He had not grown much and still looked like a child though his features were those of a man. They were, however, hard and looked unfinished. He seemed somehow incomplete, unpleasant to the eye, only a sketch, so to speak, and as alarming as a mystery. He was quite closed to outer influences, impenetrable, a prey to some constant mental ferment, both active and dangerous.
Mademoiselle Source could not help feeling all this, and her anguish of mind prevented her from sleeping. She was assailed by appalling terror and horrible nightmares. She locked herself in her room and barricaded the door, tortured by a panic fear. Of what was she afraid?
She had no idea.
She was afraid of everything, the night, the walls, the shadows projected by the moon through the white curtains at the windows, and, above all, she was afraid of him.
Why?
What had she to fear? Did she know of anything? She could not go on living like that. She knew she was menaced by some misfortune, some appalling misfortune.
One morning, secretly, she went to town to see her relatives and breathlessly told them what she felt. The two women thought she was going mad and tried to reassure her. She said to them: “If you only knew how he looks at me from morning till night! He never takes his eyes off me! Sometimes I want to shout for help, call in the neighbours, I am so afraid! But what could I say to them? He does nothing but stare at me.”
The cousins said: “Does he ever treat you roughly, does he answer you rudely?”
She replied: “No, never; he does everything I wish, he works well and is very steady now; but I am beside myself with fright. He has some idea in his head, I know it, I know it. I won’t stay any longer in the country alone with him.”
The scared relatives told her that everyone would be surprised, that no one would understand, and advised her to put aside her fears and give up her plans, but they did not discourage her from coming to live in town, in the hope that the removal would secure all her property for the two of them. They even promised to help her to sell her house and to find another one near them.
Mademoiselle Source went back home but she was in such a state of nerves that she started at the least sound and her hands trembled at the merest trifle.
She visited her relatives again twice, now quite determined not to remain in her lonely country home, and at last she found a suitable little house in the suburb, which she secretly bought.
The contract was signed on a Tuesday morning, and the rest of the day was spent in arranging for the removal. Mademoiselle Source caught the eight o’clock p.m. coach which passed about a mile and a half from the house, and stopped at the spot where the driver usually set her down. As he whipped up his horses he shouted: “Good night, Mademoiselle Source, good night!” and she replied as she was moving away: “Good night, Father Joseph.”
At seven o’clock the next morning, the village postman noticed a big pool of fresh blood on the crossroad not far from the highway, and said to himself: “Halloa! Some drunken lout’s nose has been bleeding.” But a few steps farther on he picked up a fine cambric handkerchief stained with blood, and as he neared the ditch he thought he could see some strange object lying there.
Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom of the ditch with her throat cut. An hour later, the gendarmes, the magistrate and others in authority gathered round the corpse, all giving their opinion as to what had happened. The two relations, called as witnesses, came and told them of the old maid’s fears and of the arrangements she had just made.
The orphan was arrested. Since his adopted mother’s death he had done nothing but weep, plunged, at least to all appearances, in the deepest woe. He was able to prove that he had spent the evening up to eleven o’clock in a café; he had been seen by ten people who had been there until he left. As the coach-driver declared that he had set the murdered woman down between half past nine and ten o’clock, the crime could only have been committed on the road leading from the highway to the house, not later than ten o’clock. The prisoner was acquitted.
By a will drawn up years before and left with a notary of Rennes, he was made sole legatee, and got all the property.
For a long time the country folk kept him at a distance, still suspecting him of the murder. His house, the dead woman’s house, was looked upon as bearing a curse, and everybody avoided him in the street. But he was so companionable, so friendly, that the horrible suspicion about him was gradually forgotten. He was generous, considerate, and would chat at will with the humblest of his neighbours.
The notary, Maître Rameau, was one of the first to revise his opinions about him, being captivated by the young man’s bright conversation. One evening when dining with the Collector of Taxes he declared that “a man with his gift of words—always good-humoured—cannot have such a dreadful crime on his conscience.” Impressed by the argument, the guests thought the matter over. They remembered the long conversations held by this man, who would stop them at the corner of the road and make them listen to him, who forced them into his house as they passed by, who made a better joke than the Lieutenant of the Armed Police Force himself, and was so infectiously cheerful that one could not help laughing when with him in spite of the repugnance he
