Once more he paused, looking down with grim amusement on the bent shoulders of the other man.
“Well?”
Chauvelin laughed. The query sounded choked and hoarse, whether through horror, excitement or mere impatient curiosity it were impossible to say.
“Well!” he retorted with a careless shrug of the shoulders. “I was too far up stream to see anything and Vailly saw nothing either. But he heard. So did others who happened to be on the shore close by.”
“What did they hear?”
“The hammering,” replied Chauvelin curtly, “when the portholes were knocked open to let in the flood of water. And the screams and yells of five and twenty drowning priests.”
“Not one of them escaped, I suppose?”
“Not one.”
Once more Chauvelin laughed. He had a way of laughing—just like that—in a peculiar mirthless, derisive manner, as if with joy at another man’s discomfiture, at another’s material or moral downfall. There is only one language in the world which has a word to express that type of mirth; the word is Schadenfreude.
It was Chauvelin’s turn to triumph now. He had distinctly perceived the signs of an inward shudder which had gone right through Martin-Roget’s spine: he had also perceived through the man’s bent shoulders, his silence, his rigidity that his soul was filled with horror at the story of that abominable crime which he—Chauvelin—had so blandly retailed and that he was afraid to show the horror which he felt. And the man who is afraid can never climb the ladder of success above the man who is fearless.
IV
There was silence in the low raftered room for awhile: silence only broken by the crackling and sizzling of damp logs in the hearth, and the tap-tapping of a loosely fastened shutter which sounded weird and ghoulish like the knocking of ghosts against the window-frame. Martin-Roget bending still closer to the fire knew that Chauvelin was watching him and that Chauvelin had triumphed, for—despite failure, despite humiliation and disgrace—that man’s heart and will had never softened: he had remained as merciless, as fanatical, as before and still looked upon every sign of pity and humanity for a victim of that bloody revolution—which was his child, the thing of his creation, yet worshipped by him, its creator—as a crime against patriotism and against the Republic.
And Martin-Roget fought within himself lest something he might say or do, a look, a gesture should give the other man an indication that the horrible account of a hideous crime perpetrated against twenty-five defenceless men had roused a feeling of unspeakable horror in his heart. That was the punishment of these callous makers of a ruthless revolution—that was their hell upon earth, that they were doomed to hate and to fear one another; every man feeling that the other’s hand was up against him as it had been against law and order, against the guilty and the innocent, the rebel and the defenceless; every man knowing that the other was always there on the alert, ready to pounce like a beast of prey upon any victim—friend, comrade, brother—who came within reach of his hand.
Like many men stronger than himself, Pierre Adet—or Martin-Roget as he now called himself—had been drawn into the vortex of bloodshed and of tyranny out of which now he no longer had the power to extricate himself. Nor had he any wish to extricate himself. He had too many past wrongs to avenge, too much injustice on the part of Fate and Circumstance to make good, to wish to draw back now that a newly-found power had been placed in the hands of men such as he through the revolt of an entire people. The sickening sense of horror which a moment ago had caused him to shudder and to turn away in loathing from Chauvelin was only like the feeble flicker of a light before it wholly dies down—the light of something purer, early lessons of childhood, former ideals, earlier aspirations, now smothered beneath the passions of revenge and of hate.
And he would not give Chauvelin the satisfaction of seeing him wince. He was himself ashamed of his own weakness. He had deliberately thrown in his lot with these men and he was determined not to fall a victim to their denunciations and to their jealousies. So now he made a great effort to pull himself together, to bring back before his mind those memory-pictures of past tyranny and oppression which had effectually killed all sense of pity in his heart, and it was in a tone of perfect indifference which gave no loophole to Chauvelin’s sneers that he asked after awhile:
“And was citizen Carrier altogether pleased with the result of his patriotic efforts?”
“Oh, quite!” replied the other. “He has no one’s orders to take. He is proconsul—virtual dictator in Nantes: and he has vowed that he will purge the city from all save its most deserving citizens. The cargo of priests was followed by one of malefactors, night-birds, cutthroats and suchlike. That is where Carrier’s patriotism shines out in all its glory. It is not only priests and aristos, you see—other miscreants are treated with equal fairness.”
“Yes! I see he is quite impartial,” remarked Martin-Roget coolly.
“Quite,” retorted Chauvelin, as he once more sat down in the inglenook. And, leaning his elbows upon his knees he looked straight and deliberately into the other man’s face, and added slowly: “You will have no cause to complain of Carrier’s want of patriotism when you hand over your bag of birds to him.”
This time
