Chapter 10

Three of them were lean young men, with hardy, debased, animal countenances. They were referable at a glance to the dregs of civilization. They had the stooped shoulders, the dragging gait, the half-servile, half-threatening expression that hallmarks the apache. It was to the fourth that Rufin turned with an overdue thrill of excitement. A young man--not more than twenty-five--built like a bull for force and wrath. His was that colossal physique that develops in the South; his shoulders were mighty under his mean coat, and his chained wrists were square and knotty. He held his head up with a sort of truculence in its poise; it was the head, massive, sensuous- lipped, slow-eyed, of a whimsical Nero. It was weariness, perhaps, that give him his look of satiety, of appetites full fed and dormant, of lusts grossly slaked. A murmur ran through the hall as he passed; it was as though the wretched men and women who knew him uttered an involuntary applause.

"There is Peter," said some one near Rufin. "Lucky Peter; Quel homme!"

The Huissier was memorizing for the little official the closing scene of the trial. Rufin heard words here and there in his narrative. "Called the judges a set of old . . . Laughed aloud when they asked him if . . . Yes, roared with laughter--roared." And then for the final phrase: "Condamnes a la mort!"

"You hear?" inquired the little official, nudging him. "It is too late. They are condemned to death, all of them. They have their affair!"

Rufin shrugged and led the way back to the office. But it was empty; the girl had gone.

"Tiens!" said the official. "No doubt she heard of the sentence and knew that there was no more to be done."

"Or else," said Rufin thoughtfully, frowning at the floor--"or else she reposes her trust in me."

"Ah, doubtless," agreed the little man. "But say, then! It has been an experience, hein? Piquant, picturesque, moving, too. For I am not like you; I do not see these dramas every day."

"And you fancy I do?" cried Rufin. "Man, I am terrified to find what goes on in the world. And I thought I knew life!" With a gesture of hopelessness and impotence he turned on his heel and went forth.

The business preserved its character of a series of accidents to the end; accidents are the forced effects of truth. Rufin, having organized supports of a kind not to be ignored in a republican state, even by blind Justice herself, threw his case at the wise grey head of the Minister of Justice--a wily politician who knew the uses of advertisement. The apaches are distinctively a Parisian produce, and if only Paris could be won over, intrigued by the romance and strangeness of the genius that had flowered in the gutter, and given to the world a star of art, all would be arranged and the guillotine would have but three necks to subdue. France at large would only shrug, for France is the husband of Paris and permits her her caprices. It rested with Paris, then.

But, as though they insisted upon a martyr, the apaches themselves intervened with a brisk series of murders and outrages, the last of which they effected on the very fringe of the show-Paris. It was not a sergent de ville this time, but a shopkeeper, and the city frothed at the mouth and shrieked for revenge.

"After that," said the Minister, "there is nothing to do. See for yourself--here are the papers! We shall be fortunate if four executions suffice."

Rufin was seated facing him across a great desk littered with documents.

"Why not try if three will serve?" he suggested.

The minister smiled and shook his head. He looked at Rufin half humorously.

"These Parisians," he said, "have the guillotine habit. If they take to crying for more, what old man can be sure of dying in his bed? My grandfather was an old man, and his head fell in the Revolution."

"But this," said Rufin, rustling the newspapers before him--"this is clamor. It is panic. It is not serious."

"That is why I am afraid of it," replied the Minister. "I am always afraid of a frightened Frenchman. But, sans blague, my friend, I cannot do what you wish."

Rufin put the piled newspapers from him and leaned forward to plead.

It was useless. The old man opposite him had a manner as deft and unassuming as his own; it masked a cynical inflexibility of purpose proof against any appeal.

"I cannot do it," was his single answer.

Rufin sighed. "Then it remains to see the President," he suggested.

"There is that," smiled the Minister. "See him by all means. If you are interested in gardening, you will find him charming. Otherwise, perhaps--but an honest man, I assure you."

"At least," said Rufin, "if everything fails, if the great painter is to be sacrificed to the newspapers and your epigrams--at least you will allow me to visit him before--before the----"

"But certainly!" the Minister bowed. "I am eager to serve you, Monsieur Rufin. When the date is fixed I will write you a permission. You three shall have an interview; it should be a memorable one."

"We three?" Rufin waited for an explanation.

"Exactly. You two great artists, Monsieur Rufin and Monsieur Giaconi, and also the murderer, Peter the Lucky."

The old man smiled charmingly; he had brought the negotiations to a point with a mot.

"Adieu, cher maitre," he said, rising to shake his visitor's hand across the wide desk.

Rufin seemed to have trodden into a groove of unsuccess. All his efforts were futile; he saw himself wasting time and energy while fate wasted none. The picture came to hang in his studio till the Luxembourg should demand it; daily its tragic wisdom and tenacious femininity goaded him to new endeavors, and daily he knew that he spent himself in vain.

He did not even realize how much of himself he had expended till that raw morning before the dawn when he drove across Paris in a damp and mournful cab, with the silent girl at his side, to a little square like a well shut in by high houses whose every window was lighted. There was already a crowd waiting massed under the care of mounted soldiers, and the cab slowed to a walk to pass through them. From the window at his side he saw, with unconscious appreciation, the picture it made, an arrangement of somber masses with yellow windows shining, and in the middle the gaunt uprights, the severe simplicity of the guillotine.

Faces looked in at him, strange and sudden, lit abruptly by the carriage-lamps. Somebody--doubtless a student--peered and recognized him. "Good morning, maitre," he said, and was gone. Maitre--master! Men did him honor in so naming him, gave him rank, deferred to him. But he acknowledged life for his master, himself for its pupil and servant.

The girl had not spoken since they started; she remained sitting still in her place when the cab halted at a door, and it needed his hand on her arm to rouse her to dismount. She followed him obediently between more men in uniform, and they found themselves in a corridor, where an officer, obviously waiting there for the purpose, greeted Rufin with marked deference.

"There is no need," he said, as Rufin groped in his pockets for the permit with which he had been provided. "I have been warned to expect Monsieur Rufin and the lady, and I congratulate myself on the honor of receiving them."

"He knows we are coming?" asked Rufin.

"Yes, he knows," replied the other. "At this moment his toilet is being made." He sank his voice so that the mute, abstracted girl should not overhear. "The hair above the neck, you know--they always shave that off. It might be better that mademoiselle should not see."

"Possibly," agreed Rufin, looking absently at his comely, insignificant face, which the lamps illuminated mercilessly.

The girl stood with her hands loosely joined before her, and her thin face vacant, staring, as though in a mood of deep thought, along the bare passage. Suddenly she addressed the officer.

"How long shall I be with him," she inquired, in tones of an almost arrogant composure, "before they cut his head off?"

The words, in their matter-of-fact directness, no less than the tone, seemed to startle the officer.

"Ah, Mademoiselle!" he protested, as though at an indelicacy or an accusation.

"How long?" repeated the girl.

"Kindly tell mademoiselle what she wishes to know," directed Rufin.

The officer hesitated. "It does not rest with me," he said uncomfortably. "You see, there is a regular course in these matters, a routine. I hope mademoiselle will have not less than ten minutes."

The girl looked at Rufin and made a face. It was as though she had been overcharged in a shop; she invited him, it seemed, to take note of a trivial imposture. Her manner and gesture had the repressed power of under-expression. He nodded to her in entire comprehension.

"But," began the officer excitedly, "how can I----" Rufin turned on him gravely, a somber, august figure of reproof.

"Sir," he said, "you are in the presence of a tragedy. I beg you to be silent."

The officer made a hopeless gesture; the shadow of it fled grotesquely up the walls.

A few moments later the summons came that took them along the passage to an open door, giving on to a room brilliant with lights and containing a number of people. At the farther end of it a table against the wall had been converted into a sort of altar, with wan candles alight upon it, and there was a robed priest among the uniformed men. Those by the door parted to make way for them. Rufin saw them salute him, and removed his hat.

Somebody was speaking. "Regret we cannot leave you alone, but----"

"It does not matter," said Rufin. The room was raw and aching with light; the big electrics were pitiless. In the middle of it a man sat on a chair and raised expectant eyes at his arrival. It was Giaconi, the painter, the murderer. There was some disorder of his dress which Rufin noted automatically, but it was not for some minutes that he perceived its cause--the collar of his coat had been shorn away. The man sat under all those fascinated eyes impatiently; his tired and whimsical face was tense and drawn; he was plainly putting a strong constraint upon himself. The great shoulders, the huge arms, all the compressed strength of the body, made the effect of some strong animal fettered and compelled to tameness.

"Rufin?" he said hesitatingly.

The painter nodded. "Yes, it is Rufin."

The girl glided past him toward the seated man. "And I, Pietro," she said.

He made a gesture with his hand as though to move her aside, for she stood between him and Rufin.

"Ah," she cried, "do you not need me at all--even now?"

"Oh, what is it?" said the condemned man, with a quick irritation. "Is this a time! There is not a moment to spare. I must speak to Rufin--I must. Yes, kneel down; that's right!"

She had sunk at his knee and laid her brown head upon it. As though to acknowledge the caress of a dog, he let one hand fall on her bowed shoulders. His eyes traveled across her to Rufin.

"They told me you would come. Say--is it because of my picture?"

"Yes," said Rufin. "I have done all that I could to save you because of that. But----"

"I know," said the other. "They have told me. You like it, then--my poor 'Mona Lisa' of Montmartre?"

Rufin stepped closer. It was not easy to utter all he desired to say under the eyes of those uniformed men, with the sad, attentive priest in the background.

"Monsieur," he said, "your picture is in my studio. Nothing shall ever hang in its place, for nothing will be worthy."

The seated man heard him hungrily. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten where he was and what was to happen to him ere he drew many more breaths.

"I knew," he said, "I knew. I can paint. So can you, Monsieur-- sometimes. We two---we know!"

He frowned heavily as realization returned to him. "And now I never shall," he said. "I never shall! Ah, it is horrible! A man is two people, and both die like a single soul. You know, for you are an artist."

"I--I have done my best," said Rufin despairingly. "If I could go instead and leave you to paint--oh, believe me, I would go now gladly, proudly, for I should have given the world pictures--great pictures."

A spasm of emotion filled his eyes with tears, and some one touched his arm and drew him aside. He strove with himself fiercely and looked up again to see that three men had entered the room and were going toward the prisoner. The priest had come forward and was raising the kneeling girl.

"A moment," cried the prisoner, as the three laid hands upon him. "Just a moment." They took no notice. "Monsieur Rufin," he cried, "it is my hand I offer you--only that."

Somebody near Rufin spoke a brief order and the three were still. He saw Giaconi's intent face across their shoulders, his open hand reaching forward between them. He clasped it silently.

The priest had set the girl on her knees before the improvised altar and stood beside her in silence. The three, with no word spoken, proceeded with their business. With deft speed they lashed their man's hands behind his back, forcing them back with rough skill. The chief of them motioned his subordinates to take him by the elbows and signed to the priest with his hand. The priest came forward, holding the crucifix, and took his place close to the prisoner. For a final touch of the grotesque the executioner produced and put on a tall silk hat.

"March!" he said, and they took the condemned man toward the door. He twisted his head round for a last glance at the room.

"Good-bye, little one!" he cried loudly. The kneeling girl only moaned.

"Good-bye, M'sieur Rufin."

Rufin stepped forward and bowed mechanically.

"Adieu, Maitre," he answered.

He saw that the condemned man's eyes lightened, a flush rose in his face; he smiled as if in triumph. Then they passed out, and Rufin, after standing for a moment in uncertainty, crossed the room and knelt beside the girl, with his hands pressed to his ears.

VIII

"PARISIENNE"

"At least," said the Comtesse, still staring at the brisk fire in the steel grate--"at least he saw them with his own eyes."

She was thinking aloud, and Elsie Gray, her distant relative and close companion, only looked up without reply. The Comtesse's face stood in profile against the bright appointments of the fireplace, delicate and serene; the tall salon, with its white panels gleaming discreetly in the light of the candles, made a chaste frame for her fragile presence. The window-curtains had been drawn to shut out the evening which shed its damp melancholy over the Faubourg, and to the girl the great, still room seemed like a stage set for a drama. She sat on a stool beside the Comtesse's chair, her fingers busy with many-colored skeins of silk, and the soft stir of the fire and the tick of a little clock worked themselves into her patient thoughts.

"He was to come at nine, I think," said the Comtesse at last, without turning her head.

"Yes," said Elsie, leaning forward to look at the little clock. "It still wants twenty minutes."

The Comtesse nodded slowly; all her gestures had the gentle deliberation of things done ceremonially.

"It is not much longer to wait, is it?" she said. "After twenty years, one should be patient. But to think! To-night, for the first time I hear of Jeanne from one who saw her at the end. Not a lawyer who has sought out the tale and rearranged it, but one who knew. You see, Elsie?"

Elsie put a hand on her arm, and her little thrill of excitement died out at once.

"Yes," said the girl; "I see, but you must be tranquil."

"I will be tranquil," promised the Comtesse. "I will have consideration for my heart. It is only the waiting which tries me."

"And that is nearly at an end." Elsie released her arm, and the Comtesse turned again to the fire. The tick of the clock renewed its tiny insistence; the great room again enveloped them in the austerity of its silence. The girl returned to the silk strings in her lap. She knew the occasion of the Comtesse's sudden emotion; it was a familiar tale, and not the loss familiar for being told in whispers. She had heard it first when she came from her English home to be the Comtesse's companion. It had been told to her officially, as it were, to guide her in her dealings with the Comtesse. A florid French uncle, with a manner of confidential discretion that made her blush, had been the mouthpiece of the family, and from him she had learned how Jeanne, the Comtesse's half-sister, had run away with a rogue, a man who got his deserts, an officer in a regiment stationed in Algeria.

"Eventually he committed suicide, but before that there were passages," the French uncle had said. The dreadful word "passages" seemed to contain the story, and he gave it an accent of unspeakable significance. "The Comtesse has suffered," he told her further. "It was a sad affair, and she had much tenderness for Jeanne." And that, at first, seemed to be the whole of it, though once or twice the uncle checked himself on the brink of details. But on this evening the tale was to be told afresh. There had arrived from Africa one Colonel Saval, who had served with the sorry hero of poor Jeanne's romance; he had known him and dealt with him; and he was appointed to come to the Comtesse in the quality of eye-witness.

He was punctual, at all events; the little clock was yet striking when the gaunt footman opened the door and spoke his name. The Comtesse looked up, and Elsie Gray rose to receive him; he advanced and made his bow.

"Madame la Comtesse?" he said, with a faint note of inquiry. The Comtesse's inclination answered him. "Madame la Comtesse honors me. I am happy to be of service."

He bowed to Elsie, who gave him "Good evening;" the footman set forward a chair for him and withdrew. His white hair stood about his head like a delicate haze; under it, the narrow wise face was brick- red, giving news of his long service under the sun of North Africa. He was short and slight, a tiny vivacious man, full of charming formalities, and there was about him something gentle and suave, that did not quite hide a trenchant quality of spirit. He stood before them, smiling in a moment of hesitation, half paternal, wholly gallant.

"Madame la Comtesse is suffering," said Elsie, in the spacious French idiom. "There is little that she can say. But she thanks Monsieur most sincerely for giving himself this trouble. But please be seated."

He was active in condolences at once. "I am most sympathetic," he said seriously. "And for the trouble"--he nicked it from him--"there is no trouble. I am honored."

The Comtesse bowed to him. "Monsieur is very amiable," she murmured.

He hitched up his chair and sat down, facing the pair of them. His shrewd eye took the measure of the Comtesse and her infirmity, without relinquishing a suggestion of admiration. He was a man panoplied with the civil arts; his long career in camps and garrisons had subtracted nothing of social dexterity. There was even a kind of grace in his attitude as he sat, his cane and hat in one hand, with one knee crossed upon the other. He spent a moment in consideration.

"It is of the Capitaine Bertin that I am to speak? Yes?" he asked suddenly.

The Comtesse stirred a little in her chair. "Yes," she answered, in a voice like a sigh--a sigh of relief, perhaps.

"Ah!" He made a little gesture of acknowledgment. "Le Capitaine Bertin! Then Madame will compose herself to hear little that is agreeable, for it is a tale of tragedy." His eyes wandered for a moment; he seemed to be renewing and testing again the flavor of memories. Under his trim moustache the mouth set and grew harder. Then, without further preamble, he began to speak.

"Bertin and I were of the same rank," he said, "and of much the same age. There was never a time when we were friends; there stood between us too pronounced a difference--a difference, Madame, of spirit, of aim, and even of physique. Bertin was large, sanguine, with the face of a bold lover, of a man noticeably gallant. I recall him most vividly as he sat in a cafe behind a little round table. It was thus one saw him most frequently, with his hard, swarthy face and moustaches that curled like a ram's horns. In such places he seemed most at home, with men about him and cards ready to his hand; and yet--has Madame seen the kind of man who is never wholly at his ease, who stands for ever on his guard, as it were! Bertin was such a one; there were many occasions when I remarked it. He would be in the centre of a company of his friends, assured, genial, dominant; and yet, at each fresh arrival in the room, he would look up with something furtive and defensive in his expression. I have seen deserters like that, but in Bertin it lacked an explanation."

"And there was a further matter yet. He was my fellow officer; I saw him on parade and at mess; but his life, the life of his own choice, was lived among those who were not our equals. How shall I make that clear to you, Madame? In those days, Europe drained into Algiers; it had its little world of men who gambled and drank much, and understood one another with a complete mistrust; it was with such as these that Bertin occupied his leisure. It was with them that his harshness and power were most efficacious. Naturally, it was not pleasant for us, his colleagues, to behold him for ever with such companions; the most of them seemed to be men connected with one sport or another, with billiards, or racing, or the like; but there was nothing to be done."

The Comtesse shifted slightly in her chair. "He had power," she said thoughtfully.

The little Colonel nodded twice. "He had power, as Madame observes. He had many good qualities--not quite enough, it is true, but many. There were even those that loved him, dogs, horses, waiters, croupiers and the poor women who made up the background of his life. I have thought, sometimes, that it is easy for a man to be loved, Madame, if he will take that responsibility. But what befell Bertin was not commonplace. He returned to France on leave, for six months, and it was then, I believe, that he first met the lady who became Madame Bertin?"

He gave the words the tone of a question, and the Comtesse answered with a slow gesture of assent.

"Yes, I have heard that it was so," said the Colonel. "Of what took place at that time I can tell nothing, naturally, and Madame is no doubt sufficiently informed. But I saw him--I saw them both--within a week of their return. Upon that occasion I dined at a hotel with two friends, Captain Vaucher and Lieutenant de Sailles. Bertin, with some friends and his wife, was at a table near-by. She was the only lady of the party; her place was between an Englishman, a lean, twisted man with the thin legs of a groom, and a Belgian who passed for an artist. It was de Sailles who pointed them out; and in effect it was a group to see with emotion. The lady--she was known to you, Madame? Then the position will be clear. She was of that complete and perfect type we honor as the Parisienne, a product of the most complex life in the world. She was slender and straight--ah! straight as a lance, with youth and spirit and buoyancy in the carriage of her head, the poise of her body, the color upon her cheeks. But it was not that-- the beauty and the courage--that caused her to stand out among those men as a climbing rose stands out from an old wall; it was the schooled and perfected quality of her, the fineness and delicacy of her manner and expression, the--in short, the note of breeding, Madame, the unmistakable ensign of caste. The Englishman fidgeted and lounged beside her; the fat Belgian drank much and was boisterous; Bertin was harsh and rudely jovial and loud. It was as though she were enveloped in a miasma."

"'So that is what Bertin has brought back,' said Vaucher slowly, as his custom was."

"'It is a crime,' said de Sailles."