Part 10

"Suddenly you found yourself to be a somebody! Ambition grew in you like a mushroom. Not good enough--Zelie, of New Caledonia! She might handicap you in your fine career. You beheld a glorious future that had no place for her. But who opened that prospect? Cré tonnerre! Who sold it you? Who deciphered the miniature? Who but I?

"And now at last, when the girl falls in deadly peril--as much through pique as through mere blindness, be sure of it!--when I call you to redeem your pledge and protect her: you quit! You 'withdraw'! You decide to use your new airs and graces and pull your feet out of the wet! Because you prefer the excuse of a coward to that of a traitor--Monsieur--is that it?"

Her fist hit the table like a sledge.

"Faineant!... Unless you brand yourself as shamefully as any Red Mark that ever lived.... Sit down!"

He had been sidling, bit by bit: he had taken himself almost to the door-sill: but under that tone of thunder--under that sudden amazing and cryptic jibe--he started, he faltered, he obeyed. She bulked above him and it was about this time I began truly to be sorry for my harlequin friend.

It was plain enough by this time, you understand, that I was witnessing one of those obscure human tangles which ravel themselves in the depths of a penal society. Possible nowhere else, I suppose. Yet its threads were the passions and its center was the heart: and poor Bibi-Ri no poorer hero than you or I or any of us might prove. At this point he had fallen back to his defense: sullen, awed, but also intently curious of her. How she expected to force him to her design I could not guess. But breathlessly I watched while she wove about him and about.

Back by the hearth she stood meditative for a space in silence: a dim presence in that room where the kettle hissed and gave off its vapors--of brewing fates, perhaps.

"Give me a man if he be a bad one. A man who can stand to his game two days on end--how do they put it: those savants?--'developing his capabilities.' Ah! Not like these others. Waffles! Half-baked. Mixed with small impulses good and evil. Let him be saint or devil, so he develop that capability. Let me see him anyway stand to it!... As I have seen a few:

"I remember many years ago at the prison of Mazas," she went on, as if in casual retrospect, "they kept a certain famous captive. Myself, I was never a resident there--no thanks!--I prefer the comforts of honesty. But my one sister, now dead, she was beginning her own silly career about then. She lacked the brains to steer it safe. So for a time she inhabited that same institution. And one day as we went by the visitors' room she pinched my arm to look.

"'There goes the wickedest man in France,' she said.

"Down the courtyard came a dozen of gendarmes parading a prisoner. That was a devil--if you like! That was a type--for example. Tall and fierce and unbeaten, with the eyes of a tiger. Once to see him was never to forget him again.... While he was still newly-caught they had always to guard him that way lest he slay some one with his manacled fists.

"He belonged to the very oldest stock of the South, it appeared: the old high noblesse. And was he rich? And proud? You can believe it. But also he was a great criminal such as walks the earth every while or so to remind us after all how short a journey it is to hell. A true devil. My sister knew him. She had been a servant in the household. She knew his whole story--which soon was hushed, I can tell you: a scandal too black to publish."

Her voice rose a rumbling note under the vault.

"Messieurs, never mind the rest of the tale at present. But inquire only this: Did they slay him? Did they give him his deserts?... Oh, naturally not--else where is the use of Nouméa! We must suppose those savants were glad of the specimen. 'The wickedest man'--do you see? And as for him: he was strong. And cunning to seize his opportunities. And above all true to his own devilment. So he won reprieve, Messieurs. They preserved him. They shipped him out to this tropic forcing house of ours--to let him keep on developing!... And he has. He does. My faith! With the approval of the Administration. With all kinds of special privileges and gratifications!"

She moved from the shadow again.

"Why do you tell me this?" demanded Bibi-Ri, hoarsely.

"For your instruction, Bibi-Ri," she returned, with her tone of intolerable significance. "To show you how one man stood to it. Admirable--eh?... A moment ago you spoke of his 'harmless fancies.' Well: he gluts them. He gets what he wants. A fancy of pride? Behold him in his black coat and his lofty office! A fancy for blood? From time to time he stands to spill it publicly on the scaffold! A fancy for young and innocent flesh--a solace to his old age?... Do you imagine he would be balked of that? Or rather are you prepared to hear how--with official permission and even the clerical benediction--how he manages to bedevil and to win the particular young girl of his choice?"

In hammer blows she planted each phrase.

"How this same man has let no grass grow under his feet in his little rivalry with yourself, Bibi-Ri!"

She spared him nothing.

"How, having desired your Zelie without 'ifs' or 'buts' he found means to make his purpose good, Bibi-Ri!"

He could only gape at her.

"How he followed her to Fonwhary: how he followed her back: how he missed no trick of persuading and persisting: how he finally forced her consent like any true lover in this very house this morning!"

"It is not possible!" gasped Bibi-Ri.

"Eh? It is true of true!" she trumpeted. "Name of God--where do you think you are? This is Nouméa!... Let her pass for a fool--half-mad with bitterness and chagrin though she be--and still you must admit it is not every poor orphan who gets such a chance hereabouts. What? To occupy a little manor outside the prison grounds. To enjoy the little benefits of official standing. To wear the pretty trifles of jewelry, the rings and keepsakes and lockets, that fall to the master's share every time he strikes off a lucky head!... Dieu!... Can you picture to yourself the home-coming at that menage after a day's honest labor? To be sure, she might require him first to wash his hands for fear of spoiling her new gown! But these stains of the trade--what do they matter? And so your Zelie, your sweet pigeon, your simple Caledonienne who was all too simple for you--whom you cast aside with 'brotherly advice'--she chooses to embrace that ghoul, that hell-hound, that old satyr of all the infamies.... To-morrow she weds with M. de Nou!"

In blind distress he stumbled to his feet and shied from her with hands outspread to fend away the monstrous thing. But skillfully she headed him around to the foot of the stairs and brought him face to face with the actual vision descending there.

"Ask her yourself!"...

You have seen those figures in a window of old stained glass which leap from the haze of color as if illumined of themselves. The girl who waited just above us on the step bore that same transparent loveliness, with all the fleshly promise of my glimpse of her in the market. She wore a single belted garment of some white peasant's stuff, but nothing could have suited better in the somber light of that place, smoke-blued against smoky walls. In truth it might have seemed the subtlest coquetry to clothe such beauty in the coarsest garb. For she herself was delicate as a bud. Vital and lithe: with a close-set casque of jet hair, mouth like a crushed mulberry against satin, mutinous eyes and chin: the wild, slight, heavy-scented flower of these climes.

There she stood quite coolly: even languidly.

"Visitors?" she inquired, aware of us with impersonal gaze. "I wondered if any would stop to-night. It would be kind of them to come and wish me happiness."

Except that she spoke unsmiling and ignored Bibi-Ri, except for her deathly pallor, she seemed without the least consciousness of a terrible irony. And when my poor friend made some sound in his throat her pure brow clouded a bit: she pouted.

"Have you been making yourself tiresome again with the visitors, Maman? Now where is the good of that? I wish you would not start fretting with everybody.... Yes, I shall be married. Yes, I shall be married to-morrow. By special civil license and by the priest from La Foa. There! It is all settled.... I hope you can find something more amusing for our guests."

Incredible to see how quiet she was, how composed, how youthfully unstrained. Only when her heavy lids swept over Bibi-Ri and their glances crossed could you detect like electric charges the unacknowledged tension behind.

"Oh, for amusement," chuckled Mother Carron, with a savage humor, "Bibi-Ri is amused: right enough. Sacred stove--yes!... Only he says the affair is impossible."

For the first time Zelie regarded him fairly.

"I see no reason why any one should think so. Unless he forgets--as I never do any more--that I am the daughter of convicts."

Ah, there was steel in that girl! What? The way she said it! Very simply. Without rancor, you understand. Letting it bite of itself. Without a quaver from that crisis of despair in which she must have learned to say it. In a flash I knew how the gleaming, soft, full-blooded slip of a creature had stood up against this tremendous aunt of hers. And could stand. And would!... And Bibi-Ri: he knew too. His babbling protest died cold on his lips.

"My convict father married my convict mother in this convict country," she went on, evenly. "I was born here. I must live and die here. I could never look to marry outside--could I?... They would say I was tainted.... For the rest--well, I have only to please myself, I believe."

And mother Carron nodded like a grim showman.

"Eh? What do you think of that? A wise infant--eh? Could anything be more just and reasonable?"

And it was so. She was right. It was perfectly just: perfectly reasonable. There you had the stark and appalling fact. For this is Nouméa--as Mother Carron reminded us in good season. This is Nouméa--the Noah's Ark toy of penology. If you expect your convicts to pair off and to breed like free folk, you must expect their children likewise to couple as they can--or will: free folks themselves. And with whom? Where do you draw the line? What kind of a social formula have you left for the second generation, reared in an out-door jail? Our wise philanthropists who devised the experiment: I wonder if they ever thought so far ahead. They should have been interested in Zelie--the perfect product.

Meanwhile there remained my companion--Bibi-Ri. Poor Bibi-Ri.... Whatever had passed between him and that unhappy deluded child I could not know, you comprehend--in truth I never did know. But they must have been very close at one time: those two: before his great ambition nipped him. He was suffering. He writhed. Nevertheless I saw it was going to make no difference with him.... Not now. Not this late along. I sensed his effort. I heard him draw his breath sharp like a man who plucks the barb from the wound.

"One moment, Madame!" He avoided Zelie. In abrupt and flurried speech he addressed himself to Mother Carron. "A moment, Madame--I beg. This is mere madness. And painful. And unnecessary.... There is still one easy way out for her, you know--for Zelie, for me, for everybody. Still a way."

She unbent to him all at once as to a prodigal son.

"Tiens!" she cried. "You have perceived it?"

"I have remembered. I intended not to tell you: to let it come of itself. And truly--you drove it somewhat out of mind. But now--"

"At last!"

"If we can only get Zelie to listen--"

"Ha! Just look at her there!"

"It fits the need."

"She never had but one, my boy--to hear you speak out once like this: as if you meant it." "And besides," he stammered, "it should cancel any--any obligations you might still hold against me, myself."

"Parbleu! I should hope so!"

He labored on, with a kind of desperate snuffle.

"At the end, Madame, we can always turn for aid to the Church--the patient friend of us all.... This afternoon--uneasy about Zelie, I confess, and thinking a decisive step would be best for every one--this very afternoon I took myself to St. Gregory's and there I saw--"

"Bibi-Ri: in a moment I shall kiss you!"

"For God's sake let me speak, Madame!... I saw the Directress of the Order of St. Joseph of Cluny. She heard me readily. You know--these good nuns--how they rescue any they can of the children of Nouméa.... Well: I arranged it.... To-night a travelling sister will visit you here. By great luck she is returning home very soon. If the dispositions are favorable she has promised to take Zelie at once, to guard her and to see her safe--passage free--to France, where refuge and the consolations of religion, Madame, await her!"

In the silence that dropped you should have seen Mother Carron.

"Refuge!" she began, empurpled. "What is the fellow talking about? Conso--.... Look here. Do you mean a convent?"

"Of course, Madame."

"A convent! In truth? Is this all you have to offer?"

"Yes, Madame."

She flung up her arms.

"Faith of God! You dare to make me ridicule like that? Animal low of ceiling!... But no, I tell you, but no! It is too much. My turn now. Listen to me, both. Listen to my plan!... To-day I also went to St. Gregory's: do you hear? I also sought the aid of Holy Church, which never refuses in the cause of morality--Heaven be praised!--to perform a convict marriage where it can. I also obtained help. That good Father Anselm: he also promised. He also is coming here to-night!... And word of honor, I hope to be turned into a pepper-mill if I don't have him marry the two of you on the spot."

One and the other, she challenged them.

"You think not; you wilful imp?" she roared. "I tell you it shall be so!... And you, Bibi-Ri--you grin in that sickly fashion? Wait, my gar: I'm not done with you yet! Thousand thunders!--in another minute you will be crawling at the crook of my finger.... Attend!"

And looming on us there, gigantic in the firelight like some ancient fury, she launched her climax.

"You recall that tale I started for your benefit? Well: there is more of it. I told you my sister knew all the story of 'the wickedest man'? Well: there was one thing she did not know and would have given much to hook up--like many another blackmailer, then and since.... Note!... From the murderous purpose with which that fiend pursued all in his power--wife, family, associates--it appears he spared a single victim. The creature, indeed, in whom he centered his whole affection--to call it so--his hateful pride, at least. A single one he set aside. But only to be the instrument of a last defiance.

"Brought to exposure, his course run out: what do you suppose he did? Why he took measures to conceal that remaining heir of his house beyond recovery.... He put away that son. He lost him! Completely. In space: in the world: in the crowd and the gutter. Where none should ever find him again--as none ever did, for all the rewards and all the police.

"Such cleverness--eh? Such logic. For observe.... They dared pass no death sentence while there appeared any chance of extracting his secret. A vast estate was waiting on the person of that child--one of the finest fortunes in France: the heritage of a golden line. He kept it waiting. At a stroke he saved himself before the judges: he hid away the only treasure he loved: he prolonged his own evil destiny through this unknown seed of his planted somewhere in the mud!"

Her regard flamed on Bibi-Ri.

"Unknown--my little dears. Unknown ever since!... Though it is said Heaven itself had set its seal on that race for a warning and a symbol: though the child himself was marked from birth: was marked about the neck--so the legend goes--with a thin red line like the print of a noose or the trace of strangling fingers!"

Bibi-Ri had propped himself by the table, one hand clutching the close collar of his jacket.

"How--how could you guess...!"

"Ah-ah! Now will you try to throw us over? Not so easily--eh? Now don't you think you still have need of us? Until the depositions are made, at least?... Sac à papier! The very instant you showed me that old miniature and the initial it bears--I knew you, my boy! I could have read you your whole fortune then: only I saved the best of it for a wedding present! And for sure, I never expected you to try a bolt. A droll of an idea--that! To run away from your chief witness?... Why, stupid one!" She broke off to drop him a little mocking curtsey. "Monsieur the Duke!... It was my own sister had had the honor to be Your Grace's nurse!"

He was trembling. "Tell me the name of that family!"

"But certainly, my lad.... After you are married!" "Don't torture me! Tell me the name of that man!"

"But certainly, my love.... It is M. de Nou!"

Strange how like a sinister refrain that title--that word--ran and recurred throughout the affair. But this time it had an impact as never before. Credit me! This time it came home to Bibi-Ri: and my little joker absolutely reeled under it.

"Eh?" cried Mother Carron. "Eh? How is your sacred ambition now? Is there any manhood to you? And what are you going to do about it?"

What indeed! She had reduced him to a rag. For this she had played upon a febrile nature, you understand: had battered it, dazzled it, wrung it of emotions: confirming his wildest beliefs: destroying his dearest illusions: tossing his hopes to the stars and smirching them in the mire with the same sweep:--that he might have no other will at the end.... And therein appeared the triumph of her masterful certitude. For presently raising his miserable and hunted eyes he looked at her: he looked for me in the shadow: he did not look at Zelie again--but he looked toward the door....

How easy it might have seemed, after all! Actually in his pocket he carried his release ticket, ready dated. His ship lay in harbor. His sentence expired some few days off. A step would take him into the night. He had simply to keep safe within police limits until the hour of sailing and march himself freely on board. And then ... he had won! You see? By his theory the world would open before him the most radiant of welcomes. By his faith he would have his life-long arrears to collect: his gorgeous dreams to realize. One must have been a felon--one must have eaten his heart in prison cells--and even in this widest and farthest of prison cells with its wall of painted horizons none the less alien and inexorable--to feel what those dreams meant to him.

Now again, as before, he had only to get himself off stage: he needed only the boldness to break once for all with the thief's part--as he himself had said: the selfishness to stand to his game--as Mother Carron put it!

And in truth what was hindering him? No actual compulsion: none he need fear. Only impalpable things. Shame. Uncertainty, timidity, regret. The pressures of personality. The qualms of a poor juggler with life: fearful of missing--fearful of not seizing it featly.... Cobwebs all!

What he would have done about it the good God can tell. I have asked myself often enough. But he hesitated a bit too long: that little fool of fortune with his face of a rubber puppet squeezed by fate. Next moment the cue had been taken from him, for across the pause ran a thin, keen whistle. Mother Carron spun around. And as if dispatched on that breath--through the key-hole, perhaps--there blew in suddenly among us from the back of the house somewhere a tiny, gray-faced, white-haired wraith of a man.

"Well--idiot?... What's up now?"

From her greeting, as from the blurred effacement of the apparition himself, one divined without trouble the person of that former redoubtable housebreaker: Carron. In a voice scarcely above the singing of the kettle he made his announcement.

"There are two coming by the road."

"Hey?" she bawled. "What two?"

"A priest and another."

Mother Carron smiled the only smile to pass upon her wintry front that night: she spread her hands before us.

"Enfin! What did I tell you? And in great good time, my word!... You hear that--you others?... Go and welcome Father Anselm, fool! And fetch out the wine, if you are able to stir your pins!"

The shadow sighed.

"It is not Father Anselm."

"Not Father Anselm?... Imbecile! Of course it is!"

"It is not Father Anselm."

"Who then--vaurien?"

"It is the fat priest from La Foa."

Impossible to doubt his steadfast whispering.

"La Foa!" she echoed, stricken. "You say? Not truly!... La Foa?"

"I saw him."

"And another? What other?"

"We think he is Bombiste."

I can swear that wretched individual never in his black past had handled a bomb with half the effect his mere nickname produced among us there.

"Bombiste! The executioner's assistant?... From Ile de Nou?... Here?"

"They are at the gate."

"Thunder of God!... And above all, at this time!" She caught his arm. "Delay that priest! Any way and anyhow: hold him!... Confess to him, if nothing else will do--Heaven knows you need it!... And let the other through at once. Be quick!"

She banished him like a puff of smoke and we waited in drawn suspense--we four--our eyes on the archway through which this visitant must now appear.

"What can he want?" demanded Mother Carron. "That blood-stained basket robber!"

And Zelie answered her very quietly.

"I suppose he brings me my message from M. de Nou."

You will remember in all my term at Nouméa I had seen but once before this ignoble under-servant of the guillotine. I could have preferred never to see him again. He did not improve on closer view.

He was one of those creatures somehow resembling insects: like the ciliate and noxious things that run about when you lift a damp rock. You know?... Very black. Very hairy, with hair overlaid in fringes curiously soft and glistening. With eyes very small, round and quick as beads. In person he was misshapen: bandy-legged: but with all that a powerful ruffian, whose long, crooked arms might have ended in nippers like a scorpion's.

There you have the fellow Bombiste, who presently slid in at the doorway and stood blinking through the light.

We regarded this type: and he us. Did I tell you he called himself a Pole? I cannot say. But certainly his speech was hardly to be comprehended. He spat something that could have passed equally for a greeting or a curse. And so far he had the advantage of us: for any reply of ours would have been only the half of that.

To do her justice Mother Carron kept a bold front to him. But she was handling here a very different sort of brute--not to be reached by that singular influence she exerted on the convict community at large: himself an outcast among convicts: sharing the isolation of his detested master on Ile de Nou. When she demanded to know his affair--

"Official!" he snarled back, with his slit grin.

Indeed it must have been a rare errand for him: a rare jest. He affected in his manner a gratified swagger of contempt: natural enough for a man with whom the vilest felon would never willingly speak, you understand: natural enough for one whose only dealing with his fellows was to valet their shorn bodies on the scaffold and to gather their last poor trifles of property for the executioner's wage--"robbing the basket," as we say.

"What are you after?" persisted Mother Carron.

"Not you, old woman!" he retorted. "Not any of you," he added with brutal assurance as his glance shifted past Bibi-Ri and myself. "But I come to see ... Mam'zelle here. And Mam'zelle alone!"