CHAPTER X
INTO THE LIGHT
Yes, the whole business was kept mighty quiet. Lots of people never really knew just my part in the affair. The Prefect thought it better to hush up the outside assistance and let it go in as a police job. It was all the same to me, though, as Chu-Chu was dead and his pal was dead and two others of the gang were dead. None got away, and the ones taken were no great shucks, and nothing to be afraid of in the future. Anyway, they'd heard of me and asked nothing better than to try to forget me.
It was no such cinch as a couple of weeks in bed this time. I was shot all to pieces, and was six weeks on my back, and my leg in a box, with a weight swinging from the foot; and the police surgeon says that I'll limp for the rest of my life. The Prefect took me to my own little garconniere and detailed his own doctor to fix me up.
John got back to Paris after his "cure," and came in every day to see me. Edith never came. She still thinks that I broke my word, and my honest hope is that she will keep on thinking so to her dying day; but she kept my room bright with flowers. John knew the whole story, of course. He was a different man, I thought, and a finer one; and he told me that it only needed me on my feet again to make the motor business a big success. And he was right.
Ivan's death made a big stir, but only for its romantic interest and the fact that Ivan himself was so well known and well liked round the town. The case was so evidently one of suicide that not even the most enterprising reporter tried to make a "mystery case" of it. Léontine came to see me several times. Then she went away, and I learned afterward that she had gone to Berck to look after Ivan's charity for the tuberculous children. Ivan was not quite square with Léontine; there was a lot more of the mother in her than of the wanton.
I had been laid up about a fortnight when my nurse came in one day, with a grin, to tell me that the Countess Rosalie had called to see me.
"Show her in," I snapped, "and leave us alone. She is an old friend of mine."
Rosalie looked pale, and her smile as she gave me her hand was forced and tired.
"Sit down," said I in English. "There are a lot of things I want to say to you."
She dropped in the chair at the head of my bed and I took her hand. Rosalie did not try to draw it away.
"Why haven't you been to see me?" I asked. "You got my message?"
"Yes; but I thought you would be well enough looked after without me."
"If you are thinking of La Petrovski," said I, "let me tell you that there has never been anything between us—and never will be. She is not in love with me—nor I with her. The nearest I ever came to being really in love with any woman was in a little studio apartment on the Rue Vaugirard, where it seemed to me that for the first time in my life I had found the real thing without any alloy—but I guess I was wrong."
Rosalie grew rather pale, but did not answer.
"Were you in the house when that man killed himself?" she asked.
"I will tell you all about that," I answered, "and of what happened afterwards—and why it did."
So I gave her the whole yarn, speaking in English, which nobody in the house understood. Rosalie listened, scarcely breathing, and her colour came and went like the draught on a red coal.
"So you see, little girl," I wound up, "you yourself were the immediate and direct cause of Chu-Chu's finish."
"And I never for a moment suspected that it was Chu-Chu!" said she. "He told me when he took me that he was a plumber who had just received a telephone call to drop the job he was on and hurry out to Meudon to stop a leak in a waterpipe that was destroying the ceiling. I took him to the house and he asked me to wait, but I could not do so because I had an engagement with a regular client." She looked at me with shining eyes. "And so you hurried out there on my account?" she asked.
"Yes," I answered. "I meant to put the police on to Chu-Chu in any case, but I wouldn't have acted so quickly if it hadn't been for you. Chu-Chu might easily have served you some ugly trick—throttled you and thrown you into the ditch on the way home, or some such pleasantry. He poisoned Ivan merely because he was in the way. If anything had happened to you, sweetheart, I should have wanted to kill first Chu-Chu and then myself." And I meant it, too. I was really in love with Rosalie.
She said very little after that, and presently wished me good-bye and went away; but she dropped a kiss on my forehead before she went out.
From this time on, both Rosalie and Sœur Anne Marie came often to see me. It took the little Mother Superior some time to get over the effect of the tale, which I had let Rosalie tell her; but Sœur Anne Marie had served through the Franco-Prussian War as a nurse and was no rabbit-heart.
Then one day she said to me: "Mon ami, you must be careful. Our Rosalie is losing her heart."
"She already has mine, ma Mère," I answered, "though it's not much of a bargain for her."
"I am not so sure," she answered. "Though your life has been wrongly lived, I am convinced that your heart is clean. Do you really love the poor child?"
"I love her dearly," I answered, "and I would ask her to marry me if I were sure we might never have to reap some of my early sowing. A man with such a past as mine can never be too confident of the future. I speak only of my sins against the Eighth Commandment, ma Mère."
She was silent and thoughtful for a little while, then answered:
"Rosalie loves you, and I do not think she will ever be happy without you. If, later on, some echo from your past should come to bring pain to you both, she will at least have had her hour and tasted of the fulness of life." She smiled. "We religieuses are sometimes given the power to predicate the lives of those dear to us—and there is also much in prayer. You will both be garmented in my prayers, whether I am here or—elsewhere; and, so far, these prayers have not proved fruitless."
There was no denying this. I could quite imagine the secret-service angel, detailed from divine headquarters in response to the good woman's application, sitting beside Rosalie in her taxi and sending her back from Meudon to Paris when Chu-Chu wanted her to wait. The same angel might also have whispered in my ear not to taste the peach ice-cream for politeness' sake. And I'm sure that he sent me about my business the night I said good-bye to Rosalie in her studio apartment.
My heart grew warm as I thought of Rosalie. I knew that I loved her and wanted her for my wife—Rosalie, sweet and brave and true-hearted, and, so far as that went, as physically perfect as a man could wish. I thought again of the night when I had held her in my arms, kissing and comforting her; and last of all, though it should have been first, I thought of how she had stood by me when, spent and bloodless, I had lurched into her taxi at the gate of the Baron von Hertzfeld.
Then, one day in the autumn, when I was beginning to get round a little, Rosalie came to me and said:
"To-morrow will be Sunday, and we are going for a little picnic—just you and myself and Sœur Anne Marie. We will take the car and run out to the forest of Marly for luncheon in the woods. Sœur Anne Marie is very worn from the heat of the summer and it will do her good. You are strong enough to drive now, and I will take a day off and wear a pretty gown and be grande dame."
So off we went the next day, the three of us in the little car, which I drove down a long forest alley with a Gothic roof of burnished bronze. We spread our napkins in a little glade and had a wonderful déjeuner of hors d'œuvres, all sorts, and poulet froid, with salad and galantine, and game pâtés and pickled truffles and dessert. I looked after the wines myself an old Amontillado and a very dry champagne that was given me by a friend who owned some hectares of vines near Epernay, and an old Beaune with a wonderful bouquet; and afterwards coffee which Rosalie made on a percolator, and some liqueur.
After luncheon, Sœur Anne Marie informed us that age possessed its privileges, and she proposed also to show the bon Dieu her appreciation of the good things she had eaten and drunk by withdrawing a little while from the material world in a peaceful nap. So we made her comfortable with a rug and a cushion from the car, and Rosalie and I strolled off under the ancient trees. We came to the top of a high bank on the edge of the big route, and here we seated ourselves on the edge of a laurel thicket to talk and watch the big cars that kept whizzing by.
It was a perfect day in October, and the old-gold canopy overhead screened a sky as blue as the eyes of a little child. Rosalie looked at me and smiled. Her cheeks were red to-day, and her eyes the colour of the autumn leaves. She wore a tailor suit of dark-blue serge and a pretty hat, and looked altogether the stylish femme du monde. Nobody could ever have recognised her as the pretty, piquant chauffeuse so often to be seen perched behind her wheel in front of the big hotels.
There was no trace of impudence about her this day. Though happy, so far as one could see, she was very quiet, and there was a hint of wistfulness in her eyes. Poor little girl! Life had never brought her much joy, and I wondered, as I often had before, at her bright, brave heart, for the summer had been a hard one and most women would have been worn out and despondent; but Rosalie possessed an elastic strength—or fine mettle, one might better say—and the instant the strain was relaxed she flew back as straight and tireless as before.
Our eyes met—and all at once I realised my want of her and the deep, honest love I had come to feel for her. Rosalie's hand was resting on her knee, and I took it in mine and raised it to my lips.
"Rosalie, dear," I said, "I love you! Will you marry a reformed thief?"
She turned to me slowly, and one could see how delicately the colour faded in her lovely face. Her lips trembled, and the tears gushed into her eyes.
"Oh, Frank—you are sure you want me?" she said. "There is—no one else? You are sure, sure, sure?"
"Nobody else, sweetheart—now or ever!" I answered, and gathered her into my arms.
THE END