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A short story by Gilbert Parker |
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A Friend Of The Commune |
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Title: A Friend Of The Commune Author: Gilbert Parker [More Titles by Parker] "See, madame--there, on the Hill of Pains, the long finger of the Semaphore! One more prisoner has escaped--one more." "One more, Marie. It is the life here that on the Hill, this here below; and yet the sun is bright, the cockatoos are laughing in the palms, and you hear my linnet singing." "It turns so slowly. Now it points across the Winter Valley. Ah!" "Yes, across the Winter Valley, where the deep woods are, and beyond to the Pascal River." "Towards my home. How dim the light is now! I can only see It--like a long dark finger yonder." "No, my dear, there is bright sunshine still; there is no cloud at all: but It is like a finger; it is quivering now, as though it were not sure." "Thank God, if it be not sure! But the hill is cloudy, as I said." "No, Marie. How droll you are! The hill is not cloudy; even at this distance one can see something glisten beside the grove of pines." "I know. It is the White Rock, where King Ovi died." "Marie, turn your face to me. Your eyes are full of tears. Your heart is tender. Your tears are for the prisoner who has escaped--the hunted in the chase." She shuddered a little and added, "Wherever he is, that long dark finger on the Hill of Pains will find him out--the remorseless Semaphore." "No, madame, I am selfish; I weep for myself. Tell me truly, as--as if I were your own child--was there no cloud, no sudden darkness, out there, as we looked towards the Hill of Pains." "None, dear." "Then--then--madame, I suppose it was my tears that blinded me for the moment." "No doubt it was your tears." But each said in her heart that it was not tears; each said: "Let not this thing come, O God!" Presently, with a caress, the elder woman left the room; but the girl remained to watch that gloomy thing upon the Hill of Pains. As she stood there, with her fingers clasped upon a letter she had drawn from her pocket, a voice from among the palms outside floated towards her. "He escaped last night; the Semaphore shows that they have got upon his track. I suppose they'll try to converge upon him before he gets to Pascal River. Once there he might have a chance of escape; but he'll need a lot of luck, poor devil!" Marie's fingers tightened on the letter. Then another voice replied, and it brought a flush to the cheek of the girl, a hint of trouble to her eyes. It said: "Is Miss Wyndham here still?" "Yes, still here. My wife will be distressed when she leaves us." "She will not care to go, I should think. The Hotel du Gouverneur spoils us for all other places in New Caledonia." "You are too kind, monsieur; I fear that those who think as you are not many. After all, I am little more here than a gaoler--merely a gaoler, M. Tryon." "Yet, the Commandant of a military station and the Governor of a Colony." "The station is a penitentiary; the colony for liberes, ticket-of-leave men, and outcast Paris; with a sprinkling of gentlemen and officers dying of boredom. No, my friend, we French are not colonists. We emigrate, we do not colonise. This is no colony. We do no good here." "You forget the nickel mines." "Quarries for the convicts and for political prisoners of the lowest class." "The plantations?" "Ah, there I crave your pardon. You are a planter, but you are English. M. Wyndham is a planter and an owner of mines, but he is English. The man who has done best financially in New Caledonia is an Englishman. You, and a few others like you, French and English, are the only colony I have. I do not rule you; you help me to rule." "We?" "By being on the side of justice and public morality; by dining with me, though all too seldom; by giving me a quiet hour now and then beneath your vines and fig-trees; and so making this uniform less burdensome to carry. No, no, monsieur, I know you are about to say something very gracious: but no, you shall pay your compliments to the ladies." As they journeyed to the morning-room Hugh Tryon said: "Does M. Laflamme still come to paint Miss Wyndham?" "Yes; but it ends to-morrow, and then no more of that. Prisoners are prisoners, and though Laflamme is agreeable that makes it the more difficult." "Why should he be treated so well, as a first-class prisoner, and others of the Commune be so degraded here--as Mayer, for instance?" "It is but a question of degree. He was an artist and something of a dramatist; he was not at the Place Vendome at a certain critical moment; he was not at Montmartre at a particular terrible time; he was not a high officer like Mayer; he was young, with the face of a patriot. Well, they sent Mayer to the galleys at Toulon first; then, among the worst of the prisoners here--he was too bold, too full of speech; he had not Laflamme's gift of silence, of pathos. Mayer works coarsely, severely here; Laflamme grows his vegetables, idles about Ducos, swings in his hammock, and appears at inspections the picture of docility. One day he sent to me the picture of my wife framed in gold--here it is. Is it not charming? The size of a franc-piece and so perfect! You know the soft hearts of women." "You mean that Madame Solde--" "She persuaded me to let him come here to paint my portrait. He has done so, and now he paints Marie Wyndham. But--" "But?--Yes?" "But these things have their dangers." "Have their dangers," Hugh Tryon musingly repeated, and then added under his breath almost, "Escape or--" "Or something else," the Governor rather sharply interrupted; and then, as they were entering the room, gaily continued: "Ah, here we come, mademoiselle, to pay--" "To pay your surplus of compliments, monsieur le Gouverneur. I could not help but hear something of what you said," responded Marie, and gave her hand to Tryon. "I leave you to mademoiselle's tender mercies, monsieur," said the Governor. "Au revoir!" When he had gone, Hugh said: "You are gay today." "Indeed, no, I am sad." "Wherefore sad? Is nickel proving a drug? Or sugar a failure? Don't tell me that your father says sugar is falling." He glanced at the letter, which she unconsciously held in her hand. She saw his look, smoothed the letter a little nervously between her palms, and put it into her pocket, saying: "No, my father has not said that sugar is falling--but come here, will you?" and she motioned towards the open window. When there, she said slowly, "That is what makes me sad and sorry," and she pointed to the Semaphore upon the Hill of Pains. "You are too tender-hearted," he remarked. "A convict has escaped; he will be caught perhaps--perhaps not; and things will go on as before." "Will go on as before. That is, the 'martinet' worse than the 'knout de Russe'; the 'poucettes', the 'crapaudine' on neck and ankles and wrists; all, all as bad as the 'Pater Noster' of the Inquisition, as Mayer said the other day in the face of Charpentier, the Commandant of the penitentiary. How pleasant also to think of the Boulevard de Guillotine! I tell you it is brutal, horrible. Think of what prisoners have to suffer here, whose only crime is that they were of the Commune; that they were just a little madder than other Frenchmen." "Pardon me if I say that as brutal things were done by the English in Tasmania." "Think of two hundred and sixty strokes of the 'cat.'" "You concern yourself too much about these things, I fear." "I only think that death would be easier than the life of half of the convicts here." "They themselves would prefer it, perhaps." "Tell me, who is the convict that has escaped?" she feverishly asked. "Is it a political prisoner?" "You would not know him. He was one of the Commune who escaped shooting in the Place de la Concorde. Carbourd, I think, was his name." "Carbourd, Carbourd," she repeated, and turned her head away towards the Semaphore. Her earnestness aroused in Tryon a sudden flame of sympathy which had its origin, as he well knew, in three years of growing love. This love leaped up now determinedly--perhaps unwisely; but what should a blunt soul like Hugh Tryon know regarding the best or worst time to seek a woman's heart? He came close to her now and said: "If you are so kind in thought for a convict, I dare hope that you would be more kind to me." "Be kind to you," she repeated, as if not understanding what he said, nor the look in his eyes. "For I am a prisoner, too." "A prisoner?" she rejoined a little tremulously, and coldly. "In your hands, Marie." His eyes laid bare his heart. "Oh!" she replied, in a half-troubled, half-indignant tone, for she was out of touch with the occasion of his suit, and every woman has in her mind the time when she should and when she should not be wooed. "Oh, why aren't you plain with me? I hate enigmas." "Why do I not speak plainly? Because, because, Marie, it is possible for a man to be a coward in his speech"--he touched her fingers--"when he loves." She quickly drew her hand from his. "Oh, can't we be friends without that?" There was a sound of footsteps at the window. Both turned, and saw the political prisoner, Rive Laflamme, followed by a guard. "He comes to finish my portrait," she said. "This is the last sitting." "Marie, must I go like this? When may I see you again? When will you answer me? You will not make all the hopes to end here?" It was evident that some deep trouble was on the girl. She flushed hotly, as if she were about to reply hotly also, but she changed quickly, and said, not unkindly: "When M. Laflamme has gone." And now, as if repenting of her unreasonable words of a moment before, she added: "Oh, please don't think me hard. I am sorry that I grieve you. I'm afraid I am not altogether well, not altogether happy." "I will wait till he has gone," the planter replied. At the door he turned as if to say something, but he only looked steadily, sadly at her, and then was gone. She stood where he had left her, gazing in melancholy abstraction at the door through which he had passed. There were footsteps without in the hall-way. The door was opened, and a servant announced M. Laflamme. The painter-prisoner entered followed by the soldier. Immediately afterward Mrs. Angers, Marie's elderly companion, sidled in gently. Laflamme bowed low, then turned and said coolly to the soldier: "You may wait outside to-day, Roupet. This is my last morning's work. It is important, and you splutter and cough. You are too exhausting for a studio." But Roupet answered: "Monsieur, I have my orders." "Nonsense. This is the Governor's house. I am perfectly safe here. Give your orders a change of scene. You would better enjoy the refreshing coolness of the corridors this morning. You won't? Oh, yes, you will. Here's a cigarette--there, take the whole bunch--I paid too much for them, but no matter. Ah, pardon me, mademoiselle. I forgot that you cannot smoke here, Roupet; but you shall have them all the same, there! Parbleu! you are a handsome rascal, if you weren't so wheezy! Come, come, Roupet, make yourself invisible." The eyes of the girl were on the soldier. They did the work better; a warrior has a soft place in his heart for a beautiful woman. He wheeled suddenly, and disappeared from the room, motioning that he would remain at the door. The painting began, and for half an hour or more was continued without a word. In the silence the placid Angers had fallen asleep. Nodding slightly towards her, Rive Laflamme said in a low voice to Marie: "Her hearing at its best is not remarkable?" "Not remarkable." He spoke more softly. "That is good. Well, the portrait is done. It has been the triumph of my life to paint it. Not that first joy I had when I won the great prize in Paris equals it. I am glad: and yet--and yet there was much chance that it would never be finished." "Why?" "Carbourd is gone." "Yes, I know-well?" "Well, I should be gone also were it not for this portrait. The chance came. I was tempted. I determined to finish this. I stayed." "Do you think that he will be caught?" "Not alive. Carbourd has suffered too much--the galleys, the corde, the triangle, everything but the guillotine. Carbourd has a wife and children--ah, yes, you know all about it. You remember that letter she sent: I can recall every word; can you?" The girl paused, and then with a rapt sympathy in her face repeated slowly: "I am ill, and our children cry for food. The wife calls to her husband, my darlings say, 'Will father never come home?'" Marie's eyes were moist. "Mademoiselle, he was no common criminal. He would have died for the cause grandly. He loved France too wildly. That was his sin." "Carbourd is free," she said, as though to herself. "He has escaped." His voice was the smallest whisper. "And now my time has come." "When? And where do you go?" "To-night, and to join Carbourd, if I can, at the Pascal River. At King Ovi's Cave, if possible." The girl was very pale. She turned and looked at Angers, who still slept. "And then?" "And then, as I have said to you before, to the coast, to board the Parroquet, which will lie off the island Saint Jerome three days from now to carry us away into freedom. It is all arranged by our 'Underground Railway.'" "And you tell me all this--why?" the girl said falteringly. "Because you said that you would not let a hunted fugitive starve; that you would give us horses, with which we could travel the Brocken Path across the hills. Here is the plan of the river that you drew; at this point is the King's Cave which you discovered, and is known only to yourself." "I ought not to have given it to you; but--" "Ah, you will not repent of a noble action, of a great good to me--Marie?" "Hush, monsieur. Indeed, you may not speak to me so. You forget. I am sorry for you; I think you do not deserve this--banishment; you are unhappy here; and I told you of the King's Cave-that was all." "Ah no, that is not all! To be free, that is good; but only that I may be a man again; that I may love my art--and you; that I may once again be proud of France." "Monsieur, I repeat, you must not speak so. Do not take advantage of my willingness to serve you." "A thousand pardons! but that was in my heart, and I hoped, I hoped--" "You must not hope. I can only know you as M. Laflamme, the--" "The political convict; ah, yes, I know," he said bitterly: "a convict over whom the knout is held; who may at any moment be shot down like a hare: who has but two prayers in all the world: to be free in France once more, and to be loved by one--" She interrupted him: "Your first prayer is natural." "Natural?--Do you know what song we sang in the cages of the ship that carried us into this evil exile here? Do you know what brought tears to the eyes of the guards?--What made the captain and the sailors turn their heads away from us, lest we should see that their faces were wet? What rendered the soldiers who had fought us in the Commune more human for the moment? It was this: Adieu les fruits d'or du vieux mur! "Hush, monsieur!" the girl said with a swift gesture. He looked and saw that Angers was waking. "If I live," he hurriedly whispered, "I shall be at the King's Cave to-morrow night. And you--the horses?" "You shall have my help and the horses." Then, more loudly: "Au revoir, monsieur." At that moment Madame Solde entered the room. She acknowledged Laflamme's presence gravely. "It is all done, madame," he said, pointing to the portrait. Madame Solde bowed coldly, but said: "It is very well done, monsieur." "It is my masterpiece," remarked the painter pensively. "Will you permit me to say adieu, mesdames? I go to join my amiable and attentive companion, Roupet the guard." He bowed himself out. Madame Solde drew Marie aside. Angers discreetly left. The Governor's wife drew the girl's head back on her shoulder. "Marie," she said, "M. Tryon does not seem happy; cannot you change that?" With quivering lips the girl laid her head on the Frenchwoman's breast, and said: "Ah, do not ask me now. Madame, I am going home to-day." "To-day? But, so soon!--I wished--" "I must go to-day." "But we had hoped you would stay while M. Tryon--" "M. Tryon--will--go with me--perhaps." "Ah, my dear Marie!" The woman kissed the girl, and wondered. That afternoon Marie was riding across the Winter Valley to her father's plantation at the Pascal River. Angers was driving ahead. Beside Marie rode Tryon silent and attentive. Arrived at the homestead, she said to him in the shadow of the naoulis: "Hugh Tryon, what would you do to prove the love you say you have for me?" "All that a man could do I would do." "Can you see the Semaphore from here?" "Yes, there it is clear against the sky--look!" But the girl did not look. She touched her eyelids with her finger-tips, as though they were fevered, and then said: "Many have escaped. They are searching for Carbourd and--" "Yes, Marie?" "And M. Laflamme--" "Laflamme!" he said sharply. Then, noticing how at his brusqueness the paleness of her face changed to a startled flush for an instant, his generosity conquered, and he added gently: "Well, I fancied he would try, but what do you know about that, Marie?" "He and Carbourd were friends. They were chained together in the galleys, they lived--at first--together here. They would risk life to return to France." "Tell me," said he, "what do you know of this? What is it to you?" "You wish to know all before you will do what I ask. "I will do anything you ask, because you will not ask of me what is unmanly." "M. Laflamme will escape to-night if possible, and join Carbourd on the Pascal River, at a safe spot that I know." She told him of the Cave. "Yes, yes, I understand. You would help him. And I?" "You will help me. You will?" There was a slight pause, and then he said: "Yes, I will. But think what this is to an Englishman-to yourself, to be accomplice to the escape of a French prisoner." "I gave a promise to a man whom I think deserves it. He believed he was a patriot. If you were in that case, and I were a Frenchwoman, I would do the same for you." He smiled rather grimly and said: "If it please you that this man escape, I shall hope he may, and will help you.... Here comes your father." "I could not let my father know," she said. "He has no sympathy for any one like that, for any one at all, I think, but me." "Don't be down-hearted. If you have set your heart on this, I will try to bring it about, God knows! Now let us be less gloomy. Conspirators should smile. That is the cue. Besides, the world is bright. Look at the glow upon the hills." "I suppose the Semaphore is glistening on the Hill of Pains; but I cannot see it." He did not understand her.
A few hours after this conversation, Laflamme sought to accomplish his escape. He had lately borne a letter from the Commandant, which permitted him to go from point to point outside the peninsula of Ducos, where the least punished of the political prisoners were kept. He depended somewhat on this for his escape. Carbourd had been more heroic, but then Carbourd was desperate. Laflamme believed more in ability than force. It was ability and money that had won over the captain of the Parroquet, coupled with the connivance of an old member of the Commune, who was now a guard. This night there was increased alertness, owing to the escape of Carbourd; and himself, if not more closely watched, was at least open to quick suspicion owing to his known friendship for Carbourd. He strolled about the fortified enclosure, chatting to fellow prisoners, and waiting for the call which should summon them to the huts. Through years of studied good-nature he had come to be regarded as a contented prisoner. He had no enemies save one among the guards. This man Maillot he had offended by thwarting his continued ill-treatment of a young lad who had been one of the condemned of the Commune, and whose hammock, at last, by order of the Commandant, was slung in Laflamme's hut. For this kindness and interposition the lad was grateful and devoted. He had been set to labour in the nickel mines; but that came near to killing him, and again through Laflamme's pleading he had been made a prisoner of the first class, and so relieved of all heavy tasks. Not even he suspected the immediate relations of Laflamme and Carbourd; nor that Laflamme was preparing for escape. As Laflamme waited for the summons to huts, a squad of prisoners went clanking by him, manacled. They had come from road-making. These never heard from wife nor child, nor held any commerce with the outside world, nor had any speech with each other, save by a silent gesture--language which eluded the vigilance of the guards. As the men passed, Laflamme looked at them steadily. They knew him well. Some of them remembered his speeches at the Place Vendome. They bore him no ill-will that he did not suffer as they. He made a swift sign to a prisoner near the rear of the column. The man smiled, but gave no answering token. This was part of the unspoken vocabulary, and, in this instance, conveyed the two words: I escape. A couple of hours later Laflamme rose from a hammock in his hut, and leant over the young lad, who was sleeping. He touched him gently. The lad waked: "Yes, yes, monsieur." "I am going away, my friend." "To escape like Carbourd?" "Yes, I hope, like Carbourd." "May I not go also, monsieur? I am not afraid." "No, lad. If there must be death one is enough. You must stay. Good-bye." "You will see my mother? She is old, and she grieves." "Yes, I will see your mother. And more; you shall be free. I will see to that. Be patient, little comrade. Nay, nay, hush!... No, thanks. Adieu!" He put his hands on the lad's shoulder and kissed his forehead. "I wish I had died at the Barricades. But, yes, I will be brave--be sure of that." "You shall not die--you shall live in France, which is better. Once more, adieu!" Laflamme passed out. It was raining. He knew that if he could satisfy the first sentinel he should stand a better chance of escape, since he had had so much freedom of late; and to be passed by one would help with others. He went softly, but he was soon challenged. "Halt! Who goes there?" "Condemned of the Commune--by order." "Whose order?" "That of the Commandant." "Advance order." The sentinel knew him. "Ah, Laflamme," he said, and raised the point of his bayonet. The paper was produced. It did not entitle him to go about at night, and certainly not beyond the enclosure without a guard--it was insufficient. In unfolding the paper Laflamme purposely dropped it in the mud. He hastily picked it up, and, in doing so, smeared it. He wiped it, leaving the signature comparatively plain--nothing else. "Well," said the sentinel, "the signature is right. Where do you go?" "To Government House." "I do not know that I should let you pass. But--well, look out that the next sentinel doesn't bayonet you. You came on me suddenly." The next sentinel was a Kanaka. The previous formula was repeated. The Kanaka examined the paper long, and then said: "You cannot pass." "But the other sentinel passed me. Would you get him into trouble?" The Kanaka frowned, hesitated, then said: "That is another matter. Well, pass." Twice more the same formula and arguments were used. At last he heard a voice in challenge that he knew. It was that of Maillot. This was a more difficult game. His order was taken with a malicious sneer by the sentinel. At that instant Laflamme threw his arms swiftly round the other, clapped a hand on his mouth, and, with a dexterous twist of leg, threw him backward, till it seemed as if the spine of the soldier must break. It was impossible to struggle against this trick of wrestling, which Laflamme had learned from a famous Cornish wrestler, in a summer spent on the English coast. "If you shout or speak I will kill you!" he said to Maillot, and then dropped him heavily on the ground, where he lay senseless. Laflamme stooped down and felt his heart. "Alive!" he said, then seized the rifle and plunged into the woods. The moon at that moment broke through the clouds, and he saw the Semaphore like a ghost pointing towards Pascal River. He waved his hand towards his old prison, and sped away. But others were thinking of the Semaphore at this moment, others saw it indistinct, yet melancholy, in the moonlight. The Governor and his wife saw it, and Madame Solde said: "Alfred, I shall be glad when I shall see that no more." "You have too much feeling." "I suppose Marie makes me think more of it to-day. She wept this morning over all this misery and punishment." "You think that. Well, perhaps something more--" "What more?" "Laflamme." "No, no, it is impossible!" "Indeed it is as I say. My wife, you are blind. I chanced to see him with her yesterday. I should have prevented him coming to-day, but I knew it was his last day with the portrait, and that all should end here." "We have done wrong in this--the poor child! Besides, she has, I fear, another sorrow coming. It showed itself to me to-day for the first time." Then she whispered to him, and he started and sighed, and said at last: "But it must be saved. By--! it shall be saved!" And at that moment Marie Wyndham was standing in the open window of the library of Pascal House. She had been thinking of her recent visit to the King's Cave, where she had left food, and of the fact that Carbourd was not there. She raised her face towards the moon and sighed. She was thinking of something else. She was not merely sentimental, for she said, as if she had heard the words of the Governor and Madame Solde: "Oh! if it could be saved!" There was a rustle in the shrubbery near her. She turned towards the sound. A man came quickly towards her. "I am Carbourd," he said; "I could not find the way to the Cave. They were after me. They have tracked me. Tell me quick how to go." She swiftly gave him directions, and he darted away. Again there was a rustle in the leaves, and a man stepped forth. Something glistened in his hands--a rifle, though she could not see it plainly. It was levelled at the flying figure of Carbourd. There was a report. Marie started forward with her hands on her temples and a sharp cry. She started forward--into absolute darkness. There was a man's footsteps going swiftly by her. Why was it so dark? She stretched out her hands with a moan. "Oh! mother!--oh! mother! I am blind!" she cried. But her mother was sleeping unresponsive beyond the dark-beyond all dark. It was, perhaps, natural that she should cry to the dead and not to the living. Marie was blind. She had known it was coming, and it had tried her, as it would have tried any of the race of women. She had, when she needed it most, put love from her, and would not let her own heart speak, even to herself. She had sought to help one who loved her, and to fully prove the other--though the proving, she knew, was not necessary--before the darkness came. But here it was suddenly sent upon her by the shock of a rifle shot. It would have sent a shudder to a stronger heart than hers--that, in reply to her call on her dead mother, there came from the trees the shrill laugh of the mopoke--the sardonic bird of the South. As she stood there, with this tragedy enveloping her, the dull boom of a cannon came across the valley. "From Ducos," she said. "M. Laflamme has escaped. God help us all!" And she turned and groped her way into the room she had left. She felt for a chair and sat down. She must think of what she now was. She wondered if Carbourd was killed. She listened and thought not, since there was no sound without. But she knew that the house would be roused. She bowed her head in her hands. Surely she might weep a little for herself--she who had been so troubled for others. It is strange, but she thought of her flowers and birds, and wondered how she should tend them; of her own room which faced the north--the English north that she loved so well; of her horse, and marvelled if he would know that she could not see him; and, lastly, of a widening horizon of pain, spread before the eyes of her soul, in which her father and another moved. It seemed to her that she sat there for hours, it was in reality minutes only. A firm step and the opening of a door roused her. She did not turn her head--what need? She knew the step. There was almost a touch of ironical smiling at her lips, as she thought how she must hear and feel things only, in the future. A voice said: "Marie, are you here?" "I am here." "I'll strike a match so that you can see I'm not a bushranger. There has been shooting in the grounds. Did you hear it?" "Yes. A soldier firing at Carbourd." "You saw him?" "Yes. He could not find the Cave. I directed him. Immediately after he was fired upon." "He can't have been hit. There are no signs of him. There, that's lighter and better, isn't it?" "I do not know." She had risen, but she did not turn towards him. He came nearer to her. The enigmatical tone struck him strangely, but he could find nothing less commonplace to say than: "You don't prefer the exaggerated gloaming, do you?" "No, I do not prefer the gloaming, but why should not one be patient?" "Be patient!" he repeated, and came nearer still. "Are you hurt or angry?" "I am hurt, but not angry." "What have I done?--or is it I?" "It is not you. You are very good. It is nobody but God. I am hurt, because He is angry, perhaps." "Tell me what is the matter. Look at me." He faced her now-faced her eyes, looking blindly straight before her. "Hugh," she said, and she put her hand out slightly, not exactly to him, but as if to protect him from the blow which she herself must deal: "I am looking at you now." "Yes, yes, but so strangely, and not in my eyes." "I cannot look into your eyes, because, Hugh, I am blind." Her hand went further out towards him. He took it silently and pressed it to his bosom as he saw that she spoke true; and the shadow of the thing fell on him. The hand held to his breast felt how he was trembling from the shock. "Sit down, Hugh," she said, "and I will tell you all; but do not hold my hand so, or I cannot." Sitting there face to face, with deep furrows growing in his countenance, and a quiet sorrow spreading upon her cheek and forehead, she told the story how, since her childhood, her sight had played her false now and then, and within the past month had grown steadily uncertain. "And now," she said at last, "I am blind. I think I should like to tell my father--if you please. Then when I have seen him and poor Angers, if you will come again! There is work to be done. I hoped it would be finished before this came; but--there, good friend, go; I will sit here quietly." She could not see his face, but she heard him say: "My love, my love," very softly, as he rose to go; and she smiled sadly to herself. She folded her hands in her lap, and thought, not bitterly, not listlessly, but deeply. She wanted to consider all cheerfully now; she tried to do so. She was musing among those flying perceptions, those nebulous facts of a new life, experienced for the first time; she was now not herself as she had been; another woman was born; and she was feeling carefully along the unfamiliar paths which she must tread. She was not glad that these words ran through her mind continuously at first:
She stopped speaking. She heard footsteps. Her father entered. Hugh Tryon had done his task gently, but the old planter, selfish and hard as he was, loved his daughter; and the meeting was bitter for him. The prop of his pride seemed shaken beyond recovery. But the girl's calm comforted them all, and poignancy became dull pain. Before parting for the night Marie said to Hugh: "This is what I wish you to do for me to bring over two of your horses to Point Assumption on the river. There is a glen beyond that as you know, and from it runs the steep and dangerous Brocken Path across the hills. I wish you to wait there until M. Laflamme and Carbourd come by the river--that is their only chance. If they get across the hills they can easily reach the sea. I know that two of your horses have been over the path; they are sure-footed; they would know it in the night. Is it not so?" "It is so. There are not a dozen horses in the colony that could be trusted on it at night, but mine are safe. I shall do all you wish." She put out both her hands and felt for his shoulders, and let them rest there for a moment, saying: "I ask much, and I can give no reward, except the gratitude of one who would rather die than break a promise. It isn't much, but it is all that is worth your having. Good-night. Good-bye." "Good-night. Good-bye," he gently replied; but he said something beneath his breath that sounded worth the hearing. The next morning while her father was gone to consult the chief army-surgeon at Noumea, Marie strolled with Angers in the grounds. At length she said: "Angers, take me to the river, and then on down, until we come to the high banks." With her hand on Angers' arm, and in her face that passive gentleness which grows so sweetly from sightless eyes till it covers all the face, they passed slowly towards the river. When they came to the higher banks covered with dense scrub, Angers paused, and told Marie where they were. "Find me the she-oak tree," the girl said; "there is only one, you know." "Here it is, my dear. There, your hand is on it now." "Thank you. Wait here, Angers, I shall be back presently." "But oh, my dear--" "Please do as I say, Angers, and do not worry." The girl pushed aside some bushes, and was lost to view. She pressed along vigilantly by a descending path, until her feet touched rocky ground. She nodded to herself, then creeping between two bits of jutting rock at her right, immediately stood at the entrance to a cave, hidden completely from the river and from the banks above. At the entrance, for which she felt, she paused and said aloud: "Is there any one here?" Something clicked far within the cave. It sounded like a rifle. Then stealthy steps were heard, and a voice said: "Ah, mademoiselle!" "You are Carbourd?" "As you see, mademoiselle." "You escaped safely then from the rifle-shot? Where is the soldier?" "He fell into the river. He was drowned." "You are telling me truth?" "Yes, he stumbled in and sank--on my soul!" "You did not try to save him?" "He lied and got me six months in irons once; he called down on my back one hundred and fifty lashes, a year ago; he had me kept on bread and water, and degraded to the fourth class, where I could never hear from my wife and children--never write to them. I lost one eye in the quarries because he made me stand too near a lighted fuse--" "Poor man, poor man!" she said. "You found the food I left here?" "Yes, God bless you! And my wife and children will bless you too, if I see France again." "You know where the boat is?" "I know, mademoiselle." "When you reach Point Assumption you will find horses there to take you across the Brocken Path. M. Laflamme knows. I hope that you will both escape; that you will be happy in France with your wife and children." "You will not come here again?" "No. If M. Laflamme should not arrive, and you should go alone, leave one pair of oars; then I shall know. Good-bye." "Good-bye, mademoiselle. A thousand times I will pray for you. Ah, mon Dieu! take care!--you are on the edge of the great tomb." She stood perfectly still. At her feet was a dark excavation where was the skeleton of Ovi the King. This was the hidden burial-place of the modern Hiawatha of these savage islands, unknown even to the natives themselves, and kept secret with a half-superstitious reverence by this girl, who had discovered it a few months before. "I had forgotten," she said. "Please take my hand and set me right at the entrance." "Your hand, mademoiselle? Mine is so--! It is not dark." "I am blind now." "Blind--blind! Oh, the pitiful thing! Since when, mademoiselle?" "Since the soldier fired on you-the shock...." The convict knelt at her feet. "Ah, mademoiselle, you are a good angel. I shall die of grief. To think--for such as me!" "You will live to love your wife and children. This is the will of God with me. Am I in the path now? Ah, thank you." "But, M. Laflamme--this will be a great sorrow to him." Twice she seemed about to speak, but nothing came save good-bye. Then she crept cautiously away among the bushes and along the narrow path, the eyes of the convict following her. She had done a deed which, she understood, the world would blame her for if it knew, would call culpable or foolishly heroic; but she smiled, because she understood also that she had done that which her own conscience and heart approved, and she was content. At this time Laflamme was stealing watchfully through the tropical scrub, where hanging vines tore his hands, and the sickening perfume of jungle flowers overcame him more than the hard journey which he had undergone during the past twelve hours. Several times he had been within voice of his pursuers, and once a Kanaka scout passed close to him. He had had nothing to eat, he had had no sleep, he suffered from a wound in his neck caused by the broken protruding branch of a tree; but he had courage, and he was struggling for liberty--a tolerably sweet thing when one has it not. He found the Cave at last, and with far greater ease than Carbourd had done, because he knew the ground better, and his instinct was keener. His greeting to Carbourd was nonchalantly cordial: "Well, you see, comrade, King Ovi's Cave is a reality." "So." "I saw the boat. The horses? What do you know?" "They will be at Point Assumption to-night." "Then we go to-night. We shall have to run the chances of rifles along the shore at a range something short, but we have done that before, at the Barricades, eh, Carbourd?" "At the Barricades. It is a pity that we cannot take Citizen Louise Michel with us." "Her time will come." "She has no children crying and starving at home like--" "Like yours, Carbourd, like yours. Well, I am starving here. Give me something to eat.... Ah, that is good--excellent! What more can we want but freedom! Till the darkness of tyranny be overpast--overpast, eh?" This speech brought another weighty matter to Carbourd's mind. He said: "I do not wish to distress you, but--" "Now, Carbourd, what is the matter? Faugh! this place smells musty. What's that--a tomb? Speak out, Citizen Carbourd." "It is this: Mademoiselle Wyndham is blind." Carbourd told the story with a great anxiety in his words. "The poor mademoiselle--is it so? A thousand pities! So kind, so young, so beautiful. Ah, I am distressed, and I finished her portrait yesterday! Yes, I remember her eyes looked too bright, and then again too dull: but I thought that it was excitement, and so--that!" Laflamme's regret was real enough up to a certain point, but, in sincerity and value, it was chasms below that of Hugh Tryon, who, even now, was getting two horses ready to give the Frenchmen their chance. After a pause Laflamme said: "She will not come here again, Carbourd? No? Ah, well, perhaps it is better so; but I should have liked to speak my thanks to her." That night Marie sat by the window of the sitting-room, with the light burning, and Angers asleep in a chair beside her--sat till long after midnight, in the thought that Laflamme, if he had reached the Cave, would, perhaps, dare something to see her and bid her good-bye. She would of course have told him not to come, but he was chivalrous, and then her blindness would touch him. Yet as the hours went by the thought came: was he, was he so chivalrous? was he altogether true?... He did not come. The next morning Angers took her to where the boat had been, but it was gone, and no oars were left behind. So, both had sought escape in it. She went to the Cave. She took Angers with her now. Upon the wall a paper was found. It was a note from M. Laflamme. She asked Angers to give it to her without reading it. She put it in her pocket and kept it there until she should see Hugh Tryon. He should read it to her. She said to herself as she felt the letter in her pocket: "He loved me. It was the least that I could do. I am so glad." Yet she was not altogether glad either, and disturbing thoughts crossed the parallels of her pleasure. The Governor and Madame Solde first brought news of the complete escape of the prisoners. The two had fled through the hills by the Brocken Path, and though pursued after crossing, had reached the coast, and were taken aboard the Parroquet, which sailed away towards Australia. It is probable that Marie's visitors had their suspicions regarding the escape, but they said nothing, and did not make her uncomfortable. Just now they were most concerned for her bitter misfortune. Madame Solde said to her: "My poor Marie--does it feel so dreadful, so dark?" "No, madame, it is not so bad. There are so many things which one does not wish to see, and one is spared the pain." "But you will see again. When you go to England, to great physicians there." "Then I should have three lives, madame: when I could see, when sight died, and when sight was born again. How wise I should be!" They left her sadly, and after a time she heard footsteps that she knew. She came forward and greeted Tryon. "Ah," she said, "all's well with them, I know; and you were so good." "They are safe upon the seas," he gently replied, and he kissed her hand. "Now you will read this letter for me. M. Laflamme left it behind in the Cave." With a pang he took it, and read thus:
"Hugh!" she said sadly when he had finished, "I seem to have new knowledge of things, now that I am blind. I think this letter is not altogether real. You see, that was his way of saying-good-bye." What Hugh Tryon thought, he did not say. He had met the Governor on his way to Pascal House, and had learned some things which were not for her to know. She continued: "I could not bear that one who was innocent of any real crime, who was a great artist, and who believed himself a patriot, should suffer so here. When he asked me I helped him. Yet I suppose I was selfish, wasn't I? It was because he loved me." Hugh spoke breathlessly: "And because--you loved him, Marie?" Her head was lifted quickly, as though she saw, and was looking him in the eyes. "Oh no, oh no," she cried, "I never loved him. I was sorry for him--that was all." "Marie, Marie," he said gently, while she shook her head a little pitifully, "did you, then, love any one else?" She was silent for a space and then she said: "Yes--Oh, Hugh, I am so sorry for your sake that I am blind, and cannot marry you." "But, my darling, you shall not always be blind, you shall see again. And you shall marry me also. As though--life of my life! as though one's love could live but by the sight of the eyes!" "My poor Hugh! But, blind, I could not marry you. It would not be just to you." He smiled with a happy hopeful determination; "But if you should see again?" "Oh, then...." She married him, and in time her sight returned, though not completely. Tryon never told her, as the Governor had told him, that Rive Laflamme, when a prisoner in New Caledonia, had a wife in Paris: and he is man enough to hope that she may never know. But to this hour he has a profound regret that duels are not in vogue among Englishmen. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |