CHAPTER XII

Bonito, startled out of dreams of immortality, returned to earth with a shock. _Something--somebody had spoken to him!_

Even so--taken by surprise, his wits momentarily confounded--habitual wariness kept him stone-still where he lay, his head dropped back upon the forge, while he strove desperately to excogitate his right answer to the situation. For the instant of his waking had been one with his recognition of the voice--and of a flaw, moreover, in his own policy. The consequences were facing him at once, and tremendously. He knew that his life at this moment hung upon a word.

“Where is the bond, I say? Will you wait for me to cut it out of you?”

Still he made no answer. The sooty beams in the roof seemed to undulate above his half-closed lids as the light pulsated in the lantern. He thought he saw the pin-point eyes of innumerable spiders watching him from their secret places. They affected him curiously; he could not concentrate his thoughts while they held him so intently. There were some means he possessed--he was certain of it--for retort or self-defence, could he only recall them. But those eyes held him from the effort. While he was still in a mortal struggle to escape them, the voice spoke again, quick and damning.

“What use in this pretence? I know thee--never so wide awake. Thou dog! O, thou ineffable dog! to wring it from her ruin! That once for last was once too many. Down you go!”

Still he lay as silent as death, though a pulse of life--it was plain enough--went shadowing up and down on his strained chest.

“Not?” said Cartouche horribly. “Do you know what’s here, Bonito?--the pretty little jade and golden toy? What Providence dropped it at your feet! It wakes strange thoughts in me to hold it in my hand again--the throats it split, blood lapped--all honest sport so long as it was mine. Will you not give me up the bond, lest her pure name put to it be soiled? Well, then--no ‘law’ for you--not to be thought of where she’s concerned. I’d come to kill you, beast--just my hands against yours--and behold! you’ve given me a weapon!”

With a leap, like whalebone released, the figure was on its feet and screaming: “Help! help! _à moi_, Loustalot! The prisoner--he’s escaped--Help!”

A cry as useless as desperate. He himself had paralysed the drunkard’s hand--had closed his ears. Even as he uttered it, he was down--doomed--saw the blade whisked up--last in whose heart! A mortal shudder seized him--and then all of a sudden he remembered. He tore something from his breast. Even as the knife descended, a shock and spatter of fire leapt from his hand, and Cartouche reeled and fell.

Not too late, perhaps, yet! Dropping the reeking pistol, he tried to pluck the rat’s tooth from his throat. It held like a vice. Fumbling with it feebly, and ever more feebly, his fingers relaxed, half rose again to grip the agony, and so, poised mid-way, crooked and stiffened slowly.

For a minute silence reigned on the fallen echoes of that tragedy. Then the ex-Prefect stirred. He was bleeding horribly. The wound in him was numb; only his every limb seemed faint with sickness. He crawled to the dead thing, and with shaking hands searched it, and quickly came upon what he sought. Rising, by a superhuman effort, and supporting himself against the forge, he found her name and put his stiff lips to it. They left a crimson wafer--his sign manual--“this is my act and deed.” Some ashes yet smouldered on the hearth. He blew them into a glow--the blood pumping from him, regularly, to each beat of the bellows--and thrust the paper in, and saw it go in flame. Then, tottering for the open door, he sunk down upon its threshold.

The lights of Di Rocco twinkled on the hill-side. They found him, sunk against the lintel, with his dead eyes fixed upon them.

AFTERWARD

These shadows pass; yet to what possible redemption through that blood? Had it not been said that “whoso sheddeth man’s, by man’s shall his be shed.” It was not for that poor sinner to usurp the divine prerogative. Those for whom he suffered must still expiate as they had wrought.

Far on I see them moving--the devoted woman still shadowing the weak man. The old order has passed away, and they with it. The Kingdom of retaliation has risen on the Kingdom of despotism. Savoy is bound with a red ribbon to the republic; its people shout for France; its rulers are betrayed to her. One day these two go to the scaffold.

It is a last mercy that they are permitted to go together. So her life’s purpose shall find its consummation. What sorrows, what disenchantments have been hers in these years of her fading beauty, of her hopelessness for herself, only God may know. They have never affected her steadfast resolve. She has given herself to save her saint for heaven.

Up to the very last her patient lips are shut to him on all that she has done and suffered for his sake. His passage shall be bright and confident. She kisses him and sends him to die before her.

Only then for the first time she seemed to realise what she had done. He had passed in, and the gates were shut between them for ever. They say that she dropped where she stood, and had to be carried under the knife.

[The End]

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ foresworn/forsworn, Goodbye/Good-bye, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add TOC.

Assorted punctuation corrections.

[Part I/ Chapter V ]

Change “to mend what you have helped to _marr_!” to _mar_.

[Part II/ Chapter V ]

“these delicate _nouances_ of taste and selection” to _nuances_.

[Part II/ Chapter XII ]

(“O, Louis! O, mon bien aimé! que les artifices...”) italicize French text.

[Part III / Chapter IV ]

“stood up against the rising _ride_, fearless before its roar” to _tide_.

[Part III/ Chapter V ]

“Cassandra, ma belle _prêtesse_, ma petite!” to _prêtresse_ (French for “priestess”).

[Part III/ Chapter VI ]

“those _nouances_ of alienation which only love” to _nuances_.

[End of Text]