The Downfall Part 56

Then, when at last the deadened sound was heard of footsteps drawing near, Silvine withdrew and returned to the kitchen, where she seated herself and waited, motionless as a corpse, her great eyes fixed on the flickering flame of the solitary candle.

And the suspense was long protracted, Goliah prowling warily about the house before he would risk entering. He thought he could depend on the young woman, and had therefore come unarmed save for a single revolver in his belt, but he was haunted by a dim presentiment of evil; he pushed open the window to its entire extent and thrust his head into the apartment, calling below his breath:

"Silvine! Silvine!"

Since he found the window open to him it must be that she had thought better of the matter and changed her mind. It gave him great pleasure to have it so, although he would rather she had been there to welcome him and rea.s.sure his fears. Doubtless Father Fouchard had summoned her away; some odds and ends of work to finish up. He raised his voice a little:

"Silvine! Silvine!"

No answer, not a sound. And he threw his leg over the window-sill and entered the room, intending to get into bed and snuggle away among the blankets while waiting, it was so bitter cold.

All at once there was a furious rush, with the noise of trampling, shuffling feet, and smothered oaths and the sound of labored breathing.

Sambuc and his two companions had thrown themselves on Goliah, and notwithstanding their superiority in numbers they found it no easy task to overpower the giant, to whom his peril lent tenfold strength. The panting of the combatants, the straining of sinews and cracking of joints, resounded for a moment in the obscurity. The revolver, fortunately, had fallen to the floor in the struggle. Caba.s.se's choking, inarticulate voice was heard exclaiming: "The cords, the cords!" and Ducat handed to Sambuc the coil of thin rope with which they had had the foresight to provide themselves. Scant ceremony was displayed in binding their hapless victim; the operation was conducted to the accompaniment of kicks and cuffs. The legs were secured first, then the arms were firmly pinioned to the sides, and finally they wound the cord at random many times around the Prussian's body, wherever his contortions would allow them to place it, with such an affluence of loops and knots that he had the appearance of being enmeshed in a gigantic net. To his unintermitting outcries Ducat's voice responded: "Shut your jaw!" and Caba.s.se silenced him more effectually by gagging him with an old blue handkerchief. Then, first waiting a moment to get their breath, they carried him, an inert ma.s.s, to the kitchen and deposited him upon the big table, beside the candle.

"Ah, the Prussian sc.u.m!" exclaimed Sambuc, wiping the sweat from his forehead, "he gave us trouble enough! Say, Silvine, light another candle, will you, so we can get a good view of the d----d pig and see what he looks like."

Silvine arose, her wide-dilated eyes shining bright from out her colorless face. She spoke no word, but lit another candle and came and placed it by Goliah's head on the side opposite the other; he produced the effect, thus brilliantly illuminated, of a corpse between two mortuary tapers. And in that brief moment their glances met; his was the wild, agonized look of the supplicant whom his fears have overmastered, but she affected not to understand, and withdrew to the sideboard, where she remained standing with her icy, unyielding air.

"The beast has nearly chewed my finger off," growled Caba.s.se, from whose hand blood was trickling. "I'm going to spoil his ugly mug for him."

He had taken the revolver from the floor and was holding it poised by the barrel in readiness to strike, when Sambuc disarmed him.

"No, no! none of that. We are not murderers, we francs-tireurs; we are judges. Do you hear, you dirty Prussian? we're going to try you; and you need have no fear, your rights shall be respected. We can't let you speak in your own defense, for if we should unmuzzle you you would split our ears with your bellowing, but I'll see that you have a lawyer presently, and a famous good one, too!"

He went and got three chairs and placed them in a row, forming what it pleased him to call the court, he sitting in the middle with one of his followers on either hand. When all three were seated he arose and commenced to speak, at first ironically aping the gravity of the magistrate, but soon launching into a tirade of blood-thirsty invective.

"I have the honor to be at the same time President of the Court and Public Prosecutor. That, I am aware, is not strictly in order, but there are not enough of us to fill all the roles. I accuse you, therefore, of entering France to play the spy on us, recompensing us for our hospitality with the most abominable treason. It is to you to whom we are princ.i.p.ally indebted for our recent disasters, for after the battle of Nouart you guided the Bavarians across the wood of Dieulet by night to Beaumont. No one but a man who had lived a long time in the country and was acquainted with every path and cross-road could have done it, and on this point the conviction of the court is unalterable; you were seen conducting the enemy's artillery over roads that had become lakes of liquid mud, where eight horses had to be hitched to a single gun to drag it out of the slough. A person looking at those roads would hesitate to believe that an army corps could ever have pa.s.sed over them.

Had it not been for you and your criminal action in settling among us and betraying us the surprise of Beaumont would have never been, we should not have been compelled to retreat on Sedan, and perhaps in the end we might have come off victorious. I will say nothing of the disgusting career you have been pursuing since then, coming here in disguise, terrorizing and denouncing the poor country people, so that they tremble at the mention of your name. You have descended to a depth of depravity beyond which it is impossible to go, and I demand from the court sentence of death."

Silence prevailed in the room. He had resumed his seat, and finally, rising again, said:

"I a.s.sign Ducat to you as counsel for the defense. He has been sheriff's officer, and might have made his mark had it not been for his little weakness. You see that I deny you nothing; we are disposed to treat you well."

Goliah, who could not stir a finger, bent his eyes on his improvised defender. It was in his eyes alone that evidence of life remained, eyes that burned intensely with ardent supplication under the ashy brow, where the sweat of anguish stood in big drops, notwithstanding the cold.

Ducat arose and commenced his plea. "Gentlemen, my client, to tell the truth, is the most noisome blackguard that I ever came across in my life, and I should not have been willing to appear in his defense had I not a mitigating circ.u.mstance to plead, to wit: they are all that way in the country he came from. Look at him closely; you will read his astonishment in his eyes; he does not understand the gravity of his offense. Here in France we may employ spies, but no one would touch one of them unless with a pair of pincers, while in that country espionage is considered a highly honorable career and an extremely meritorious manner of serving the state. I will even go so far as to say, gentlemen, that possibly they are not wrong; our n.o.ble sentiments do us honor, but they have also the disadvantage of bringing us defeat. If I may venture to speak in the language of Cicero and Virgil, _quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat_. You will understand the allusion, gentlemen."

And he took his seat again, while Sambuc resumed:

"And you, Caba.s.se, have you nothing to say either for or against the defendant?"

"All I have to say," shouted the Provencal, "is that we are wasting a deal of breath in settling that scoundrel's hash. I've had my little troubles in my lifetime, and plenty of 'em, but I don't like to see people trifle with the affairs of the law; it's unlucky. Let him die, I say!"

Sambuc rose to his feet with an air of profound gravity.

"This you both declare to be your verdict, then--death?"

"Yes, yes! death!"

The chairs were pushed back, he advanced to the table where Goliah lay, saying:

"You have been tried and sentenced; you are to die."

The flame of the two candles rose about their unsnuffed wicks and flickered in the draught, casting a fitful, ghastly light on Goliah's distorted features. The fierce efforts he made to scream for mercy, to vociferate the words that were strangling him, were such that the handkerchief knotted across his mouth was drenched with spume, and it was a sight most horrible to see, that strong man reduced to silence, voiceless already as a corpse, about to die with that torrent of excuse and entreaty pent in his bosom.

Caba.s.se c.o.c.ked the revolver. "Shall I let him have it?" he asked.

"No, no!" Sambuc shouted in reply; "he would be only too glad." And turning to Goliah: "You are not a soldier; you are not worthy of the honor of quitting the world with a bullet in your head. No, you shall die the death of a spy and the dirty pig that you are."

He looked over his shoulder and politely said:

"Silvine, if it's not troubling you too much, I would like to have a tub."

During the whole of the trial scene Silvine had not moved a muscle. She had stood in an att.i.tude of waiting, with drawn, rigid features, as if mind and body had parted company, conscious of nothing but the one fixed idea that had possessed her for the last two days. And when she was asked for a tub she received the request as a matter of course and proceeded at once to comply with it, disappearing into the adjoining shed, whence she returned with the big tub in which she washed Charlot's linen.

"Hold on a minute! place it under the table, close to the edge."

She placed the vessel as directed, and as she rose to her feet her eyes again encountered Goliah's. In the look of the poor wretch was a supreme prayer for mercy, the revolt of the man who cannot bear the thought of being stricken down in the pride of his strength. But in that moment there was nothing of the woman left in her; nothing but the fierce desire for that death for which she had been waiting as a deliverance.

She retreated again to the buffet, where she remained standing in silent expectation.

Sambuc opened the drawer of the table and took from it a large kitchen knife, the one that the household employed to slice their bacon.

"So, then, as you are a pig, I am going to stick you like a pig."

He proceeded in a very leisurely manner, discussing with Caba.s.se, and Ducat the proper method of conducting the operation. They even came near quarreling, because Caba.s.se alleged that in Provence, the country he came from, they hung pigs up by the heels to stick them, at which Ducat expressed great indignation, declaring that the method was a barbarous and inconvenient one.

"Bring him well forward to the edge of the table, his head over the tub, so as to avoid soiling the floor."

They drew him forward, and Sambuc went about his task in a tranquil, decent manner. With a single stroke of the keen knife he slit the throat crosswise from ear to ear, and immediately the blood from the severed carotid artery commenced to drip, drip into the tub with the gentle plashing of a fountain. He had taken care not to make the incision too deep; only a few drops spurted from the wound, impelled by the action of the heart. Death was the slower in coming for that, but no convulsion was to be seen, for the cords were strong and the body was utterly incapable of motion. There was no death-rattle, not a quiver of the frame. On the face alone was evidence of the supreme agony, on that terror-distorted mask whence the blood retreated drop by drop, leaving the skin colorless, with a whiteness like that of linen. The expression faded from the eyes; they became dim, the light died from out them.

"Say, Silvine, we shall want a sponge, too."

She made no reply, standing riveted to the floor in an att.i.tude of unconsciousness, her arms folded tightly across her bosom, her throat constricted as by the clutch of a mailed hand, gazing on the horrible spectacle. Then all at once she perceived that Charlot was there, grasping her skirts with his little hands; he must have awaked and managed to open the intervening doors, and no one had seen him come stealing in, childlike, curious to know what was going on. How long had he been there, half-concealed behind his mother? From beneath his shock of yellow hair his big blue eyes were fixed on the trickling blood, the thin red stream that little by little was filling the tub. Perhaps he had not understood at first and had found something diverting in the sight, but suddenly he seemed to become instinctively aware of all the abomination of the thing; he gave utterance to a sharp, startled cry:

"Oh, mammy! oh, mammy! I'm 'fraid, take me away!"

It gave Silvine a shock, so violent that it convulsed her in every fiber of her being. It was the last straw; something seemed to give way in her, the excitement that had sustained her for the last two days while under the domination of her one fixed idea gave way to horror. It was the resurrection of the dormant woman in her; she burst into tears, and with a frenzied movement caught Charlot up and pressed him wildly to her heart. And she fled with him, running with distracted terror, unable to see or hear more, conscious of but one overmastering need, to find some secret spot, it mattered not where, in which she might cast herself upon the ground and seek oblivion.

It was at this crisis that Jean rose from his bed and, softly opening his door, looked out into the pa.s.sage. Although he generally gave but small attention to the various noises that reached him from the farmhouse, the unusual activity that prevailed this evening, the trampling of feet, the shouts and cries, in the end excited his curiosity. And it was to the retirement of his sequestered chamber that Silvine, sobbing and disheveled, came for shelter, her form convulsed by such a storm of anguish that at first he could not grasp the meaning of the rambling, inarticulate words that fell from her blanched lips. She kept constantly repeating the same terrified gesture, as if to thrust from before her eyes some hideous, haunting vision. At last he understood, the entire abominable scene was pictured clearly to his mind: the traitorous ambush, the slaughter, the mother, her little one clinging to her skirts, watching unmoved the murdered father, whose life-blood was slowly ebbing; and it froze his marrow--the peasant and the soldier was sick at heart with anguished horror. Ah, hateful, cruel war! that changed all those poor folks to ravening wolves, bespattering the child with the father's blood! An accursed sowing, to end in a harvest of blood and tears!

Resting on the chair where she had fallen, covering with frantic kisses little Charlot, who clung, sobbing, to her bosom, Silvine repeated again and again the one unvarying phrase, the cry of her bleeding heart.

"Ah, my poor child, they will no more say you are a Prussian! Ah, my poor child, they will no more say you are a Prussian!"

Meantime Father Fouchard had returned and was in the kitchen. He had come hammering at the door with the authority of the master, and there was nothing left to do but open to him. The surprise he experienced was not exactly an agreeable one on beholding the dead man outstretched on his table and the blood-filled tub beneath. It followed naturally, his disposition not being of the mildest, that he was very angry.

"You pack of rascally slovens! say, couldn't you have gone outdoors to do your dirty work? Do you take my place for a shambles, eh? coming here and ruining the furniture with such goings-on?" Then, as Sambuc endeavored to mollify him and explain matters, the old fellow went on with a violence that was enhanced by his fears: "And what do you suppose I am to do with the carca.s.s, pray? Do you consider it a gentlemanly thing to do, to come to a man's house like this and foist a stiff off on him without so much as saying by your leave? Suppose a patrol should come along, what a nice fix I should be in! but precious little you fellows care whether I get my neck stretched or not. Now listen: do you take that body at once and carry it away from here; if you don't, by G-d, you and I will have a settlement! You hear me; take it by the head, take it by the heels, take it any way you please, but get it out of here and don't let there be a hair of it remaining in this room at the end of three minutes from now!"

In the end Sambuc prevailed on Father Fouchard to let him have a sack, although it wrung the old miser's heartstrings to part with it. He selected one that was full of holes, remarking that anything was good enough for a Prussian. Caba.s.se and Ducat had all the trouble in the world to get Goliah into it; it was too short and too narrow for the long, broad body, and the feet protruded at its mouth. Then they carried their burden outside and placed it on the wheelbarrow that had served to convey to them their bread.