813

"Why, I'm killing two birds with one stone! It was as easy to rescue two as one. Think of the time it would have taken, the efforts – useless efforts, perhaps – to worm myself into that child's friendship! What was I to her? What should I be now? An unknown person.. a stranger. Whereas now I am the rescuer. In an hour I shall be.. the friend."

She began to tremble:

"So.. so you did not rescue Geneviève… So you are going to mix us up in your affairs.." And, suddenly, in a fit of rebellion, seizing him by the shoulders, "No, I won't have it, do you understand? You brought the child to me one day, saying, 'Here, I entrust her to you.. her father and mother are dead.. take her under your protection.' Well, she's under my protection now and I shall know how to defend her against you and all your manœuvers!"

Standing straight upright, in a very determined attitude, Mme. Ernemont seemed ready for all emergencies.

Slowly and deliberately Sernine loosened the two hands, one after the other, that held him, and in his turn, took the old lady by the shoulders, forced her into an arm-chair, stooped over and, in a very calm voice, said:

"Rot!"

She began to cry and, clasping her hands together, implored him:

"I beseech you, leave us in peace. We were so happy! I thought that you had forgotten us and I blessed Heaven every time a day had passed. Why, yes .. I love you just the same. But, Geneviève.. you see, there's nothing that I wouldn't do for that child. She has taken your place in my heart."

"So I perceive," said he, laughing. "You would send me to the devil with pleasure. Come, enough of this nonsense! I have no time to waste. I must talk to Geneviève."

"You're going to talk to her?"

"Well, is that a crime?"

"And what have you to tell her?"

"A secret.. a very grave secret.. and a very touching one.."

The old lady took fright:

"And one that will cause her sorrow, perhaps? Oh, I fear everything, I fear everything, where she's concerned!."

"She is coming," he said.

"No, not yet."

"Yes, yes, I hear her… Wipe your eyes and be sensible."

"Listen," said she, eagerly, "listen. I don't know what you are going to say, what secret you mean to reveal to this child whom you don't know. But I, who do know her, tell you this: Geneviève has a very plucky, very spirited, but very sensitive nature. Be careful how you choose your words… You might wound feelings.. the existence of which you cannot even suspect.."

"Lord bless me! And why not?"

"Because she belongs to another race than you, to a different world… I mean, a different moral world… There are things which you are forbidden to understand nowadays. Between you and her, the obstacle is insurmountable… Geneviève has the most unblemished and upright conscience.. and you."

"And I?"

"And you are not an honest man!"

Geneviève entered, bright and charming:

"All my babies have gone to bed; I have ten minutes to spare… Why, grandmother, what's the matter? You look quite upset… Is it still that business with the."

"No, mademoiselle," said Sernine, "I believe I have had the good fortune to reassure your grandmother. Only, we were talking of you, of your childhood; and that is a subject, it seems, which your grandmother cannot touch upon without emotion."

"Of my childhood?" said Geneviève, reddening. "Oh, grandmother!"

"Don't scold her, mademoiselle. The conversation turned in that direction by accident. It so happens that I have often passed through the little village where you were brought up."

"Aspremont?"

"Yes, Aspremont, near Nice. You used to live in a new house, white all over.."

"Yes," she said, "white all over, with a touch of blue paint round the windows… I was only seven years old when I left Aspremont; but I remember the least things of that period. And I have not forgotten the glare of the sun on the white front of the house, nor the shade of the eucalyptus-tree at the bottom of the garden."

"At the bottom of the garden, mademoiselle, was a field of olive-trees; and under one of those olive-trees stood a table at which your mother used to work on hot days.."

"That's true, that's true," she said, quite excitedly, "I used to play by her side.."

"And it was there," said he, "that I saw your mother several times… I recognized her image the moment I set eyes on you.. but it was a brighter, happier image."

"Yes, my poor mother was not happy. My father died on the very day of my birth, and nothing was ever able to console her. She used to cry a great deal. I still possess a little handkerchief with which I used to dry her tears at that time."

"A little handkerchief with a pink pattern."

"What!" she exclaimed, seized with surprise. "You know."

"I was there one day when you were comforting her… And you comforted her so prettily that the scene remained impressed on my memory."

She gave him a penetrating glance and murmured, almost to herself:

"Yes, yes… I seem to.. The expression of your eyes.. and then the sound of your voice.."

She lowered her eyelids for a moment and reflected as if she were vainly trying to bring back a recollection that escaped her. And she continued:

"Then you knew her?"

"I had some friends living near Aspremont and used to meet her at their house. The last time I saw her, she seemed to me sadder still.. paler.. and, when I came back again."

"It was all over, was it not?" said Geneviève. "Yes, she went very quickly.. in a few weeks.. and I was left alone with neighbors who sat up with her.. and one morning they took her away… And, on the evening of that day, some one came, while I was asleep, and lifted me up and wrapped me in blankets.."

"A man?" asked the prince.

"Yes, a man. He talked to me, quite low, very gently.. his voice did me good.. and, as he carried me down the road and also in the carriage, during the night, he rocked me in his arms and told me stories.. in the same voice.. in the same voice."

She broke off gradually and looked at him again, more sharply than before and with a more obvious effort to seize the fleeting impression that passed over her at moments. He asked:

"And then? Where did he take you?"

"I can't recollect clearly.. it is just as though I had slept for several days… I can remember nothing before the little town of Montégut, in the Vendée, where I spent the second half of my childhood, with Father and Mother Izereau, a worthy couple who reared me and brought me up and whose love and devotion I shall never forget."

"And did they die, too?"

"Yes," she said, "of an epidemic of typhoid fever in the district.. but I did not know that until later… As soon as they fell ill, I was carried off as on the first occasion and under the same conditions, at night, by some one who also wrapped me up in blankets… Only, I was bigger, I struggled, I tried to call out.. and he had to close my mouth with a silk handkerchief."

"How old were you then?"

"Fourteen.. it was four years ago."

"Then you were able to see what the man was like?"

"No, he hid his face better and he did not speak a single word to me… Nevertheless, I have always believed him to be the same one.. for I remember the same solicitude, the same attentive, careful movements.."

"And after that?"

"After that, came oblivion, sleep, as before… This time, I was ill, it appears; I was feverish… And I woke in a bright, cheerful room. A white-haired lady was bending over me and smiling. It was grandmother.. and the room was the one in which I now sleep upstairs."

She had resumed her happy face, her sweet, radiant expression; and she ended, with a smile:

"That was how she became my grandmother and how, after a few trials, the little Aspremont girl now knows the delights of a peaceful life and teaches grammar and arithmetic to little girls who are either naughty or lazy.. but who are all fond of her."

She spoke cheerfully, in a tone at once thoughtful and gay, and it was obvious that she possessed a reasonable, well-balanced mind. Sernine listened to her with growing surprise and without trying to conceal his agitation:

"Have you never heard speak of that man since?" he asked.

"Never."

"And would you be glad to see him again?"

"Oh, very glad."

"Well, then, mademoiselle."

Geneviève gave a start:

"You know something.. the truth perhaps."

"No.. no.. only."

He rose and walked up and down the room. From time to time, his eyes fell upon Geneviève; and it looked as though he were on the point of giving a more precise answer to the question which she had put to him. Would he speak?

Mme. Ernemont awaited with anguish the revelation of the secret upon which the girl's future peace might depend.

He sat down beside Geneviève, appeared to hesitate, and said at last:

"No.. no.. just now.. an idea occurred to me.. a recollection."

"A recollection?.. And."

"I was mistaken. Your story contained certain details that misled me."

"Are you sure?"

He hesitated and then declared:

"Absolutely sure."

"Oh," said she, greatly disappointed. "I had half guessed.. that that man whom I saw twice.. that you knew him.. that."

She did not finish her sentence, but waited for an answer to the question which she had put to him without daring to state it completely.

He was silent. Then, insisting no further, she bent over Mme. Ernemont:

"Good night, grandmother. My children must be in bed by this time, but they could none of them go to sleep before I had kissed them."

She held out her hand to the prince:

"Thank you once more.."

"Are you going?" he asked quickly.

"Yes, if you will excuse me; grandmother will see you out."

He bowed low and kissed her hand. As she opened the door, she turned round and smiled. Then she disappeared. The prince listened to the sound of her footsteps diminishing in the distance and stood stock-still, his face white with emotion.

"Well," said the old lady, "so you did not speak?"

"No.."

"That secret."

"Later… To-day.. oddly enough.. I was not able to."

"Was it so difficult? Did not she herself feel that you were the stranger who took her away twice… A word would have been enough.."

"Later, later," he repeated, recovering all his assurance. "You can understand.. the child hardly knows me… I must first gain the right to her affection, to her love… When I have given her the life which she deserves, a wonderful life, such as one reads of in fairy-tales, then I will speak."

The old lady tossed her head:

"I fear that you are making a great mistake. Geneviève does not want a wonderful life. She has simple tastes."

"She has the tastes of all women; and wealth, luxury and power give joys which not one of them despises."

"Yes, Geneviève does. And you would do much better."

"We shall see. For the moment, let me go my own way. And be quite easy. I have not the least intention, as you say, of mixing her up in any of my manœuvers. She will hardly ever see me… Only, we had to come into contact, you know… That's done… Good-bye."

He left the school and walked to where his motor-car was waiting for him. He was perfectly happy:

"She is charming.. and so gentle, so grave! Her mother's eyes, eyes that soften you.. Heavens, how long ago that all is! And what a delightful recollection! A little sad, but so delightful!" And he said, aloud, "Certainly I shall look after her happiness! And that at once! This very evening! That's it, this very evening she shall have a sweetheart! Is not love the essential condition of any young girl's happiness?"

He found his car on the high-road:

"Home," he said to Octave.

When Sernine reached home, he rang up Neuilly and telephoned his instructions to the friend whom he called the doctor. Then he dressed, dined at the Rue Cambon Club, spent an hour at the opera and got into his car again:

"Go to Neuilly, Octave. We are going to fetch the doctor. What's the time?"

"Half-past ten."

"Dash it! Look sharp!"

Ten minutes later, the car stopped at the end of the Boulevard Inkerman, outside a villa standing in its own grounds. The doctor came down at the sound of the hooter. The prince asked:

"Is the fellow ready?"

"Packed up, strung up, sealed up."

"In good condition?"

"Excellent. If everything goes as you telephoned, the police will be utterly at sea."

"That's what they're there for. Let's get him on board."

They carried into the motor a sort of long sack shaped like a human being and apparently rather heavy. And the prince said:

"Go to Versailles, Octave, Rue de la Vilaine. Stop outside the Hôtel des Deux-Empereurs."

"Why, it's a filthy hotel," observed the doctor. "I know it well; a regular hovel."

"You needn't tell me! And it will be a hard piece of work, for me, at least… But, by Jove, I wouldn't sell this moment for a fortune! Who dares pretend that life is monotonous?"

They reached the Hôtel des Deux-Empereurs. A muddy alley; two steps down; and they entered a passage lit by a flickering lamp.

Sernine knocked with his fist against a little door.

A waiter appeared, Philippe, the man to whom Sernine had given orders, that morning, concerning Gérard Baupré.

"Is he here still?" asked the prince.

"Yes."

"The rope?"

"The knot is made."

"He has not received the telegram he was hoping for?"

"I intercepted it: here it is."

Sernine took the blue paper and read it:

"Gad!" he said. "It was high time. This is to promise him a thousand francs for to-morrow. Come, fortune is on my side. A quarter to twelve… In a quarter of an hour, the poor devil will take a leap into eternity. Show me the way, Philippe. You stay here, Doctor."

The waiter took the candle. They climbed to the third floor, and, walking on tip-toe, went along a low and evil-smelling corridor, lined with garrets and ending in a wooden staircase covered with the musty remnants of a carpet.

"Can no one hear me?" asked Sernine.

"No. The two rooms are quite detached. But you must be careful not to make a mistake: he is in the room on the left."

"Very good. Now go downstairs. At twelve o'clock, the doctor, Octave and you are to carry the fellow up here, to where we now stand, and wait till I call you."

The wooden staircase had ten treads, which the prince climbed with definite caution. At the top was a landing with two doors. It took Sernine quite five minutes to open the one of the right without breaking the silence with the least sound of a creaking hinge.

A light gleamed through the darkness of the room. Feeling his way, so as not to knock against one of the chairs, he made for that light. It came from the next room and filtered through a glazed door covered with a tattered hanging.

The prince pulled the threadbare stuff aside. The panes were of ground glass, but scratched in parts, so that, by applying one eye, it was easy to see all that happened in the other room.

Sernine saw a man seated at a table facing him. It was the poet, Gérard Baupré. He was writing by the light of a candle.

Above his head hung a rope, which was fastened to a hook fixed in the ceiling. At the end of the rope was a slip-knot.

A faint stroke sounded from a clock in the street.

"Five minutes to twelve," thought Sernine. "Five minutes more."

The young man was still writing. After a moment, he put down his pen, collected the ten or twelve sheets of paper which he had covered and began to read them over.

What he read did not seem to please him, for an expression of discontent passed across his face. He tore up his manuscript and burnt the pieces in the flame of the candle.

Then, with a fevered hand, he wrote a few words on a clean sheet, signed it savagely and rose from his chair.

But, seeing the rope at ten inches above his head, he sat down again suddenly with a great shudder of alarm.

Sernine distinctly saw his pale features, his lean cheeks, against which he pressed his clenched fists. A tear trickled slowly down his face, a single, disconsolate tear. His eyes gazed into space, eyes terrifying in their unutterable sadness, eyes that already seemed to behold the dread unknown.

And it was so young a face! Cheeks still so smooth, with not a blemish, not a wrinkle! And blue eyes, blue like an eastern sky!.

Midnight.. the twelve tragic strokes of midnight, to which so many a despairing man has hitched the last second of his existence!

At the twelfth stroke, he stood up again and, bravely this time, without trembling, looked at the sinister rope. He even tried to give a smile, a poor smile, the pitiful grimace of the doomed man whom death has already seized for its own.

Swiftly he climbed the chair and took the rope in one hand.

For a moment, he stood there, motionless: not that he was hesitating or lacking in courage. But this was the supreme moment, the one minute of grace which a man allows himself before the fatal deed.

He gazed at the squalid room to which his evil destiny had brought him, the hideous paper on the walls, the wretched bed.

On the table, not a book: all were sold. Not a photograph, not a letter: he had no father, no mother, no relations. What was there to make him cling to life?

With a sudden movement he put his head into the slip-knot and pulled at the rope until the noose gripped his neck.

And, kicking the chair from him with both feet, he leapt into space.

Ten seconds, fifteen seconds passed, twenty formidable, eternal seconds..

The body gave two or three jerks. The feet had instinctively felt for a resting-place. Then nothing moved..

A few seconds more… The little glazed door opened.

Sernine entered.

Without the least haste he took the sheet of paper to which the young man had set his signature, and read:

"Tired of living, ill, penniless, hopeless, I am taking my own life. Let no one be accused of my death.

"Gérard Baupré.

"30 April."

He put back the paper on the table where it could be seen, picked up the chair and placed it under the young man's feet. He himself climbed up on the table and, holding the body close to him, lifted it up, loosened the slip-knot and passed the head through it.

The body sank into his arms. He let it slide along the table and, jumping to the floor, laid it on the bed.

Then, with the same coolness, he opened the door on the passage:

"Are you there, all the three of you?" he whispered.

Some one answered from the foot of the wooden staircase near him:

"We are here. Are we to hoist up our bundle?"

"Yes, come along!"

He took the candle and showed them a light.

The three men trudged up the stairs, carrying the sack in which the "fellow" was tied up.

"Put him here," he said, pointing to the table.

With a pocket-knife, he cut the cords round the sack. A white sheet appeared, which he flung back. In the sheet was a corpse, the corpse of Pierre Leduc.

"Poor Pierre Leduc!" said Sernine. "You will never know what you lost by dying so young! I should have helped you to go far, old chap. However, we must do without your services… Now then, Philippe, get up on the table; and you, Octave, on the chair. Lift up his head and fasten the slip-knot."

Two minutes later, Pierre Leduc's body was swinging at the end of the rope.

"Capital, that was quite simple! Now you can all of you go. You, Doctor, will call back here to-morrow morning; you will hear of the suicide of a certain Gérard Baupré: you understand, Gérard Baupré. Here is his farewell letter. You will send for the divisional surgeon and the commissary; you will arrange that neither of them notices that the deceased has a cut finger or a scar on one cheek.."

"That's easy."

"And you will manage so as to have the report written then and there, to your dictation."

"That's easy."

"Lastly, avoid having the body sent to the Morgue and make them give permission for an immediate burial."

"That's not so easy."

"Try. Have you examined the other one?"

He pointed to the young man lying lifeless on the bed.

"Yes," said the doctor. "The breathing is becoming normal. But it was a big risk to run.. the carotid artery might have."

"Nothing venture, nothing have… How soon will he recover consciousness?"

"In a few minutes."

"Very well. Oh, by the way, don't go yet, Doctor. Wait for me downstairs. There is more for you to do."

The prince, when he found himself alone, lit a cigarette and puffed at it quietly, sending little blue rings of smoke floating up to the ceiling.

A sigh roused him from his thoughts. He went to the bed. The young man was beginning to move; and his chest rose and fell violently, like that of a sleeper under the influence of a nightmare. He put his hands to his throat, as though he felt a pain there; and this action suddenly made him sit up, terrified, panting..

Then he saw Sernine in front of him:

"You?" he whispered, without understanding. "You?."

He gazed at him stupidly, as though he had seen a ghost.

He again touched his throat, felt round his neck… And suddenly he gave a hoarse cry; a mad terror dilated his eyes, made his hair stand on end, shook him from head to foot like an aspen-leaf! The prince had moved aside; and he saw the man's corpse hanging from the rope.

He flung himself back against the wall. That man, that hanged man, was himself! He was dead and he was looking at his own dead body! Was this a hideous dream that follows upon death? A hallucination that comes to those who are no more and whose distracted brain still quivers with a last flickering gleam of life?.

His arms struck at the air. For a moment, he seemed to be defending himself against the squalid vision. Then, exhausted, he fainted away for the second time.

"First-rate," said the prince, with a grin. "A sensitive, impressionable nature… At present, the brain is out of gear… Come, this is a propitious moment… But, if I don't get the business done in twenty minutes.. he'll escape me.."

He pushed open the door between the two garrets, came back to the bed, lifted the young man and carried him to the bed in the other room. Then he bathed his temples with cold water and made him sniff at some salts.

This time, the swoon did not last long.

Gérard timidly opened his eyes and raised them to the ceiling. The vision was gone. But the arrangement of the furniture, the position of the table and the fireplace, and certain other details all surprised him.. And then came the remembrance of his act, the pain which he felt at his throat..

He said to the prince:

"I have had a dream, have I not?"

"No."

"How do you mean, no?" And, suddenly recollecting, "Oh, that's true, I remember… I meant to kill myself.. and I even." Bending forward anxiously, "But the rest, the vision."

"What vision?"

"The man.. the rope.. was that a dream?."

"No," said Sernine. "That also was real."

"What are you saying? What are you saying?.. Oh, no, no!.. I entreat you!.. Wake me, if I am asleep.. or else let me die!.. But I am dead, am I not? And this is the nightmare of a corpse!.. Oh, I feel my brain going!.. I entreat you.."

Sernine placed his hand gently on the young man's head and, bending over him:

"Listen to me.. listen to me carefully and understand what I say. You are alive. Your matter and your mind are as they were and live. But Gérard Baupré is dead. You understand me, do you not? That member of society who was known as Gérard Baupré has ceased to exist. You have done away with that one. To-morrow, the registrar will write in his books, opposite the name you bore, the word 'Dead,' with the date of your decease."

"It's a lie!" stammered the terrified lad. "It's a lie! Considering that I, Gérard Baupré, am here!"

"You are not Gérard Baupré," declared Sernine. And, pointing to the open door, "Gérard Baupré is there, in the next room. Do you wish to see him? He is hanging from the nail to which you hooked him. On the table is a letter in which you certify his death with your signature. It is all quite regular, it is all final. There is no getting away from the irrevocable, brutal fact: Gérard Baupré has ceased to exist!"

The young man listened in despair. Growing calmer, now that facts were assuming a less tragic significance, he began to understand: