The great train thundered on straight down through the heart of France. Almost the length of it separated Quixtus and Clementina. They had seen each other only for a few moments amid the bustle of the hurrying platform—just long enough for her quick vision to perceive, in the uncertain blue light of the arc-lamps, a haunted look in his eyes that was absent when she had first met him that afternoon. He had spoken a few courteous phrases; he had inquired whether Tommy and Etta, who clung to her to the last, were to be fellow travellers, whereon Clementina had very definitely informed him that Etta was staying with friends in Paris, while Tommy had arranged to visit a painter chum at Barbizon; he had expressed the hope that when they arrived at Marseilles she would command his services, and, after a bareheaded leave-taking of the two ladies, which caused Etta afterwards to remark that it was only her short skirt that had prevented her from making her court curtsey, he had gone in search of his own compartment. Etta had flung her arms round Clementina’s neck.
“Oh, Clementina darling, do come back soon! The Jacksons are kind, but, oh, so stuffy! And Tommy is going to Barbizon, and I shan’t see him, and if you don’t come back soon, he’ll have forgotten all about me.”
Tommy had given her a great hug and kissed her.
“Good-bye, dear. God bless you. Come back soon. We can’t do without you.”
And Clementina, pausing on the first step of the railway carriage, had turned and raised her hand—the unfilled finger-ends of her cotton gloves projecting comically—and cried:
“Good-bye, you dear, selfish, detestable, beloved children!”
And neither of the twain had known what in the world she meant.
The great train thundered on through the country which Clementina had traversed a month or so before with Tommy—Dijon, Macon, Lyons. . . . Things had changed since then. Then a sweet rejuvenescence had crept through her veins; then she had amused herself with the idea of being a lady. The towns, whose names shouted through the awful stillness of the stations otherwise only broken by the eerie clank of the wheel-testers’ hammers were now but abstract stages on her journey, then had a magical significance. . . . That must be Vienne through which they were dashing. . . . If the bitter-sweet, the tragi-comedy, the cardiac surgery of Vienne had not brought a smile to Clementina’s lips in the dark solitude of her compartment, would she have been the sturdy, humorous Clementina who had cried her farewell to the children? Things had changed since then, she assured herself. She was just Clementina again, fighting her battles alone, impatient, contemptuous, unfeeling; no longer a lady, merely a female dauber, ready once more to paint elderly magnates’ trousers at so much per leg. . . . She sighed and laughed. Those had been pleasant times. . . . That she should be going over the same ground now with Quixtus seemed a freakish trick of destiny.
At nine o’clock in the morning the train entered Marseilles Station. Quixtus came speedily up to Clementina as she stepped on to the platform, and offered his services. He trusted she had slept well and had a comfortable journey.
“Didn’t sleep a wink,” said Clementina. “Did you?”
Quixtus admitted broken slumbers. The strangeness of the adventure had kept him awake.
“You’re looking ill this morning,” said Clementina, glancing at him sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”
He seemed careworn, feverish, and an unnatural glitter had replaced the haunted look in his eyes. Clementina did not know how the approaching consummation of a deed of real wickedness terrified the mild and gentle-natured man. Hitherto his evil doings had been fantastic, repaired almost at once as if mechanically by the underlying instinct of generosity; his visions of sin had been fantastic, too, harmless, unpractical; but this sin of vengeance which he had intellectually conceived and fostered loomed great and terrible. So does the braggart who has sworn to eat up a lion alive, totter at the knees when he hears the lion’s roar. His night had been that of a soul on fire.
“Something’s wrong. What is it?” asked Clementina.
He answered vaguely. This summons had upset him. It had set him thinking, a tiring mental process. He remembered, said he, how Hammersley, when they were boys together, had called him to see a dying butterfly on a rose-bush. The yellow wings were still flapping languidly; then slower and slower; then strength gave out and they quivered in the last effort; and then the hold on the rose-bush relaxed and the butterfly fell to the earth—dead.
“What does Monsieur wish done with the baggage?” asked the attendant porter, who had listened uncomprehendingly to the long and tragical tale.
Quixtus passed his hand across his forehead and looked at the porter as if awakening out of a dream.
“What you like,” said he.
So forlorn and hag-ridden did he appear, that a wave of pity swept through Clementina. The deadly phrase of the judge in the Marrable trial occurred to her: “Such men as you ought not to be allowed to go about loose.” The mothering instinct more than her natural forcefulness, made her take charge of the situation.
“The omnibus of the H?tel du Louvre,” she said to the man, and taking Quixtus by the arm, she led him like a child out of the station.
“Get in,” she said with rough kindliness, pushing him towards the step of the omnibus. But he moved aside for her to precede him. Clementina said “Rubbish!” and entered the vehicle. She was no longer playing at being a lady. Quixtus followed her, and the omnibus clattered down the steep streets and jolted and swayed through the traffic and between the myriad tramcars that deface and deafen the city. The morning sun shone fiercely. The pavements baked. The sun-drenched buildings burned hot to the eye and the very awnings in the front of shops and over stalls in the markets suggested heat rather than coolness. Far away at the end of the Cannebière, the strip of sea visible glittered like a steel blade.
“Whew!” gasped Clementina, “what heat!”
“I feel it rather chilly,” said Quixtus.
She stared at him, wiping a damp forehead. What was the matter with the man?
When they entered the fairly cool vestibule of the hotel, the manager met them and assigned the rooms. They asked for Hammersley. Alas, said the manager, he was very ill. The doctor was with him even now. An elderly man in thin, sunstained tweeds, who had been sitting in a corner playing with a child of five or six in charge of a Chinese nurse, came forward and greeted them.
“Are you the friends Mr. Hammersley telegraphed for? Miss Wing and Dr. Quixtus? My name is Poynter. I was a fellow passenger of Mr. Hammersley’s on the ‘Moronia.’ He was a sick man when he started; and got worse on the voyage. Impossible to land at Brindisi. Arrived here, he could go no further either by boat or train. He was quite helpless, so I stayed on till his friends could come. It was I who wrote out and sent the telegrams.”
“That was very good of you,” said Clementina.
Quixtus bowed vaguely, but spoke not a word. His lips were white. He held the front edges of his jacket crushed in a nervous grip. Poynter’s voice sounded far away. He barely grasped the meaning of his words. A dynamo throbbed in his head instead of a brain.
“Is he dying?” asked Clementina.
Mr. Poynter made an expressive gesture. “I’m afraid so. He collapsed during the night and they’ve been giving him oxygen this morning. Yesterday he was desperately anxious to see you both.”
“Is it possible or judicious to go to him now?” asked Clementina.
“You may inquire. If you will allow me, I’ll show you the way to his room.”
He led the way to the lift. They entered. For Quixtus his companions had ceased to exist. He was conscious only of going to the dying man, and the dynamo throbbed, throbbed. During the ascent Clementina said abruptly to Poynter:
“How long is it since you’ve been home?”
“Twenty-five years,” he replied with a grim smile. “And it has been the dream of my life for ten.”
“And you’ve stopped off in this Hades of a place for the sake of a sick stranger? You must be a good sort.”
“You would have done the same,” said Poynter.
“Not I.”
He smiled again and looked at her with his calm, certain eyes. “A man does not live in the far Orient for nothing. I know you would. This way,” he said, as the lift-door opened. He led them down a corridor, Quixtus following, a step or two behind, like a man in a trance.
The awful moment was at hand, the moment which, in the tea-shop and in the hotel, had seemed far, far distant, hidden in the mists of some unreal devil-land; which at dinner had begun to loom through the mists; which all night long had seemed to grow nearer and nearer with every rhythmic thud of the thundering train, until, at times, it touched him like some material horror. The moment was at hand. At last he was about to fulfil his destiny of evil. His enemy lay dying, the spirit faintly flapping its wings like the butterfly. In a moment they would enter a room. He would behold the dying man. He would curse him and send a blackened, anguished soul into eternity.
The dynamo in his brain and the beating of his heart made him fancy that they were walking to the sound of muffled drums. Nearer, nearer. This was real, actual. He was a devil walking to the sound of muffled drums.
Poynter and Clementina stopped before a door. Quixtus stood still shaking all over, like a horse in front of a nameless terror.
“This is his room,” said Poynter, grasping the handle.
Quixtus gave a queer cry and suddenly threw himself forward and clutched Poynter’s arm convulsively, his features distorted with terror.
“Wait—wait! I can’t do it! I can’t do it! It’s monstrous!”
He leaned up against the wall and closed his eyes.
“Overwrought nerves,” whispered Poynter.
There happened to be a bench near by, placed for the convenience of the chambermaid of the floor. Clementina made him sit down.
“I don’t think you’re quite up to seeing him just now,” she said.
He shook his head. “No. Not just now. I feel faint. It’s death. I’m not used to death. You go in. Give him my love. I’ll see him later. But give him my love.”
“Very well,” said Clementina.
She rapped gently at the door. It was opened and a sister of charity in a great white coif appeared on the threshold.
She looked at the visitors sadly.
“C’est fini,” she whispered.
Quixtus staggered to his feet.
“Dead?”
“Oui, Monsieur.”
The sweat broke out in great drops on his forehead.
“Dead!” he repeated.
“Vous pouvez entrer si vous voulez,” said the sister.
Then Quixtus reeled as if some one had dealt him a crushing blow. Poynter saved him from falling and guided him to the seat. For a long, long second all was darkness. The dynamo stopped suddenly. Then, as had happened once before, a little thread seemed to snap in his brain. He opened his eyes feeling sick and giddy. The sister quickly disappeared into the room, and returned with some brandy. The others stood anxiously by. Presently the spirits took effect and enabled him to............