Within an Inch of His Life Part 49

"She had something important to communicate to you. She came to me"--

"O Dionysia!" stammered Jacques, "what a precious friend"--

"And I agreed," said Blangin in a paternal tone of voice, "to bring her in secretly. It is a great sin I commit; and if it ever should become known--But one may be ever so much a jailer, one has a heart, after all.

I tell you so merely because the young lady might not think of it. If the secret is not kept carefully, I should lose my place, and I am a poor man, with wife and children."

"You are the best of men!" exclaimed M. de Boiscoran, far from suspecting the price that had been paid for Blangin's sympathy, "and, on the day on which I regain my liberty, I will prove to you that we whom you have obliged are not ungrateful."

"Quite at your service," replied the jailer modestly.

Gradually, however, Dionysia had recovered her self-possession. She said gently to Blangin,--

"Leave us now, my good friend."

As soon as he had disappeared, and without allowing M. de Boiscoran to say a word, she said, speaking very low,--

"Jacques, grandpapa has told me, that by coming thus to you at night, alone, and in secret, I run the risk of losing your affection, and of diminis.h.i.+ng your respect."

"Ah, you did not think so!"

"Grandpapa has more experience than I have, Jacques. Still I did not hesitate. Here I am; and I should have run much greater risks; for your honor is at stake, and your honor is my honor, as your life is my life.

Your future is at stake, _our_ future, our happiness, all our hopes here below."

Inexpressible joy had illumined the prisoner's face.

"O G.o.d!" he cried, "one such moment pays for years of torture."

But Dionysia had sworn to herself, as she came, that nothing should turn her aside from her purpose. So she went on,--

"By the sacred memory of my mother, I a.s.sure you, Jacques, that I have never for a moment doubted your innocence."

The unhappy man looked distressed.

"You," he said; "but the others? But M. de Chandore?"

"Do you think I would be here, if he thought you were guilty? My aunts and your mother are as sure of it as I am."

"And my father? You said nothing about him in your letter."

"Your father remained in Paris in case some influence in high quarters should have to be appealed to."

Jacque shook his head, and said,--

"I am in prison at Sauveterre, accused of a fearful crime, and my father remains in Paris! It must be true that he never really loved me. And yet I have always been a good son to him down to this terrible catastrophe.

He has never had to complain of me. No, my father does not love me."

Dionysia could not allow him to go off in this way.

"Listen to me, Jacques," she said: "let me tell you why I ran the risk of taking this serious step, that may cost me so dear. I come to you in the name of all your friends, in the name of M. Folgat, the great advocate whom your mother has brought down from Paris and in the name of M. Magloire, in whom you put so much confidence. They all agree you have adopted an abominable system. By refusing obstinately to speak, you rush voluntarily into the gravest danger. Listen well to what I tell you.

If you wait till the examination is over, you are lost. If you are once handed over to the court, it is too late for you to speak. You will only, innocent as you are, make one more on the list of judicial murders."

Jacques de Boiscoran had listened to Dionysia in silence, his head bowed to the ground, as if to conceal its pallor from her. As soon as she stopped, all out of breath, he murmured,--

"Alas! Every thing you tell me I have told myself more than once."

"And you did not speak?"

"I did not."

"Ah, Jacques, you are not aware of the danger you run! You do not know"--

"I know," he said, interrupting her in a harsh, hoa.r.s.e voice,--"I know that the scaffold, or the galleys, are at the end."

Dionysia was petrified with horror.

Poor girl! She had imagined that she would only have to show herself to triumph over Jacques's obstinacy, and that, as soon as she had heard what he had to say, she would feel rea.s.sured. And instead of that--

"What a misfortune!" she cried. "You have taken up these fearful notions, and you will not abandon them!"

"I must keep silent."

"You cannot. You have not considered!--"

"Not considered," he repeated.

And in a lower tone he added,--

"And what do you think I have been doing these hundred and thirty mortal hours since I have been alone in this prison,--alone to confront a terrible accusation, and a still more terrible emergency?"

"That is the difficulty, Jacques: you are the victim of your own imagination. And who could help it in your place? M. Folgat said so only yesterday. There is no man living, who, after four days' close confinement, can keep his mind cool. Grief and solitude are bad counsellors. Jacques, come to yourself; listen to your dearest friends who speak to you through me. Jacques, your Dionysia beseeches you.

Speak!"

"I cannot."

"Why not?"

She waited for some seconds; and, as he did not reply, she said, not without a slight accent of bitterness in her voice,--

"Is it not the first duty of an innocent man to establish his innocence?"

The prisoner, with a movement of despair, clasped his hands over his brow. Then bending over Dionysia, so that she felt his breath in her hair, he said,--

"And when he cannot, when he cannot, establish his innocence?"

She drew back, pale unto death, tottering so that she had to lean against the wall, and cast upon Jacques de Boiscoran glances in which the whole horror of her soul was clearly expressed.

"What do you say?" she stammered. "O G.o.d!"