The Son of Clemenceau Part 28

"Can you believe that?" she faltered, receding a step, turning white and trembling in the fear that he knew all.

"Believe? I am certain that you are lying now as always!" he thundered.

"It is impossible that your remorse should be sincere; it must mask some infamy. You have perpetrated faults which are unattended by remorse.

Enough! If I am wrong, and you really do repent, it will not take a minute, but years for you to be believed, and it does not concern me.

Apply to the Church, which alone can redeem and absolve such culprits as you."

Convinced that she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning, Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon, love, protection and fortune, she might have defied Von Sendlingen and his league, but, alone, she was a stormy petrel flapping its insignificant pinions in the face of the G.o.d of Storms. Felix refused to be cheated by her and she was lost. But the criminal hates to stand alone in the dock; she wished to be terribly avenged because he was so great and so implacable. She would show that she could be extreme, too; if she were not encouraged to love, she would hate.

"Oh, you pitiless one, because you have right on your side and your conscience," she screamed; "I will drag you down with me into curses and blasphemies, and others as well! whoever you hold dear shall perish with us!"

"My father was threatened in the same way," retorted Clemenceau. "He had not the patience I enjoy. Had he but waited a little, the viper would have died in her own venomous slime!"

"Then you will not kill me as your murderer did my aunt?"

"No! you have wrecked my happiness, my home, my private life, but I forgive you, and that is your punishment. You have cast your wicked, unholy lures about my adopted son, Antonino, but I overlook this because he will repulse you and, that will be an augmentation of your punishment. You threaten Rebecca Daniels, but such are protected by the great Giver of good and, that is again an augmentation of your punishment. No, I will not hurt you--I would not kill one to whom long life--as it was to your witch grandmother, embitters every fraction of time. Live! and, remember, if you are here when I return, that our paths diverge forever here and beyond the earth!"

She had sunk in a heap on the tiger-skin rug and her hair, loosened by accident or perhaps by design, streamed in a sheet of graven gold over her faultless shoulders. Through this s.h.i.+mmering net, her tears flowed, detached like strung diamonds scattered from the thread. But her weeping and her att.i.tude were thrown away, for she heard his step as regular as a soldier's, leaving the room, crossing the vestibule and taking him out to where the carriage wheels ground the gravel. Von Sendlingen had gone; the Daniels were descending the stairs; even the servants gave no sign of life. Already the doomed house began to sound with those dull echoes when spectres promenade where human tenants have dwelt. Under ordinary conditions, her place was to speed the parting guests, but her farewell to Rebecca had expressed her sentiments, and she dared not risk another contest of wits with the Hebrew.

She heard the horse's hoofs and the wheels beat the sand, and the click of the gate closing after the vehicle. The silence of death fell on the deserted house.

"I am alone," she said, sitting up but not rising.

"Now it will be everyone for himself and myself upon the side of evil, where they forced me to rank."

Hardly had she risen to her feet, very tremulous, and prepared to go to the mirror over the sideboard to re-arrange her hair, than she heard footsteps in the hall.

"Hedwig!" but listening more coolly, "no, a man!" she added, "has Von Sendlingen the audacity to enter?"

A man opened the door, but stood petrified on the threshold.

CHAPTER XXII

FELIX

It was Antonino.

"Is this the keeper?" thought Cesarine, laughing scornfully within herself. "A pretty boy for the austere Clemenceau to trust! Do not excuse yourself," she called out. "Close the door--it causes a draft!

So, you told my husband that you loved me?"

Far from expecting this address, the Italian let several seconds pa.s.s before he faltered:

"Who told you so?"

"He did! he never lacks frankness, I will say that for him. Well, you have destroyed my chances of securing a peaceful life. And yet I never did you any harm, did I?"

"I destroy you?" repeated he, as she began to weep after a vain attempt to hide her eyes in her tresses.

"How is that?"

"Because I lost control of myself under his anger and his threats, and I confessed to him also that I was fond of you. We have a fellow feeling and selected the same confidant!"

"You love me?"

"For what else did I come back to this gloomy house? What else would have induced me to stay? He drove me away before, and I never suspected that it was to clear the scene for Rebecca, fool--child that I was! And now he picked the quarrel with me about you in order to go off with the heathen! You men are so monopolizing! He wants to be let love the inky-eyed Jewess, but I must not say a kind word to you! Oh, what am I to do now?" and in pretending to repair the disarray of her hair, down came a luxuriant tress. "What does it matter which way I turn? All roads lead to the river or the railroad--a step into the cold water or repose on the track of the iron horse, and no one will then torment poor Cesarine!"

"You have some sinister plan," said Antonino, frightened by her manner.

"I will not let you go away alone."

"Is it thus you guard your master's house?"

"Then wait till he returns and decide upon something."

"He will decide on separating us, that is sure. Do you think if he takes me, that you could go with us?"

"No! but if you meant to kill yourself, I should die after you."

"Why not die together?"

"I do not care."

"Then you love me thoroughly?" she exclaimed in delight.

"Death would be repose, and this struggle is driving me frantic," said he, in a deep voice.

"Well, we will die some day," she said with pretended fervor, "but we are young and have time before us. Lovers do not willingly die! If you love me as I love you, you would, like me, find life all of a sudden wondrously bright! What a blessing that I have money for our enjoyment!"

clapping her hands like a child.

"In your fair Italy, we--"

"Money," repeated he, raised by her magic into a region above such sordid ideas and falling quickly.

"Of course! my bank orders! stay, they are in your box. Let us hasten away before he returns. Quick, take!"

"No;" said Antonino. "When he left the house in my charge he bade me touch nothing, and let nothing be touched until his return."

"He forsaw!" muttered the faithless wife, gnawing one of the tresses furiously as she studied the Italian's emotion. "Get me my money!"

"Wait until--"

"And with it those papers that describe your discoveries."

"What do you mean?" he cried, coming to a halt, half-way toward the chest while she was undoing one of the windows of which she had drawn back the curtains. "The papers--they are not mine, or yours."

"They will make the man I love rich and famous!" she replied, with eyes that seemed to light up the room far more than the starlight entering.

"You know all about the work. With those plans in the language you also read, you can rise higher than he! He restricts his genius to his country--you--we will sell to the highest bidder!"