Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) Part 59

She had smiled, she had replied to the first questions with graceful modesty, fixing her wickedly guileless eyes upon the officials seated behind the presidential table, and on those other men in blue uniform, charged with accusing her or reading the doc.u.ments of her prosecution.

But something cold and hostile existed in the atmosphere and paralyzed her smiles, leaving her words without echo and making ineffectual the splendors of her eyes. All foreheads were bowed under the weight of severe thought: all the men in that instant appeared thirty years older. They simply would not see such a one as she was, however much effort she might make. They had left their admiration and their desires on the other side of the door.

Freya perceived that she had ceased to be a woman and was no more than one accused. Another of her s.e.x, an irresistible rival, was now engrossing everything, binding these men with a profound and austere love. Instinct made her regard fixedly the white matron of grave countenance whose vigorous bust appeared over the head of the president. She was Patriotism, Justice, the Republic, contemplating with her vague and hollow eyes this female of flesh and blood who was beginning to tremble upon realizing her situation.

"I do not want to die!" cried Freya, suddenly abandoning her seductions and becoming a poor, wretched creature crazed by fear. "I am innocent."

She lied with the absurd and barefaced illogicalness of one finding herself in danger of death. It was necessary to re-read her first declarations, which she was now denying, of presenting afresh the material proofs whose existence she did not wish to admit, of making her entire past file by supported by that irrefutable data of anonymous origin.

"It is _they_ who have done it all!... They have mis-represented me!...

Since they have brought about my ruin, I am going to tell what I know."

In his account the lawyer pa.s.sed lightly over what had occurred in the Council of War. Professional secrecy and patriotic interest prevented greater explicitness. The session had lasted from morning till night, Freya revealing to her judges all that she knew.... Then her defender had spoken for five hours, trying to establish a species of interchange in the application of the penalty. The guilt of this woman was undeniable and the wickedness that she had carried through was very great, but they should spare her life in exchange for her important confessions.... Besides, the inconsequence of her character should be taken into consideration ... also, that vengeance of which the enemy had made her the victim....

With Freya he had waited, until well on into the night, the decision of the tribunal. The defendant appeared animated by hope. She had become a woman again: she was talking placidly with him and smiling at the gendarmes and eulogizing the army.... "Frenchmen, gentlemen, were incapable of killing a woman...."

The _maitre_ was not surprised at the sad and furrowed brows of the officers as they came out from their deliberations. They appeared discontented with their recent vote, and yet at the same time showed the serenity of a tranquil countenance. They were soldiers who had just fulfilled their full duty, suppressing every purely masculine instinct.

The one deputed to read the sentence swelled his voice with a fict.i.tious energy.... "_Death!_..." After a long enumeration of crimes Freya was condemned to be shot:--she had given information to the enemy that represented the loss of thousands of men and boats, torpedoed because of her reports, on which had perished defenseless families.

The spy nodded her head upon listening to her own acts, for the first time appreciating their enormity and recognizing the justice of their tremendous punishment. But at the same time she was relying upon a good-natured reprieve in exchange for all which she had revealed, upon a gallant clemency ... because she was she.

As the fatal word sounded, she uttered a cry, became ashy pale, and leaned upon the lawyer for support.

"I do not want to die!... I ought not to die!... I am innocent."

She continued shrieking her innocence, without giving any other proof of it than the desperate instinct of self-preservation. With the credulity of one who wishes to save herself, she accepted all the problematical consolations of her defender. There remained the last recourse of appealing to the mercy of the President of the Republic: perhaps he might pardon her.... And she signed this appeal with sudden hope.

The lawyer managed to delay the fulfillment of the sentence for two months, visiting many of his colleagues who were political personages.

The desire of saving the life of his client was tormenting him as an obsession. He had devoted all his activity and his personal influence to this affair.

"In love!... In love, as you were!" said, with scornful accent, the voice of Ferragut's prudent counselor.

The periodicals were protesting against this delay in the execution of the sentence. The name of Freya Talberg was beginning to be heard in conversation as an argument against the weakness of the government. The women were the most implacable.

One day, in the Palace of Justice, the _maitre_ Became convinced of this general animosity that was pus.h.i.+ng the defendant toward the day of execution. The woman who had charge of the gowns, a verbose old wife, on a familiar footing with the ill.u.s.trious lawyers, had rudely made known their opinions.

"I wonder when they're going to execute that spy!... If she were a poor woman with children and needed to earn their bread, they would have shot her long ago.... But she is an elegant _cocotte_ and with jewels.

Perhaps she has bewitched some of the cabinet ministers. We are going to see her on the street now almost any day.... And my son who died at Verdun!..."

The prisoner, as though divining this public indignation, began to consider her death very near losing, little by little, that love of existence which had made her burst forth into lies and delirious protests. In vain the _maitre_ held out hopes of pardon.

"It is useless: I must die.... I ought to be shot.... I have done so much mischief.... It horrifies even me to remember all the crimes named in that sentence.... And there are still others that they don't know!... Solitude has made me see myself just as I am. What shame!... I ought to perish; I have ruined everything.... What is there left for me to do in the world?..."

"And it was then, my dear sir," continued the attorney, in his letter, "that she spoke to me of you, of the way in which you had known each other, of the harm which she had done you unconsciously."

Convinced of the uselessness of his efforts to save her life, the _maitre_ had solicited one last favor of the tribunal. Freya was very desirous that he should accompany her at the moment of her execution, as this would maintain her serenity. Those in the government had promised their colleague in the forum, to send opportune notice that he might be present at the fulfillment of the sentence.

It was at three o'clock in the morning and while he was in the deepest sleep that some messengers, sent by the prefecture of police, awakened him. The execution was to take place at daybreak: this was a decision reached at the last moment in order that the reporters might learn too late of the event.

An automobile took him with the messengers to the prison of St. Lazare, across silent and shadowy Paris. Only a few hooded street lamps were cutting with their sickly light the darkness of the streets. In the prison they were joined by other functionaries and many chiefs and officers who represented military justice. The condemned woman was still sleeping in her cell, ignorant of what was about to occur.

Those charged with awakening her, gloomy and timid, were marching in line through the corridors of the jail, b.u.mping into one another in their nervous precipitation.

The door was opened. Under the regulation light Freya was on her bed, with closed eyes. Upon opening them and finding herself surrounded by men, her face was convulsed with terror.

"Courage, Freya!" said the prison warden. "The appeal for pardon has been denied."

"Courage, my daughter," added the priest of the establishment, starting the beginning of a discourse.

Her terror, due to the rude surprise of awakening with the brain still paralyzed, lasted but a few seconds. Upon collecting her thoughts, serenity returned to her face.

"I must die?" she asked. "The hour has already come?... Very well, then: let them shoot me. Here I am."

Some of the men turned their heads, and so averted their glance.... She had to get out of the bed in the presence of the two watchmen. This precaution was so that she might not attempt to take her life. She even asked the lawyer to remain in the cell as though in this way she wished to lessen the annoyance of dressing herself before strangers.

Upon reaching this pa.s.sage in his letter, Ferragut realized the pity and admiration of the _maitre_ who had seen her preparing the last toilet of her life.

"Adorable creature! So beautiful!... She was born for love and luxury, yet was going to die, torn by bullets like a rude soldier...."

The precautions adopted by her coquetry appeared to him admirable. She wanted to die as she had lived, placing on her person the best that she possessed. Therefore, suspecting the nearness of her execution, she had a few days before reclaimed the jewels and the gown that she was wearing when arrest prevented her returning to Brest.

Her defender described her "with a dress of pearl gray silk, bronze stockings and low shoes, a great-coat of furs, and a large hat with plumes. Besides, the necklace of pearls was on her bosom, emeralds in her ears and all her diamonds on her fingers."

A sad smile curled her lips upon trying to look at herself in the window panes, still black with the darkness of night, which served her as a mirror.

"I die in my uniform like a soldier," she said to her lawyer.

Then in the ante-chamber of the prison, under the crude artificial light, this plumed woman, covered with jewels, her clothing exhaling a subtle perfume, memory of happier days, turned without any embarra.s.sment toward the men clad in black and in blue uniforms.

Two religious sisters who accompanied her appeared more moved than she.

They were trying to exhort her and at the same time were struggling to keep back the tears.... The priest was no less touched. He had attended other criminals, but they were men.... To a.s.sist to a decent death a beautiful perfumed woman scintillating with precious stones, as though she were going to ride in an automobile to a fas.h.i.+onable tea!...

The week before she had been in doubt as to whether to receive a Calvinist pastor or a Catholic priest. In her cosmopolitan life of uncertain nationality she had never taken the time to decide about any religion for herself. Finally she had selected the latter on account of its being more simple intellectually, more liberal and approachable....

Several times when the priest was trying to console her, she interrupted him as though she were the one charged with inspiring courage.

"To die is not so terrible as it appears when seen afar off!... I feel ashamed when I think of the fears that I have pa.s.sed through, of the tears that I have shed.... It turns out to be much more simple than I had believed.... We all have to die!"

They read to her the sentence refusing the appeal for pardon. Then they offered her a pen that she might sign it.

A colonel told her that there were still a few moments at her disposition in which to write to her family, her friends, or to make her last will....

"To whom shall I write?" said Freya. "I haven't a single friend in the world...."

"Then it was," continued the lawyer, "that she took the pen as if a recollection had occurred to her, and traced some few lines.... Then she tore up the paper and came toward me. She was thinking of you, Captain: her last letter was for you and she left it unfinished, fearing that it might never reach your hands. Besides, she wasn't equal to writing; her pulse was nervous: she preferred to talk.... She asked me to send you a long, very long letter, telling about her last moments, and I had to swear to her that I would carry out her request."

From that time on the _maitre_ had seen things badly. Emotion was perturbing his sensibilities, but there yet lived in his mind Freya's last words on coming out of the jail.