House of the White Shadows — Book 4, Chapters 13-14
SHADOWS
Christian Almer stood at the door, gazing at the retreating figure of the Advocate.
It passed through the clear light of the lamps, became blurred, was merged in the darkness.
The corridor was long, and before the Advocate reached the end he was a shadow among shadows.
In Almer's excited mood the slightest impressions became the medium for distorted reflection.
The dim form of the Advocate was pregnant with meaning, and when it was finally lost to sight, Almer's eyes followed an invisible figure moving, not through space, but through events in which he and his friend and Adelaide were the principal actors.
A wild whirl of images crowded to his mind, presenting in the midst of their confusion defined and distinct pictures, the leading features of which were the consequences arising from the double betrayal of love and friendship.
Violent struggles, deadly embraces--in houses, in forests, on the brinks of precipices, in the torrents of furious rivers.
The proportions of these images were vast, titanic.
The forests were interminable, the trees rose to an immense height, the rivers resembled raging seas, the presentments of animated life were of unnatural magnitude.
Even when he and Adelaide were flying through a trackless wood, and were overtaken by the Advocate, this impression of gigantic growth prevailed, as though there were room in the world for naught but themselves and the passions by which they were swayed.
He was recalled to himself by a soft tapping at the door of the inner room.
He instantly unlocked it, and released Adelaide, who raised her eyes, beaming with animation, to his.
He was overcome with astonishment.
He thought to see her pale, frightened, trembling.
Never had he beheld her more radiant.
"He is gone," she said in a gay tone.
"Hush!"
whispered Almer, "he may return."
"He will not," she said.
"You will see him no more to-night."
"Thank Heaven the danger is averted!
I feel as if I had been guilty of some horrible crime."
"Whereas you have simply indulged poor innocent me in a harmless fancy.
Christian, I heard every word."
"I thought you would have fallen asleep.
How could you have been so imprudent, so reckless, as to laugh?"
"How can I help being a woman of impulse?
Were you very much frightened?
I was not--I rather enjoyed it.
Christian, there is not a single thing my immaculate husband does which does not convince me he has no heart.
Just think what might have happened if he had come to the right door and thrown it open and seen me!
There!
You look so horrified that I feel I have said something wrong again.
Christian, what did you mean by saying to him, 'My thoughts are not under my control while you have your hand on that letter'?
What letter was it?"
"Your note, which Dionetta left in the room.
He was sitting by the desk upon which I had laid it, and his hand was upon it."
"And it made you nervous?
To think that he had but to open that innocent bit of paper!
What a scene there would have been!
I should have gloried in the situation--yes, indeed.
There is no pleasure in life like the excitement of danger.
Those who say women are weak know nothing of us.
We are braver than men, a thousand, thousand times braver.
I tried to peep through the door, but there wasn't a single friendly crevice.
What a shock it would have given him if I had suddenly called out as he held the letter: 'Open it, my love, open it and read it!'
" "That is what you call being prudent?"
said Almer in despair.
"Tyrant!
I cannot promise you not to think.
I have a good mind to be angry with you.
You are positively ungrateful.
You shut me up in a room all by myself, where I quietly remain, the very soul of discretion--you did not so much as hear me breathe--only forgetting myself once when my feelings overcame me, and you don't give me one word of praise.
Tell me instantly, sir, that I am a brave little woman."
"You are the personification of rashness."
"How ungrateful!
Did you think of me, Christian, while I was locked up there?"
"My thoughts did not wander from you for a moment."
"If you had only given me a handful of these roseleaves so that I might have buried my face in them and imagined I was not tied to a man who loves another woman than his wife!
You seem amazed.
Do you forget already what has passed between you?
If it had happened that I loved him, after his confession to-night I should hate him.
But it is indifferent to me upon whom he has set his affections--with all my heart I pity the unfortunate creature he loves.
She need not fear me;
I shall not harm her.
You got at the heart of his secret when you asked him if a woman was involved in it; and you compelled him to confess that his honour--and of course hers; mine does not matter--was at stake in his miserable love-affair.
He loves a woman who is not his wife; with all his evasions he could not help admitting it.
And this is the man who holds his head so high above all other men--the man who was never known to commit an indiscretion!
Of course he must keep his secret close--of course he could not speak of it to his friend, whom he tries to hoodwink with professions and twisted words!
He married me, I suppose, to satisfy his vanity; he wanted the world to see that old as he was, grave as he was, no woman could resist him.
And I allowed myself to be persuaded by worldly friends!
Is it not a proof of my never having loved him, that, instead of hating him when in my hearing he confesses he loves another, I simply laugh at him and despise him?
I should not shed a tear over him if he died to-night.
He has insulted me--and what woman ever forgets or forgives an insult?
But he has done me a good service, too, and I thank him.
How sleepy I am!
Good-night.
My minute is up, and I cannot stay longer; I must think of my complexion.
Goodnight, Christian; that is all I came to say."
CHAPTER XIV THE ADVOCATE FEARS HE HAS CREATED A MONSTER
The Advocate did not immediately return to his study.
Darkness was more congenial to his mood, and he spent a few minutes in the gardens of the villa.
Although he had stated to Christian Almer that the conversation which had passed between them had been of benefit to him, he felt, now that he was alone, that there was much in it to give rise to disturbing thought and conjecture.
He had not foreseen the difficulty, in social intercourse, of avoiding the subject uppermost in his mind.
A morbid self-consciousness, at present in its germ, and from which he had hitherto been entirely free, seemed to unlock all roads in its direction.
It was, as it were, the converging-point of all matters, even the most trivial, affecting himself.
Having put the seal upon his resolution with respect to Gautran's confession, he became painfully aware that he had committed himself to a line of action from which he could not now recede without laying himself open to such suspicion, from friend and foe alike, as might fatally injure his reputation.
He was a lawyer, and he knew what powerful use he could make of such a weapon against any man, high or low.
If it could be turned against another it could be turned against himself.
He must not, therefore, waver in his resolution.
Only his conscience could call him to account.
Well, he would reckon with that.
It was a passive, not an active accuser.
Gautran would seek some new locality, in which he would be lost to sight.
As a matter of common prudence, it was more than likely he would change his name.
The suspicion which attached itself to him, and the horror with which he was regarded in the neighbourhood in which he had lived, would compel him to fly to other pastures.
In this, and in the silence of time, lay the Advocate's safety, for every day that passed would weaken the fever of excitement created by the trial.
After a few weeks, if it even happened that Gautran were insanely to make a public declaration of his guilt, and to add to this confession a statement that the Advocate was aware of it during the trial, by whom would he be believed?
Certainly not by the majority of the better classes of the people; and in the event of such a contingency, he could quote with effect the poet's words: "Be thou chaste as ice, and pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny."
So much, then, for himself: but he was more than ever anxious and ill at ease regarding Christian Almer.
The secret which his friend dared not divulge to him was evidently of the gravest import--probably as terrible in its way as that which lay heavily on the Advocate's soul;
and the profound mystery in which it was wrapt invested it with a significance so unusual, even in the Advocate's varied experience of human nature, that he could not keep from brooding upon it.
Was it a secret in which honour was involved?
He could not bring himself to believe that Almer could be guilty of a dishonourable act--but a man might be dragged into a difficulty against his will, and might have a burden of shame unexpectedly thrust upon him which he could not openly fling off without disgrace.
And yet--and yet--that he should be so careful in concealing it from the knowledge of the truest of friends--it was inexplicable.
Ponder as long as he might, the Advocate could arrive at no explanation of it, nor could his logical mind obtain the slightest clue to the mystery.
The cool air in the gardens refreshed him, and he walked about, always within view of the lights in his study windows, with his head uncovered.
It was during the first five minutes of his solitude that an impression stole upon him that he was not alone.
He searched the avenues, he listened, he asked aloud: "Is any person near, and does he wish to speak to me?"
No voice answered him.
The gardens, with the exception of the soft rustling of leaf and branch, were as silent as the grave.
Towards the end of his solitary rambling, and as he was contemplating leaving the grounds, this impression again stole upon him.
Was it the actual sound of muffled footsteps, or the spiritual influence of an unseen presence, which disturbed him?
He could not decide.
Again he searched the avenues, again he listened, again he asked a question aloud.
All was silent.
This was the third time during the night that he had allowed himself to be beguiled.
Once in Christian Almer's room, when he thought he had heard a laugh, and now twice in the solitude of the grounds.
He set it down as an unreasoning fancy springing from the agitation into which he had been thrown by his interview with Gautran, and he breathed a wish that the next fortnight were passed, when his mind would almost certainly have recovered its equilibrium.
The moment the wish was born, he smiled in contempt of his own weakness.
It opened another vein in the psychological examination to which he was subjecting himself.
He entered his study, and did not perceive Gautran, who was asleep in the darkest corner of the room.
But his quick observant eye immediately fell upon the glass out of which Gautran had drunk the wine.
The glass was on his writing-table; it was not there when he left his study.
He glanced at the wine-bottles on the sideboard; they had been disturbed.
"Some person has been here in my absence," he thought.
"Who--and for what purpose?"
He hastily examined his manuscripts and, missing none, raised the wine-glass and held it mouth downwards.
As a couple of drops of red liquor fell to the ground, he heard behind him the sound of heavy breathing.
An ordinary man would have let the glass fall from his hand in sudden alarm, for the breathing was so deep, and strong, and hoarse, that it might have proceeded from the throat of a wild beast who was preparing to spring upon him.
But the Advocate was not easily alarmed.
He carefully replaced the glass, and wheeled in the direction of the breathing.
He saw the outlines of a form stretched upon the ground in a distant corner; he stepped towards it, and stooping, recognised Gautran.
He was not startled.
It seemed to be in keeping with what had previously transpired, that Gautran should be lying there slumbering at his feet.
He stood quite still, regarding the sleeping figure of the murderer in silence.
He had risen to his full height; one hand rested upon the back of a massive oak chair: his face was grave and pale; his head was downwards bent.
So he stood for many minutes almost motionless.
Not the slightest agitation was observable in him; he was calmly engaged in reflecting upon the position of affairs, as though they related not to himself, but to a client in whose case he was interested, and he was evolving from them, by perfectly natural reasoning, the most extraordinary complications and results.
In all his experience he had never been engaged in a case presenting so many rare possibilities, and he was in a certain sense fascinated by the powerful use he could make of the threads of the web in which he had become so strangely and unexpectedly entangled.
Gautran's features were not clearly visible to him; they were too much in shadow.
He took from his writing-table a lamp with a soft strong light, and set it near to the sleeping man.
It brought the ruffian into full view.
His unshaven face, his coarse, matted hair, his brutal sensual mouth, his bushy eyebrows, his large ears, his bared neck, his soiled and torn clothes, the perspiration in which he was bathed, presented a spectacle of human degradation as revolting as any the Advocate had ever gazed upon.
"By what means," he thought, "did this villain obtain information of my movements and residence, and what is his motive in coming here?
When he accosted me tonight he did not know where I lived--of that I am convinced, for he had no wish to meet me, and believed he was threatening another man than myself on the high road.
That was a chance meeting.
Is this, also, a chance encounter?
No; there is premeditation in it.
Had he entered another house he would have laid his hands on something valuable and decamped, his purpose being served.
He would not dare to rob me, but he dares to thrust his company upon me.
Of all men, I am the man he should be most anxious to avoid, for only I know him to be guilty.
Have I created a monster who is destined to be the terror and torture of my life?
Is he shrewd enough, clever enough, cunning enough, to use his power as I should use it were I in his place, and he in mine?
That is not to be borne, but what is the alternative?
I could put life into the grotesque oaken features upon which my hand is resting, and they might suggest a remedy.
The branches of the tree within which these faces grew in some old forest waved doubtless over many a mystery, but this in which I am at present engaged matches the deepest of them.
Some demon seems to be whispering at my elbow.
Speak, then; what would you urge me to do?"
The Unseen: "Gautran entered unobserved."
The Advocate: "That is apparent, or he would not be lying here with the hand of Fate above him."
The Unseen: "No person saw him--no person is aware that he is in your study, at your mercy."
The Advocate: "At my mercy!
You could have found a better word to express your meaning."
The Unseen: "You know him to be a murderer."
The Advocate: "True."
The Unseen: "He deserves death!
You have already heard the whisperings of the voice which urged you to fulfil the divine law, Blood for blood!"
The Advocate: "Speak not of what is Divine.
Tempter, have you not the courage to come straight to the point?"
The Unseen: "Kill him where he lies!
He will not be missed.
It is night--black night.
Every living being in the house, with the exception of yourself, is asleep.
You have twisted justice from its rightful course.
The wrong you did you can repair.
Kill him where he lies!"
The Advocate: "And have the crime of murder upon my soul?"
The Unseen: "It is not murder.
Standing as you are standing now, knowing what you know, you are justified."
The Advocate: "I will have no juggling.
If I kill him it is not in the cause of justice.
Speak plainly.
Why should he die at my hands?"
The Unseen: "His death is necessary for your safety."
The Advocate: "Ah, that is better.
No talk of justice now.
We come to the coarse selfishness of things, which will justify the deadliest crimes.
His death is necessary for my safety!
How am I endangered?
Say that his presence here is a threat.
Am I not strong enough to avoid the peril?
How vile am I that I should allow such thoughts to suggest themselves!
Christian, my friend, whatever is the terror which has taken possession of you, and from which you vainly strive to fly, your secret is pure in comparison with mine.
If it were possible that the secret which oppresses you concerned your dearest friend, concerned me, whom perchance it has in some hidden way wronged, how could I withhold from you pity and forgiveness, knowing how sorely my own actions need pity and forgiveness?
For the first time in my life I am brought face to face with my soul, and I see how base it is.
Has my life, then, been surrounded by dreams, and do I now awake to find how low and abominable are the inner workings of my nature?
I must arouse this monster.
He shall hide nothing from me."
He spurned Gautran with his foot.
It was with no gentle touch, and Gautran sprang to his feet, and would have thrown himself upon the Advocate had he not suddenly recognised him.
CHAPTER XV
