Peter Ibbetson Part 25

There was a sound of people running up-stairs. He listened a moment and hissed out:

"They _both_ were, you idiot! How can I tell for certain whether you are my son or not? It all comes to the same. Of course I wrote the letter.

Come on, you cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d parricide!" ... and he advanced on me with his creese low down in his right hand, the point upward, and made a thrust, shrieking out, "Break open the door! quick!"

They did; but too late!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "b.a.s.t.a.r.d! PARRICIDE!"]

I saw crimson!

He missed me, and I brought down my stick on his left arm, which he held over his head, and then on his head, and he fell, crying:

"O my G.o.d! O Christ!"

I struck him again on his head as he was falling, and once again when he was on the ground. It seemed to crash right in.

That is why and how I killed Uncle Ibbetson.

Part Five

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"_Grouille, greve, greve, grouille, File, file, ma quenouille!

File sa corde au bourreau Qui siffle dans le preau..._"

So sang the old hag in _Notre Dame de Paris!_

So sang to me night and day, for many nights and days, the thin small voice that always went piping inside me, now to one tune, now to another, but always the same words--that terrible refrain that used to haunt me so when I was a school-boy at Bluefriars!

Oh, to be a school-boy again in a long gray coat and ridiculous pink stockings--innocent and free--with Esmeralda for my only love, and Athos and Porthos and D'Artagnan for my bosom friends, and no worse tribulation than to be told on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon that the third volume was in hand--_volume trois en lecture_'.

Sometimes, I remember, I could hardly sleep on a Sunday night, for pity of the poor wretch who was to be hanged close by on Monday morning, and it has come to that with _me_!

Oh, Mary, Mary, d.u.c.h.ess of Towers, sweet friend of my childhood, and love of my life, what must you think of me now?

How blessed are the faithful! How good it must be to trust in G.o.d and heaven, and the forgiveness of sin, and be as a little child in all but innocence! A whole career of crime wiped out in a moment by just one cheap little mental act of faith at the eleventh hour, in the extreme terror of well-merited dissolution; and all the evil one has worked through life (that goes on breeding evil for ages to come) taken off one's shoulders like a filthy garment, and just cast aside, anywhere, anyhow, for the infecting of others--who do not count.

What matter if it be a fool's paradise? Paradise is paradise, for whoever owns it!

They say a Sicilian drum-major, during the French occupation of Palermo, was sentenced to be shot. He was a well-known coward, and it was feared he would disgrace his country at the last moment in the presence of the French soldiers, who had a way of being shot with a good grace and a light heart: they had grown accustomed to it.

For the honor of Sicily his confessor told him, in the strictest confidence, that his sentence was a mock one, and that he would be fired at with blank cartridges.

It was a pious fraud. All but two of the twelve cartridges had bullets, and he fell, riddled through and through. No Frenchman ever died with a lighter heart, a better grace. He was superb, and the national honor was saved.

Thrice happy Sicilian drum-major, if the story be true! That trust in blank cartridges was his paradise.

Oh, it is uphill work to be a stoic when the moment comes and the tug!

But when the tug lasts for more than a moment--days and nights, days and nights! Oh, happy Sicilian drum-major!

Pray? Yes, I will pray night and morning, and all day long, to whatever there is left of inherited strength and courage in that luckless, misbegotten waif, Peter Ibbetson; that it may bear him up a little while yet; that he may not disgrace himself in the dock or on the gallows.

Repent? Yes, of many things. But of the thing for which I am here?

Never!

It is a ghastly thing to be judge and jury and executioner all in one, and for a private and personal wrong--to condemn and strike and kill.

Pity comes after--when it is too late, fortunately--the wretched weakness of pity! Pooh! no Calcraft will ever pity _me_, and I do not want him to.

He had his long, snaky knife against my stick; he, too, was a big strong man, well skilled in self-defence! Down he went, and I struck him again and again. "O my G.o.d! O Christ!" he shrieked....

"It will ring in my heart and my ears till I die--till I die!"

There was no time to lose--no time to think for the best. It is all for the best as it is. What might he not have said if he had lived!

Thank Heaven, pity is not remorse or shame; and what crime could well be worse than his? To rob one's dearly beloved dead of their fair shame!

He might have been mad, perhaps, and have grown in time to believe the lies he told himself. Such things have been. But such a madman should no more be suffered to live than a mad dog. The only way to kill the lie was to kill the liar--that is, if one _can_ ever kill a lie!

Poor worm! after all, he could not help it, I suppose! he was _built_ like that! and _I_ was built to kill him for it, and be hanged.'