"Someone will come, and I am lost." It was not for myself that Itrembled.What could be done to a son who had but avenged his murdered father? But, my mother? This was what all my resolutions to spare her at any cost, my daily solicitude for her welfare, my unseen tears, my tender silence, had come to in the end! I must now, inevitably, either explain myself, or leave her to think I was a mere murderer.I was lost.But if I called, if I cried out suddenly that my stepfather had just killed himself in my presence, should I be believed? And, besides, had he not written what would convict me of murder, on that sheet of paper lying on the table?
Was I going to destroy it, as a practiced criminal destroys every vestige of his presence before he leaves the scene of his crime?
I seized the sheet of paper; the lines were written upon it in characters rather larger than usual.How it shook in my hand while I read these words: "Forgive me, Marie.I was suffering too much.
I wanted to be done with it." And he had had the strength to affix his signature!
So then, his last thought had been for her.In the brief moments that had elapsed between my blow with the knife, and his death, he had perceived the dreadful truth, that I should be arrested, that Iwould speak to explain my deed, that my mother would then learn his crime--and he had saved me by compelling me to silence.
But was I going to profit by this means of safety? Was I going to accept the terrible generosity by which the man, whom I had so profoundly detested, would stand acquitted towards me for evermore?
I must render so much justice to my honor; my first impulse was to destroy that paper, to annihilate with it even the memory of the debt imposed upon my hatred by the atrocious but sublime action of the murderer of my father.
At that moment I caught sight of a portrait of my mother, on the table, close to where he had been sitting.It was a photograph, taken in her youth; she was represented in brilliant evening attire, her bare arms shaded with lace, pearls in her hair, gay, ay, better than gay, happy, with an ineffably pure expression overspreading her face.My stepfather had sacrificed all to save her from despair on learning the truth, and was she to receive the fatal blow from me, to learn at the same moment that the man she loved had killed her first husband, and that he had been killed by her son?
I desire to believe, so that I may continue to hold myself in some esteem, that only the vision of her grief led me to my decision.Ireplaced the sheet of paper on the table, and turned away from the corpse lying on the carpet, without casting a glance at it.The remembrance of my flight from the Grand Hotel, on the previous day, gave me courage; I must try a second time to get away without betraying discomposure.
I found my hat, left the room, and closed the door carelessly.Icrossed the hall and went down the staircase, passing by the footman who stood up mechanically, and then the concierge who saluted me.The two servants had not even put me out of countenance.
I returned to my room as I had done the day before, but in a far more tragic state of suspense.Was I saved? Was I lost? All depended on the moment at which somebody might go into my stepfather's room.If my mother were to return within a few minutes of my departure; if the footman were to go upstairs with some letter, I should instantly be suspected, in spite of the declaration written by M.Termonde.I felt that my courage was exhausted.I knew that, if accused, I should not have moral strength to defend myself, for my weariness was so overwhelming that I did not suffer any longer.The only thing I had strength to do was to watch the swing of the pendulum of the timepiece on the mantelshelf, and to mark the movement of the hands.A quarter of an hour elapsed, half an hour, a whole hour.
It was an hour and a half after I had left the fatal room, when the bell at the door was rung.I heard it through the walls.Aservant brought me a laconic note from my mother scribbled in pencil and hardly legible.It informed me that my stepfather had destroyed himself in an attack of severe pain.The poor woman implored me to go to her immediately.Ah, she would now never know the truth!
