t know anybody was ever killed in a French--Oh, I see--yes--lost his head--”

This little aside finished, the general came back again to the attack, more civil, however, and more conciliatory in his tone.

“You must be aware,” he said, addressing de Charruel, “that no young lady can accept such a present as this from any one save a member of her family or the man to whom she is engaged. I can only think that my daughter has taken your ring in ignorance of its real value, forgetful for the moment that the conventionalities are the same whether in New Caledonia or New York. You will pardon me, therefore, if I feel constrained to ask you to take back your gift.”

“It rests entirely with Miss Coulstoun,” returned de Charruel.

“In that case, there can certainly be no question,” said the general.

“I shall not give it back, papa,” said Amy.

Her father stared at her in amazement, and from her distrustfully to de Charruel.

“Is he not a--convict?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you are going to accept a present from a convict?”

“Yes.”

“A present said to be worth twelve thousand francs?”

“Yes.”

“My God!” he cried, “I could not have believed it possible.”

At this she burst out crying.

The general put his arm round her. “Come away, my daughter,” he said. “For once in my life I am ashamed of you.”

“I must first say good-bye to M. de Charruel,” she said through her tears, holding out her hand--the left hand, on which the ruby glowed like a drop of blood.

The convict raised it slowly to his lips. Their eyes met for the last time.

“Good-bye,” he said.

* * * * *