The Maids of Paradise Part 75

"Parbleu!"

"And you thought if you admitted it and denounced the man who bribed you that you would help divide a few millions with us, you rogue?"

suggested Buckhurst, admiringly.

The wretch laughed outright.

"And you believe that you deserve well of the commune?" smiled Buckhurst.

The soldier grinned and opened his mouth to answer, and Buckhurst shot him through the face; and, as he fell, shot him again, standing wreathed in the smoke of his own weapon.

The deafening racket of the revolver, the smoke, the spectacle of the dusty, inert thing on the floor over which Buckhurst stood and shot, seemed to stun us all.

"I think," said Buckhurst, in a pleasantly persuasive voice, "that there will be no more bribery in this battalion." He deliberately opened the smoking weapon; the spent sh.e.l.ls dropped one by one from the cylinder, clinking on the stone floor.

"No--no more bribery," he mused, touching the dead man with the carefully polished toe of his shoe. "Because," he added, reloading his revolver, "I do not like it."

He turned quietly to Mornac and ordered the corpse to be buried, and Mornac, plainly unnerved at the murderous act of his superior, repeated the order, cursing his men to cover the quaver in his voice.

"As for you," observed Buckhurst, glancing up at us where we stood speechless together, "you will be judged and sentenced when this drum-head court decides. Go into that room!"

The Countess did not move.

Speed touched her arm; she looked up quietly, smiled, and stepped across the threshold. Speed followed; Jacqueline slipped in beside him, and then I turned on Buckhurst, who had just ordered his soldiers to surround the house outside.

"As a matter of fact," I said, when the last armed ruffian had departed, "I am the only person in this house who has interfered with your affairs. The others have done nothing to harm you."

"The court will decide that," he replied, balancing his revolver in his palm.

I eyed him for an instant. "Do you mean harm to this unfortunate woman?" I asked.

"My friend," he replied, in a low voice, "you have very stupidly upset plans that have cost me months to perfect. You have, by stopping that train, robbed me of something less than twenty millions of francs. I have my labor for my pains; I have this mob of fools on my hands; I may lose my life through this whim of yours; and if I don't, I have it all to begin again. And you ask me what I am going to do!"

His eyes glittered.

"If I strike her I strike you. Ask yourself whether or not I will strike."

All the blood seemed to leave my heart; I straightened up with an effort.

"There are some murders," I said, "that even you must recoil at."

"I don't think you appreciate me," he replied, with a deathly smile.

He motioned toward the door with levelled weapon. I turned and entered the tea-room, and he locked the door from the outside.

The Countess, seated on the sofa, looked up as I appeared. She was terribly pale, but she smiled as my heavy eyes met hers.

"Is it to be farce or tragedy, monsieur?" she asked, without a tremor in her clear voice.

I could not have uttered a word to save my life. Speed, pacing the room, turned to read my face; and I think he read it, for he stopped short in his tracks. Jacqueline, watching him with blue, inscrutable eyes, turned sharply toward the window and peered out into the darkness.

Beyond the wall of the garden the fog, made luminous by the torches of the insurgents, surrounded the house with a circle of bright, ruddy vapor.

Speed came slowly across the room with me.

"Do they mean to shoot us?" he asked, bluntly.

"Messieurs," said the Countess, with a faint smile, "your whispers are no compliment to my race. Pray honor me by plain speaking. Are we to die?"

We stood absolutely speechless before her.

"Ah, Monsieur Scarlett," she said, gravely, "do you also fail me ...

at the end?... You, too--even you?... Must I tell you that we of Trecourt fear nothing in this world?"

She made a little gesture, exquisitely imperious.

I stepped toward her; she waited for me to seat myself beside her.

"Are we to die?" she asked.

"Yes, madame."

"Thank you," she said, softly.

I looked up. My head was swimming so that I could scarcely see her, scarcely perceive the deep, steady tenderness in her clear eyes.

"Do you not understand?" she asked. "You are my friend. I wished to know my fate from you."

"Madame," I said, hoa.r.s.ely, "how can you call me friend when you know to what I have brought you?"

"You have brought me to know myself," she said, simply. "Why should I not be grateful? Why do you look at me so sadly, Monsieur Scarlett?

Truly, you must know that my life has been long enough to prove its uselessness."

"It is not true!" I cried, stung by remorse for all I had said.

"Such women as you are the hope of France! Such women as you are the hope of the world! Ah, that you should consider the bitterness and folly of such a man as I am--that you should consider and listen to the sorry wisdom of a homeless mountebank--a wandering fool--a preacher of empty plat.i.tudes, who has brought you to this with his cursed meddling!"

"You taught me truth," she said, calmly; "you make the last days of my life the only ones worth living. I said to you but an hour since--when I was angry--that we were unfitted to comprehend each other. It is not true. We are fitted for that. I had rather die with you than live without the friendship which I believe--which I know--is mine. Monsieur Scarlett, it is not love. If it were, I could not say this to you--even in death's presence. It is something better; something untroubled, confident, serene.... You see it is not love....

And perhaps it has no name.... For I have never before known such happiness, such peace, as I know now, here with you, talking of our death. If we could live,... you would go away.... I should be alone.... And I have been alone all my life,... and I am tired. You see I have nothing to regret in a death that brings me to you again.... Do you regret life?"

"Not now," I said.

"You are kind to say so. I do believe--yes, I know that you truly care for me.... Do you?"

"Yes."

"Then it will not be hard.... Perhaps not even very painful."

The key turning in the door startled us. Buckhurst entered, and through the hallway I saw his dishevelled soldiers running, flinging open doors, tearing, trampling, pillaging, wrecking everything in their path.