King of Camargue Part 32

"And a good one! be sure of that!" said she, in her jerky voice, her voice which resembled _another's_.

He went with her as far as the first of the stakes he had displaced, to point out the safe road to her, and when he saw her reach the edge of the swamp sixty feet beyond, he stooped and began to put the stakes in place one by one as he walked toward the firm ground.

When he reached the last, he sprang to his feet with haggard eyes.

Livette, with head thrown back, face turned toward the sky, eyes closed, mouth open, and gra.s.s mingled with her straying hair, was lying among the water-lilies, as if asleep, and in the throes of a bad dream. He also saw her two little clenched hands, above the water, clinging to the reeds.

Transformed for a moment to a statue, Renaud soon aroused himself, and, bending over Livette, put his hands under her armpits. The poor body, buried in the thick, black ooze, came slowly forth, torn from its bed like the smooth stalk of a lily.

When he had the poor body in his arms, inert and cold, perhaps dead,--the body of the poor, dear child, whose skirts, entangled in a net-work of long gra.s.ses, clung tightly to her dangling legs,--Renaud suddenly uttered a roar as of an enraged wild beast, and ran like a madman at the top of his speed to the nearest farm-house.

XXIII

THE PURSUIT

One forgives only those whom one loves; only those who love forgive.

Love at its apogee is naught but the power of inspiring forgiveness and bestowing it; and the social laws, which are of the mechanism of human justice, seem to have realized that fact, since they ignore the testimony of all those who would naturally be expected to love the culprit.

Sympathy is simply a laying aside--in favor of those we love--of the implacable severity which we use but little in dealing with ourselves, and which attributes to those who pa.s.s judgment an unerring wisdom which is not human, or a self-confidence which is too much so.

Livette, as she lay sick upon the best bed in the Icard farm-house, already had, in her sorrowing heart, an adorable feeling of indulgence for Renaud, which would have made the blessed maidens who laid the Crucified One in his shroud, smile with joy in the mystic heaven of the lofty chapel. She believed that she would die by her fiance's fault, and she pitied him. Forgiveness sooner or later redeems him who receives, and consoles him who accords it. In the sentiment of compa.s.sion is hidden the divine future of mankind.

Renaud was still ignorant of Livette's indulgence. Indeed, he could not deserve it until he had come to look upon himself as forever unworthy.

For the moment, he had not gone to the bottom of the h.e.l.l of evil thoughts.

When he found Livette half drowned in the _gargate_, his first impulse, born of true love and pity for her, in absolute forgetfulness of himself, lasted but an instant--but it had existed. Renaud at first suffered for her and for her alone.

His second impulse, almost immediate, and praiseworthy still, although there was a touch of selfishness in it, was to condemn himself, through fear of moral responsibility. Had he not with his own hand displaced the stakes that marked the path, with the idea, indefensible at best, that Rampal would be misled by that treacherous method of defence? Yes, almost immediately after he uttered his cry of agony, he shuddered with terror at the thought of the remorse that was in store for him, as soon as he felt that Livette was like a dead woman in his arms.

When he had given her in charge of the women at the main farm-house of the Icard farm, where there was great excitement over such an adventure at that time of day, he questioned two old peasant-women who knew more than all the doctors in the province. After doing what was necessary for Livette, they cheerfully declared that the poor girl would not die of it; they even said that it was "nothing at all." He did not even try to understand how she had come so far to fall into the trap!

She would not die! That was the essential thing at that moment. What a relief _to him_, for he was already accusing himself of his little sweetheart's death! He had been so afraid! And it turned out to be only a warning! G.o.d be praised, and blessed be the mighty saints who had performed such a miracle!

But the devil rejoiced when he looked into Renaud's conscience, for he saw the course his ideas were about to take, a course that would lead him from bad to worse.

Rea.s.sured as to Livette,--and as to himself,--he flew into a pa.s.sion with the accursed gitana, the indirect cause, at least, of all this misery.

"Ah! the beggar! I will kill her!--it will be easy to find her again.

She can't be far away--I will kill her!"

His wrath took full possession of him--he ran for his horse. Kill her!--kill her! Nothing could be more righteous.--And he went about it.

Poor Renaud! the victim of all the involuntary falsehoods which, starting from ourselves, one engendering another, sometimes render the best of us irresponsible and drive us on to disaster when pa.s.sion makes us mad.

This chain, often undiscoverable, of false but specious reasons with which men deceive themselves, each fitting into the last without violence, each explaining and justifying the one that follows it--leads insensibly to acts incomprehensible to him who is not able to follow it back, link by link. It is the chain of FATALITY, in which the links, consisting of trifling but suggestive facts, of decisive circ.u.mstances, unknown sometimes to the culprit, alternate with the fict.i.tious good motives he has invented for his own benefit in the reflex movements of his mind. To re-establish the logical sequence of facts, of sensations suddenly transformed into ideas, is the work of equity which reasons, or of love which divines. In default of tracing back the chain of insensible, imperious transitions, we find between the criminal who has long been an honest man and his crime, the abyss at sight of which fools and unthinking folk, filled with the pride of implacable sinners, never fail to exclaim: "It is monstrous!" But if G.o.d, infinite Love, does exist, everything is forgiven, because everything is understood; there are, mayhap, simply the miserable wretches on one side, and divine pity on the other.

Yes, Renaud would have killed the sorceress, with savage joy, to avenge Livette. But was not that desire, which he deemed a praiseworthy one, simply a pretext for seeking her out again that same day, for seeing her once more?--That, at all events, is what the devil himself thought as he crouched on the floor of the crypt in the church of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the spot occupied the day before by the dark-browed gipsies, beneath the shrine of Saint Sara.

And so, mounted upon Blanchet, Renaud galloped furiously away upon his tracks of the night, intending to kill Zinzara.

Livette would not die!--That idea caused him great joy, so great that he was no sooner out-of-doors, away from the painful, wearisome spectacle of the poor unconscious child, than he yielded, alas! to the influence of the bright sunlight, and breathed at ease. He had already ceased to think of Livette's sufferings. His satisfaction had already ceased to be anything more than selfishness: not only would he not have to reproach himself for her death, but, more than that, now that she knew everything, was he not absolved, as it were? There was nothing more for him to fear. The worst that could happen had happened! And he actually felt as if a weight had been taken from his shoulders, as if he were once more sincere in his dealings with Livette, a better man, in short, thanks to what had happened. Although he did not reason this out, the thought went through his mind. It was what he felt. For everything serves the pa.s.sion of love; it turns to its own profit the very things that would naturally tend most to thwart it. Moreover, he need feel no qualms of conscience, as he was going to chastise the malignant creature, to kill her, in fact:--a vile race!

No, she could not be far away. Doubtless, if she had planned the catastrophe, she had concealed herself near at hand to see the result.

He rode back toward the bridge over the ca.n.a.l. No one had seen the gipsy there. He descended the Rhone to the spot where they had left the boat the night before. The boat was in the same place, fastened by the same knot.

He began to fear that he might not find her. But when, after searching two hours, he was certain of it, he was much surprised to find that he did not feel the righteous wrath of the officer of justice at the thought of a culprit eluding the vengeance of the law, but the sudden distress of a betrayed lover. He did not cry to himself: "I shall not have the pleasure of punishing her!" but: "I shall never see her again!" And that cry burst forth in his heart as a fierce revelation of unpardonable, pitiless love. What! he loved her! he loved her! and he learned it for the first time at that moment! he admitted it to himself for the first time!--yes, beyond cavil he loved her--_now_!

His heart failed him. He was bewildered. He felt a vague sense of well-being, due to the mere joy of loving, marred by a feeling of intense chagrin at the thought of the certain misery that lay before him. He was horrified at himself, and, at the same moment, decided upon his future course in a frenzy of excitement.

The physical power of love is superb and appalling. It stops at nothing. And the man who is watching beside the dying or the dead, even though it be some one who is dear to him, feels a thrill of joy rush to his heart, if the being he loves with all the force of his youth pa.s.ses by.

Renaud had just held Livette almost dying in his arms, and already he had no regret save for the other, for the woman he should have trampled under his feet!

Thereupon, all the events of the night returned to his mind, and finished the work of poisoning. He could not be reconciled to the thought that he should never again see what he had had for so short a time. No, it could not be at an end. If she were a criminal, why then he would love her in her crime, that was all! The black bull was loose.--But Livette? aha! Livette? a swan's feather, or a red flamingo's, under his horse's hoof.

What was the placid affection the young maid had inspired in his heart compared to the frenzy of sorrow and joy the other caused him to feel?

Sorrow and joy combined, that is what love is; and the love men prefer is not that which contains the greater joy as compared to the keener sorrow--it is that in which those emotions are most intense. It was that law of pa.s.sion to whose operation Renaud was now being subjected.

He realized that he had definitely chosen the other, the gipsy, despite the cry of his outraged sense of honor.

That cry of his honest heart, to which he no longer lent a willing ear, he still heard, do what he would, and he suffered half consciously, for many reasons which he did not distinguish one from another, but which resulted in producing a confused feeling in his own mind that he was a monster.

A monster! for now that he considered the matter more carefully, it became his settled conviction that the gitana had intended to kill Livette--and yet it was that same gitana that he loved!

Ah! the witch!--She had certainly seen Livette, her poor little head, like a dead woman's, lying on the water among the gra.s.s, her mouth open for the last cry for help, her teeth glistening with water in the sunlight! She could not have helped seeing her.--And she had pa.s.sed her by without a word!--It was because she was determined to be her ruin. She had evidently led her into the trap. How? What did it matter! but it was no longer possible to doubt that it was the fact.

But in that case--if she was really guilty--there could be no doubt, either, that having seen her desire accomplished, she had fled. She would appear no more! he would have no opportunity to kill her! he would never see her again! And the thing that moved him most deeply in connection with Livette's misfortune was the thought that it involved Zinzara's flight. He tried in vain to put away the abominable regret; it returned upon him like a wave. What! he should never see her again!

Oh! those caresses of the night before in the cabin of the swamp were clinging to his arms and legs like serpents. They twined about his body as creeping plants about the branches of the tamarisk, or as one eel about another: biting at his heart. And he shivered from head to foot.

"Ah! the witch!" he repeated. "Ah! the witch! What! never again!"

Never again!--Why, did he not think that night that he should be able to keep her on his island; that it would last a year at least, until the next year's fetes; that he would have the wild beast to himself in the desert, in his wild beast's lair--all to himself, with her lithe, graceful body, her ankle-rings and bracelets, and her beggar queen's crown?

But did she not love him? Had it all been mere trickery and craft on her part?

The horse's blood flowed freely under the drover's spurs; but the horseman's heart was bleeding within him a thousand times more cruelly.

All mere trickery and craft! He repeated it again and again to himself, and would not believe it.

That she was false to the core, he firmly believed, and, by dint of thinking about it, soon ceased to believe it. That would have been too horrible, really! His self-pity and the feeling that he must be proud of her forced back the thought, which, driven away for a moment, returned again at once with more force as a sure, proven, established fact. It returned like a flash of light which hurt his eyes. Yes, yes, she was false to the core! yes, from pure wantonness the woman had deceived him again and again since the day of the bath, when she exhibited her naked body to him with the deliberate purpose of leading him astray, of leaving him, some day, stranded in the desert, without his fiancee, without his love--alone.

And he struggled desperately to see her again--in his memory at least--in order to question her crafty features, but, try as he would, his mind was unable to restore the picture, drowned as it was beneath a wavering, irritating mist. He opened his eyes to their fullest extent, as if, by causing them to express a fixed determination to see her again, he could compel her to appear before him in flesh and blood. And he no longer saw the trees or the moor that lay before him, or the sky or the horizon, but neither did he see her whose image he sought to evoke. Then he suddenly closed his eyes, and for a brief second--in the darkness--he caught a glimpse of her. Was it really she? He had not time to recognize her. Once, however, the image became clearer, and he _saw_ her; but still it was only a shadowy face, still veiled with falsehood and impenetrable to him.