Where the Pavement Ends Part 21

Me, I was glad to slip aside unchallenged. I had no desire to linger between that dame and the purpose, whatever it might be, that dwelt in the fixity of her frown. As a spectator I blotted myself in the shadows, to attend the next act of this hidden and somber drama.

"Monsieur," she began, with an affectation wholly foreign to her rough voice, "I have the felicity to inform you that our beloved Zelie is home from Fonwhary again."

"I knew it," murmured Bibi-Ri.

"She resides at present under this poor roof."

He cast a nervous glance toward the stairway. "I knew that," he said.

"Ah? You know so much? After staying away so long?... We began to doubt it."

She came to plant herself before him, and the effect of her politeness was like a bludgeon.

"In that case be kind enough to sit, Monsieur Bibi-Ri. Dear little Monsieur Bibi-Ri: we have missed you! Be seated. You bring your pockets full of news, it seems."

But it seemed on the other hand, not so. I saw my companion brace himself. Evidently this was his stage-play: the ordeal he had now to meet.

"You must excuse me, Madame. I cannot remain and I have no news....

Except that I drop this business on the spot. Like a live coal, Madame!"

His whimsy might have disarmed any other.

"I have done my best with Zelie. Sad! Somehow she fails to perceive any longer my true charm.... You had sent me mysterious word, Madame, of some danger to which you said she was drifting. Well--seeing her in the public market to-day I sought to question her: at the least to give her brotherly advice. Madame--she repulsed me. Like that! Would neither talk nor listen. Said we were watched. Said it was not safe.

"Sapristi!... You can believe I was ready to quit then and there! But presently I found a better reason--if I needed one, Madame. For casting about, perplexed as I was, of a sudden I recognized--can you guess? Why the man! The individual you expected to send me against, I imagine. From whom I am supposed to guard her, perhaps! I saw him.

"After that: enough and many thanks!" he laughed, with a catch in his throat. "No place for Bibi! Finished. Rien ne va plus!... For who am I to chase any maid so unwilling? And at the same time who am I and what should I be doing--in my present station, Madame--to cross the little harmless fancies of such a personage?... It was M. de Nou!" he cried.

Still she made no move.

"And so--Bibi-Ri retires," he concluded, unsteadily, edging for his exit. "I withdraw! You can find someone better fitted. My time is up. My s.h.i.+p sails soon. I will not need to come again, I think. In parting--"

"What!" It was like the break of a banking storm. "What did you sing me there? 'Not come again?' Forty devils! Do you know if you hadn't come to-night in answer to my message I would have had you haled by the leg?... Why you two sous' worth! You think to employ your sneaking pickpocket tricks on me? To decamp with the prize I taught you to use: and pay nothing for it?"

There was incredulity in her wrath: the measure pf her rude mastery.

"Before G.o.d! Where did you get the courage to try that?" she marvelled.

"As if I had not trouble enough already with the other stubborn brat herself. And now you!... Have you altogether forgotten that I betrothed you myself to my niece--my own dead sister's child--when she came visiting from the church school at Fonwhary some weeks ago?"

"You said it was so," admitted Bibi-Ri, squirming.

"Good! Then you can wager it was so, my boy.... And at that time did you or did you not strike a solemn bargain with me?"

He made no denial.

"You wept--sacred pipe! You called every saint to witness your grat.i.tude. Anything I wanted! Zelie? Of course. You would always be the defense of that precious infant against the taint and the curse of Noumea!"

He shrugged.

"You swore by your own hope of salvation to save her--to pluck this pure flower from the dung-hill and marry her the very hour of your release.

Your bridal trip should carry her away to France.... Are these your words?"

"I offered to," he retorted. "But Zelie refused even then--you know she did! And so she has since."

"Fichtre! You and your offers! Tell me--from the day you discovered your heritage have you ever been back to persuade her?"

He avoided that stern eye.

"There it is, you see!" She gave an eloquent gesture. "As for her--leave her to me. She is only a stiff-necked little idiot who knows nothing.

You should have made up her mind for her. You! I picked you for that: and you were willing enough before. But straightway: instead: what did you do?... Why you began to swell up over notions of your coming greatness! That is what happened to you. Shrimp! Can't I read your soul?

"Suddenly you found yourself to be a somebody! Ambition grew in you like a mushroom. Not good enough--Zelie, of New Caledonia! She might handicap you in your fine career. You beheld a glorious future that had no place for her. But who opened that prospect? Cre tonnerre! Who sold it you?

Who deciphered the miniature? Who but I?

"And now at last, when the girl falls in deadly peril--as much through pique as through mere blindness, be sure of it!--when I call you to redeem your pledge and protect her: you quit! You 'withdraw'! You decide to use your new airs and graces and pull your feet out of the wet! Because you prefer the excuse of a coward to that of a traitor--Monsieur--is that it?"

Her fist hit the table like a sledge.

"Faineant!... Unless you brand yourself as shamefully as any Red Mark that ever lived.... Sit down!"

He had been sidling, bit by bit: he had taken himself almost to the door-sill: but under that tone of thunder--under that sudden amazing and cryptic jibe--he started, he faltered, he obeyed. She bulked above him and it was about this time I began truly to be sorry for my harlequin friend.

It was plain enough by this time, you understand, that I was witnessing one of those obscure human tangles which ravel themselves in the depths of a penal society. Possible nowhere else, I suppose. Yet its threads were the pa.s.sions and its center was the heart: and poor Bibi-Ri no poorer hero than you or I or any of us might prove. At this point he had fallen back to his defense: sullen, awed, but also intently curious of her. How she expected to force him to her design I could not guess.

But breathlessly I watched while she wove about him and about.

Back by the hearth she stood meditative for a s.p.a.ce in silence: a dim presence in that room where the kettle hissed and gave off its vapors--of brewing fates, perhaps.

"Give me a man if he be a bad one. A man who can stand to his game two days on end--how do they put it: those savants?--'developing his capabilities.' Ah! Not like these others. Waffles! Half-baked. Mixed with small impulses good and evil. Let him be saint or devil, so he develop that capability. Let me see him anyway stand to it!... As I have seen a few:

"I remember many years ago at the prison of Mazas," she went on, as if in casual retrospect, "they kept a certain famous captive. Myself, I was never a resident there--no thanks!--I prefer the comforts of honesty.

But my one sister, now dead, she was beginning her own silly career about then. She lacked the brains to steer it safe. So for a time she inhabited that same inst.i.tution. And one day as we went by the visitors'

room she pinched my arm to look.

"'There goes the wickedest man in France,' she said.

"Down the courtyard came a dozen of gendarmes parading a prisoner. That was a devil--if you like! That was a type--for example. Tall and fierce and unbeaten, with the eyes of a tiger. Once to see him was never to forget him again.... While he was still newly-caught they had always to guard him that way lest he slay some one with his manacled fists.

"He belonged to the very oldest stock of the South, it appeared: the old high n.o.blesse. And was he rich? And proud? You can believe it. But also he was a great criminal such as walks the earth every while or so to remind us after all how short a journey it is to h.e.l.l. A true devil. My sister knew him. She had been a servant in the household. She knew his whole story--which soon was hushed, I can tell you: a scandal too black to publish."

Her voice rose a rumbling note under the vault.

"Messieurs, never mind the rest of the tale at present. But inquire only this: Did they slay him? Did they give him his deserts?... Oh, naturally not--else where is the use of Noumea! We must suppose those savants were glad of the specimen. 'The wickedest man'--do you see? And as for him: he was strong. And cunning to seize his opportunities. And above all true to his own devilment. So he won reprieve, Messieurs. They preserved him. They s.h.i.+pped him out to this tropic forcing house of ours--to let him keep on developing!... And he has. He does. My faith! With the approval of the Administration. With all kinds of special privileges and gratifications!"

She moved from the shadow again.

"Why do you tell me this?" demanded Bibi-Ri, hoa.r.s.ely.

"For your instruction, Bibi-Ri," she returned, with her tone of intolerable significance. "To show you how one man stood to it.