he said, in a low voice; ‘you are young; you are beautiful; you can yet enjoy life; but,’ in a deliberate cruel manner, ‘you will not, for the river claims you as its victim.’
Something in his voice fills her with fear, and looking up she reads death in his face, and sinking on her knees she holds out her helpless hands with a pitying cry for life.
‘Strange,’ observed M. Vandeloup, with a touch of his old airy manner; ‘you come to commit suicide and are not afraid; I wish to save you the trouble, and you are, my dear—you are illogical.’
‘No! no!’ she mutters, twisting her hands together, ‘I do not want to die; why do you wish to kill me?’ lifting her wan face to his.
He bent down, and caught her wrist fiercely.
‘You ask me that?’ he said, in a voice of concentrated passion, ‘you who, with your long tongue, have put the hangman’s rope round my throat; but for you, I would, by this time, have been on my way to America, where freedom and wealth awaits me. I have worked hard, and committed crimes for money, and now, when I should enjoy it, you, with your feminine devilry, have dragged me back to the depths.’
‘I did not make you commit the crimes,’ she said, piteously.
‘Bah!’ with a scoffing laugh, ‘who said you did? I take my own sins on my own shoulders; but you did worse; you betrayed me. Yes; there is a warrant out for my arrest, for the murder of that accursed Pierre. I have eluded the clever Melbourne police so far, but I have lived the life of a dog. I dare not even ask for food, lest I betray myself. I am starving! I tell you, starving! you harlot! and it is your work.’
He flung her violently to the ground, and she lay there, a huddled heap of clothing, while, with wild gesticulations, he went on.
‘But I will not hang,’ he said, fiercely; ‘Octave Braulard, who escaped the guillotine, will not perish by a rope. No; I have found a boat going to South America, and to-morrow I go on board of her, to sail to Valparaiso; but before I go I settle with you.’
She sprang suddenly to her feet with a look of hate in her eyes.
‘You villain!’ she said, through her clenched teeth, ‘you ruined my life, but you shall not murder me!’
He caught her wrist again, but he was weak for want of food, and she easily wrenched it away.
‘Stand back!’ she cried, retreating a little.
‘You think to escape me,’ he almost shrieked, all his smooth cynical mask falling off; ‘no, you will not; I will throw you into the river. I will see you sink to your death. You will cry for help. No one will hear you but God and myself. Both of us are merciless. You will die like a rat in a hole, and that face you are so proud of will be buried in the mud of the river. You devil! your time has come to die.’
He hissed out the last word in a low, sibilant manner, then sprang towards her to execute his purpose. They were both standing on the verge of the steps, and instinctively Kitty put out her hands to keep him off. She struck him on the chest, and then his foot slipped on the green slime which covered the steps, and with a cry of baffled rage he fell backward into the dull waters, with a heavy splash. The swift current gripped him, and before Kitty could utter a sound, she could see him rising out in midstream, and being carried rapidly away. He threw up his hands with a hoarse cry for help, but, weakened by famine, he could do nothing for himself, and sank for the second time. Again he rose, and the current swept him near shore, almost within reach of a fallen tree. He made a desperate effort to grasp it, but the current, mocking his puny efforts, bore him away once again in its giant embrace, and with a wild shriek on God he sank to rise no more.
The woman on the bank, with white face and staring eyes, saw the fate which he had meant for her meted out to him, and when she saw him sink for the last time, she covered her face with her hand and fled rapidly away into the shadowy night.
The sun is setting in a sea of blood, and all the west is lurid with crimson and barred by long black clouds. A heavy cloud of smoke shot with fiery red hangs over the city, and the din of many workings sound through the air. Down on the river the ships are floating on the blood-stained waters, and all their masts stand up like a forest of bare trees against the clear sky. And the river sweeps on red and angry-looking under the sunset, with the rank grass and vegetation on its shelving banks. Rats are scampering along among the wet stones, and then a vagrant dog poking about amid some garbage howls dismally. What is that black speck on the crimson waters? The trunk of a tree perhaps; no, it is a body, with white face and tangled auburn hair; it is floating down with the current. People are passing to and fro on the bridge, the clock strikes in the town hall, and the dead body drifts slowly down the red stream far into the shadows of the coming night—under the bridge, across which the crowd is hurrying, bent on pleasure and business, past the tall warehouses where rich merchants are counting their gains, under the shadow of the big steamers with their tall masts and smoky funnels. Now it is caught in the reeds at the side of the stream; no, the current carries it out again, and so down the foul river, with the hum of the city on each side and the red sky above, drifts the dead body on its way to the sea. The red dies out of the sky, the veil of night descends, and under the cold starlight—cold and cruel as his own nature—that which was once Gaston Vandeloup floats away into the still shadows.
FINIS
The Harlequin Opal
V. Don Miguel Is Communicative
XI. The Drama of Little Things
