El Dorado · Part III · Chapter 35 (2/2)

An ashen hue, which seemed like the shadow of the hand of death, passed over the prisoner’s face. Chauvelin felt compelled to avert his gaze. A feeling that was almost akin to remorse had stirred a hidden chord in his heart. The feeling did not last⁠—the heart had been too long atrophied by the constantly recurring spectacles of cruelties, massacres, and wholesale hecatombs perpetrated in the past eighteen months in the name of liberty and fraternity to be capable of a sustained effort in the direction of gentleness or of pity. Any noble instinct in these revolutionaries had long ago been drowned in a whirlpool of exploits that would forever sully the records of humanity; and this keeping of a fellow-creature on the rack in order to wring from him a Judas-like betrayal was but a complement to a record of infamy that had ceased by its very magnitude to weigh upon their souls.

Chauvelin was in no way different from his colleagues; the crimes in which he had had no hand he had condoned by continuing to serve the Government that had committed them, and his ferocity in the present case was increased a thousandfold by his personal hatred for the man who had so often fooled and baffled him.

When he looked round a second or two later that ephemeral fit of remorse did its final vanishing; he had once more encountered the pleasant smile, the laughing if ashen-pale face of his unconquered foe.

“Only a passing giddiness, my dear sir,” said Sir Percy lightly. “As you were saying⁠—”

At the airily-spoken words, at the smile that accompanied them, Chauvelin had jumped to his feet. There was something almost supernatural, weird, and impish about the present situation, about this dying man who, like an impudent schoolboy, seemed to be mocking Death with his tongue in his cheek, about his laugh that appeared to find its echo in a widely yawning grave.

“In the name of God, Sir Percy,” he said roughly, as he brought his clenched fist crashing down upon the table, “this situation is intolerable. Bring it to an end tonight!”

“Why, sir?” retorted Blakeney, “methought you and your kind did not believe in God.”

“No. But you English do.”

“We do. But we do not care to hear His name on your lips.”

“Then in the name of the wife whom you love⁠—”

But even before the words had died upon his lips, Sir Percy, too, had risen to his feet.

“Have done, man⁠—have done,” he broke in hoarsely, and despite weakness, despite exhaustion and weariness, there was such a dangerous look in his hollow eyes as he leaned across the table that Chauvelin drew back a step or two, and⁠—vaguely fearful⁠—looked furtively towards the opening into the guardroom. “Have done,” he reiterated for the third time; “do not name her, or by the living God whom you dared to invoke I’ll find strength yet to smite you in the face.”

But Chauvelin, after that first moment of almost superstitious fear, had quickly recovered his sangfroid.

“Little Capet, Sir Percy,” he said, meeting the other’s threatening glance with an imperturbable smile, “tell me where to find him, and you may yet live to savour the caresses of the most beautiful woman in England.”

He had meant it as a taunt, the final turn of the thumbscrew applied to a dying man, and he had in that watchful, keen mind of his well weighed the full consequences of the taunt.

The next moment he had paid to the full the anticipated price. Sir Percy had picked up the pewter mug from the table⁠—it was half-filled with brackish water⁠—and with a hand that trembled but slightly he hurled it straight at his opponent’s face.

The heavy mug did not hit citizen Chauvelin; it went crashing against the stone wall opposite. But the water was trickling from the top of his head all down his eyes and cheeks. He shrugged his shoulders with a look of benign indulgence directed at his enemy, who had fallen back into his chair exhausted with the effort.

Then he took out his handkerchief and calmly wiped the water from his face.

“Not quite so straight a shot as you used to be, Sir Percy,” he said mockingly.

“No, sir⁠—apparently⁠—not.”

The words came out in gasps. He was like a man only partly conscious. The lips were parted, the eyes closed, the head leaning against the high back of the chair. For the space of one second Chauvelin feared that his zeal had outrun his prudence, that he had dealt a deathblow to a man in the last stage of exhaustion, where he had only wished to fan the flickering flame of life. Hastily⁠—for the seconds seemed precious⁠—he ran to the opening that led into the guardroom.

“Brandy⁠—quick!” he cried.

Héron looked up, roused from the semi-somnolence in which he had lain for the past half-hour. He disentangled his long limbs from out the guardroom chair.

“Eh?” he queried. “What is it?”

“Brandy,” reiterated Chauvelin impatiently; “the prisoner has fainted.”

“Bah!” retorted the other with a callous shrug of the shoulders, “you are not going to revive him with brandy, I imagine.”

“No. But you will, citizen Héron,” rejoined the other dryly, “for if you do not he’ll be dead in an hour!”

“Devils in hell!” exclaimed Héron, “you have not killed him? You⁠—you d⁠⸺⁠d fool!”

He was wide awake enough now; wide awake and shaking with fury. Almost foaming at the mouth and uttering volleys of the choicest oaths, he elbowed his way roughly through the groups of soldiers who were crowding round the centre table of the guardroom, smoking and throwing dice or playing cards. They made way for him as hurriedly as they could, for it was not safe to thwart the citizen agent when he was in a rage.

Héron walked across to the opening and lifted the iron bar. With scant ceremony he pushed his colleague aside and strode into the cell, whilst Chauvelin, seemingly not resenting the other’s ruffianly manners and violent language, followed close upon his heel.

In the centre of the room both men paused, and Héron turned with a surly growl to his friend.

“You vowed he would be dead in an hour,” he said reproachfully.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

“It does not look like it now certainly,” he said dryly.

Blakeney was sitting⁠—as was his wont⁠—close to the table, with one arm leaning on it, the other, tightly clenched, resting upon his knee. A ghost of a smile hovered round his lips.

“Not in an hour, citizen Héron,” he said, and his voice flow was scarce above a whisper, “nor yet in two.”

“You are a fool, man,” said Héron roughly. “You have had seventeen days of this. Are you not sick of it?”

“Heartily, my dear friend,” replied Blakeney a little more firmly.

“Seventeen days,” reiterated the other, nodding his shaggy head; “you came here on the 2nd of Pluviôse, today is the 19th.”

“The 19th Pluviôse?” interposed Sir Percy, and a strange gleam suddenly flashed in his eyes. “Demn it, sir, and in Christian parlance what may that day be?”

“The 7th of February at your service, Sir Percy,” replied Chauvelin quietly.

“I thank you, sir. In this d⁠⸺⁠d hole I had lost count of time.”

Chauvelin, unlike his rough and blundering colleague, had been watching the prisoner very closely for the last moment or two, conscious of a subtle, undefinable change that had come over the man during those few seconds while he, Chauvelin, had thought him dying. The pose was certainly the old familiar one, the head erect, the hand clenched, the eyes looking through and beyond the stone walls; but there was an air of listlessness in the stoop of the shoulders, and⁠—except for that one brief gleam just now⁠—a look of more complete weariness round the hollow eyes! To the keen watcher it appeared as if that sense of living power, of unconquered will and defiant mind was no longer there, and as if he himself need no longer fear that almost supersensual thrill which had a while ago kindled in him a vague sense of admiration⁠—almost of remorse.

Even as he gazed, Blakeney slowly turned his eyes full upon him. Chauvelin’s heart gave a triumphant bound.

With a mocking smile he met the wearied look, the pitiable appeal. His turn had come at last⁠—his turn to mock and to exult. He knew that what he was watching now was no longer the last phase of a long and noble martyrdom; it was the end⁠—the inevitable end⁠—that for which he had schemed and striven, for which he had schooled his heart to ferocity and callousness that were devilish in their intensity. It was the end indeed, the slow descent of a soul from the giddy heights of attempted self-sacrifice, where it had striven to soar for a time, until the body and the will both succumbed together and dragged it down with them into the abyss of submission and of irreparable shame.