Part 13 (1/2)

The Clerk of the Court bowed, but made no reply. What was there to say to a remark like that! It was clear that the problem must be worked out alone between these two people, though he was not quite sure what the problem was. The man had said the thing was over; but the woman had come, and the look of both showed that it was not all over.

What would the man do? What was it the woman wished to do? The master-carpenter had said that Jean Jacques had spared him, and meant to forgive his wife. No doubt he had done so, for Jean Jacques was a man of sentiment and chivalry, and there was no proof that there had been anything more than a few mad caresses between the two misdemeanants; yet here was the woman with the man for whom she had imperilled her future and that of her husband and child!

As though Carmen understood what was going on in his mind, she said: ”Since you know everything, you can understand that I want a few words with M'sieu' George here alone.”

”Madame, I beg of you,” the Clerk of the Court answered instantly, his voice trembling a little--”I beg that you will not be alone with him.

As I believe, your husband is willing to let bygones be bygones, and to begin to-morrow as though there was no to-day. In such case you should not see Monsieur Ma.s.son here alone. It is bad enough to see him here in the office of the Clerk of the Court, but to see him alone--what would Monsieur Jean Jacques say? Also, outside there in the street, if our neighbours should come to know of the trouble, what would they say? I wish not to be tiresome, but as a friend, a true friend of your whole family, madame--yes, in spite of all, your whole family--I hope you will realize that I must remain here. I owe it to a past made happy by kindness which is to me like life itself. Monsieur Ma.s.son, is it not so?” he added, turning to the master-carpenter. More flushed and agitated than when he had faced Jean Jacques in the flume, the master-carpenter said: ”If she wants a few words-of farewell--alone with me, she must have it, M'sieu' Fille. The other room--eh? Outside there”--he jerked a finger towards the street--”they won't know that you are not with us; and as for Jean Jacques, isn't it possible for a Clerk of the Court to stretch the truth a little? Isn't the Clerk of the Court a man as well as a mummy? I'd do as much for you, little lawyer, any time. A word to say farewell, you understand!” He looked M. Fille squarely in the eye.

”If I had to answer M. Jean Jacques on such a matter--and so much at stake--”

Ma.s.son interrupted. ”Well, if you like we'll bind your eyes and put wads in your ears, and you can stay, so that you'll have been in the room all the time, and yet have heard and seen nothing at all. How is that, m'sieu'? It's all right, isn't it?”

M. Fille stood petrified for a moment at the audacity of the proposition. For him, the Clerk of the Court, to be blinded and made ridiculous with wads in his ears-impossible!

”Grace of Heaven, I would prefer to lie!” he answered quickly. ”I will go into the next room, but I beg that you be brief, monsieur and madame.

You owe it to yourselves and to the situation to be brief, and, if I may say so, you owe it to me. I am not a practised Ananias.”

”As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, m'sieu',” returned Ma.s.son.

”I must beg that you will make your farewells of a minute and no more,”

replied the Clerk of the Court firmly. He took out his watch. ”It is six o'clock. I will come again at three minutes past six. That is long enough for any farewell--even on the gallows.”

Not daring to look at the face of the woman, he softly disappeared into the other room, and shut the door without a sound.

”Too good for this world,” remarked the master-carpenter when the door closed tight. He said it after the disappearing figure and not to Carmen. ”I don't suppose he ever kissed a real grown-up woman in his life. It would have shattered his frail little carca.s.s if, if”--he turned to his companion--”if you had kissed him, Carmen. He's made of tissue-paper,--not tissue--and apple-jelly. Yes, but a stiff little backbone, too, or he'd not have faced me down.”

Ma.s.son talked as though he were trying to gain time. ”He said three minutes,” she returned with a look of death in her face. As George Ma.s.son had talked with the Clerk of the Court, she had come to see, in so far as agitation would permit, that he was not the same as when he left her by the river the evening before.

”There's no time to waste,” she continued. ”You spoke of farewells--twice you spoke, and three times he spoke of farewells between us. Farewells--farewells--George--!”

With sudden emotion she held out her arms, and her face flushed with pa.s.sion and longing.

The tempest which shook her shook him also, and he swayed from side to side like an animal uncertain if the moment had come to try its strength with its foe; and in truth the man was fighting with himself. His moments with Jean Jacques at the flume had expanded him in a curious kind of way. His own arguments while he was fighting for his life had, in a way, convinced himself. She was a rare creature, and she was alluring--more alluring than she had ever been; for a tragic sense had made her thinner, had refined the boldness of her beauty, had given a wonderful l.u.s.tre to her eyes; and suffering has its own attraction to the degenerate. But he, George Ma.s.son, had had a great shock, and he had come out of the jaws of death by the skin of his teeth. It had been the nearest thing he had ever known; for though once he had had a pistol pointed at him, there was the chance that it might miss at half-a-dozen yards, while there was no chance of the lever of the flume going wrong; and water and a mill-wheel were as absolute as the rope of the gallows.

In a sense he had saved himself by his cleverness, but if Jean Jacques had not been just the man he was, he could not have saved himself. It did not occur to him that Jean Jacques had acted weakly. He would not have done what Jean Jacques had done, had Jean Jacques spoiled his home.

He would have sprung the lever; but he was not so mean as to despise Jean Jacques because he had foregone his revenge. This master-carpenter had certain gifts, or he could not have caused so much trouble in the world. There is a kind of subtlety necessary to allure or delude even the humblest of women, if she is not naturally bad; and Ma.s.son had had experiences with the humblest, and also with those a little higher up.

This much had to be said for him, that he did not think Jean Jacques contemptible because he had been merciful, or degraded because he had chosen to forgive his wife.

The sight of the woman, as she stood with arms outstretched, had made his pulses pound in his veins, but the heat was suddenly chilled by the wave of tragedy which had pa.s.sed over him. When he had climbed out of the flume, and opened the lever for the river to rush through, he had felt as though ice--cold liquid flowed in his veins, not blood; and all day he had been like that. He had moved much as one in a dream, and he had felt for the first time in his life that he was not ready to bluff creation. He had always faced things down, as long as it could be done; and when it could not, he had retreated, with the comment that no man was wise who took gruel when he needn't. He was now face to face with his greatest problem. One thing was clear--they must either part for ever, or go together, and part no more. There could be no half measures.

She was a remarkable woman in her way, with a will of her own, and a kind of madness in her; and there could be no backing and filling. They only had three minutes to talk together alone, and two of them were up.

Her arms were held out to him, but he stood still, and before the fire of her eyes his own eyes dropped. ”No, not yet!” he exclaimed. ”It's been a day--heaven and h.e.l.l, what a day it's been! He had me like that!”

He opened and shut his hand with fierce, spasmodic strength. ”And he let me go--oh, let me go like a fox out of a trap! I've had enough for one day--blood of St. Peter, enough, enough!”

The flame of desire in her eyes suddenly turned to fury. ”It is farewell, then, that you wish,” she said hoa.r.s.ely. ”It is no more and farewell then? You said it to him”--she pointed to the other room--”you said it to Jean Jacques, and you say it to me--to me that's given you all I have. Ah, what a beast you are, George Ma.s.son!”

”No, Carmen, you have not given me all. If you had, there would be no farewell. I would stand by you to the end of life, if I had taken all.”