The Strand Magazine/Volume 3/Issue 14/After the Crime
After the Crime.
From the French of Constant Guéroult.
[Constant Guéroult was born at Elbeuf, on the 11th of February, 1814, and passed the first thirty years of his life in commerce. He then came to Paris, and began to write stories in various journals. The power and interest of these, which are mostly sensational in type, soon made his name widely known. The little story which follows is a good specimen of his style, and is additionally interesting as teaching the same moral which Dickens enforced in his description of the crime of Bill Sykes and of Jonas Chuzzlewit—that murder carries with it its own punishment.]
T was at the extremity of a village: a window was hurriedly thrown open, and a
man appeared at it, his features livid, his eyes haggard, his lips agitated by a convulsive tremor; his right hand grasped a knife from which blood was dripping, drop by drop. He cast a look into the silent country, then sprang to the ground, and set off running away through the fields.
At the end of a quarter of an hour he stopped exhausted, breathless, at the edge of a wood, twenty paces from a highway. He searched for the most closely grown, the most impenetrable spot to be found, and pressed his way into it, regardless of the thorns that were tearing him; then he began to dig up the earth with his knife. When he had made a hole a foot deep, he placed the weapon in it, and covered it with the soil he had dug out, re-covered it with a grass sod, which he trampled down solidly, after which he sat down upon the wet grass.
"He re-covered the hole with a grass hole."
He listened, and appeared terrified by the silence which hung upon the country.
It was the hour when the darkness of night is replaced by that grey and uniform tint which is neither day nor night, and through which objects look like phantoms.
It seemed to him that he was alone in this funereal immensity, in the midst of this dumb and dim nature. Suddenly a sound made him start; it was the axle of a waggon creaking on the road, a league away perhaps; but in the silence this strange and discordant noise made itself heard with singular distinctness.
Then Nature awoke little by little. The lark took flight towards the blue sky, pouring out his notes, at once timid and charming, overflowing with life and happiness; a winged tribe began to sing and flutter amid the leaves glittering with dew; on all sides—in the moss on which the golden insect was crawling, to the branch of the highest oak, where the bird voluptuously plumed herself in the ether—arose a morning concert, so harmonious in its confusion, so potent in its delirium, so full of greeting to the first rays coming from the east, that it might well be called a hymn to the sun.
Nature expanded herself, radiant and virginal; all was grace, freshness, sparkle in the forest, where a blue mist still floated; all was calm and hushed in the plain, the great lines of which undulated to infinity, the grey tones of which grew light under the reflection of the blue sky.
The murderer rose; his limbs trembled, and his teeth clattered one against the other.
He cast furtive glances around him, then parted the branches with precaution, stopping, starting, drawing back his head hastily at the least sound; then, at length, he quitted the densely grown thicket in which he had buried his knife.
He pressed forward deeper into the forest, choosing always the most shaded portions and avoiding the open parts and the beaten paths, making frequent stoppages to listen or to examine the ground before him ere he advanced. In this way he walked all day without being conscious of fatigue—so great was the agony which dominated him.
He paused at the entrance to a grove of beeches, whose imposing trunks stood white and smooth, like thousands of columns, crowned with foliage. A calm day, a harmonious silence, added to the impression of grandeur and retirement made by this beautiful spot; something animate seemed to throb amid the luminous shade of the motionless boughs, as if a soul were there amid the shadows, murmuring mysterious syllables.
The fugitive felt ill at ease, and, creeping like a reptile, forced his way under a clump of thorn bushes, the density of which completely hid him.
When he was in safety, he first raised his hand to his head and then to his stomach, and muttered, "I am hungry!"
The sound of his voice made him shudder; it was the first time he had heard it since the murder, and it resounded in his ears like a knell and a menace. For some moments he remained motionless and held his breath, as if in fear of having been heard.
When he had become a little calmer, he felt in his pockets one after the other; they contained a few sous.
"That will be enough," he said in a low tone; "in six hours I shall have crossed the frontier; then I can show myself; I can work, and shall be saved."
At the end of an hour he felt the cold begin to stiffen his limbs, for with the coming of night the dew fell, and his only clothes were a linen blouse and trousers of the same material. He rose, and, cautiously quitting his thorn bushes, continued his march. He halted at the first signs of dawn. He had reached the limits of the forest, and must now enter upon the open country, must show himself in the full light of day; and, struck with terror by this thought, he dared not advance a step further.
While he was standing hidden in a thicket the sound of horses' hoofs was heard. He turned pale.
"Gendarmes!" he gasped, crouching down upon the ground.
It was a farm-labourer going to the fields, with two horses harnessed to a waggon; he was whistling a country air while re-tying the lash of his whip.
"Jacques!" a voice cried to him.
The peasant turned round.
"Hallo! is that you Françoise? Where are you going so early?"
"Oh! I'm going to wash this bundle of linen at the spring close by."
"I'm going within two steps of it; put your bundle on one of my beasts."
"Thanks—that's not to be refused. How's the wife and the little ones—all of them?"
"I'm the weakest of the family," replied Jacques, laughing loudly; "all goes well—work, joy, and health."
He tied his lash, and the sharp crack was repeated by echo after echo.
The murderer followed him with his eyes as far as he could see him; then a deep sigh escaped from his lips, and his gaze turned to the open country spreading before him.
"I must get on," he murmured, "it is twenty-four hours since I. All is discovered, I am being sought, an hour's delay may ruin me."
He made up his mind resolutely, and quitted the forest.
At the end of ten minutes he came within sight of a church tower. Then he slackened his pace, a prey to a thousand conflicting feelings, drawn towards the village by hunger, restrained by the fear which counselled him to avoid habitations.
However, after a long struggle, during which he had advanced as much as possible under the screen of outhouses and bushes, he was about to enter the village, when he saw something glitter about a hundred paces from him.
It was the brass badge and the pommel of a rural policeman's sabre.
"He may have my description," he murmured with a shudder.
And, shrinking back quickly, he ran to a little wood which extended on his left and hid himself in it, pushing further and further into its depths, forgetting his hunger, and thinking only of flying from the village and the rural policeman.
But he speedily reached the end of the wood, which was of very small extent: beyond, the plain began again.
On peering from between the branches, he saw a man seated on the grass eating his breakfast. It was Jacques, the farm labourer.
"Peering between the branches, he saw a man seated on the grass."
Nothing could be more pleasant than the corner he had chosen for his breakfast-room. It was a sort of little stony ravine, through which ran two deep wheel-ruts, but carpeted with grass and moss and bordered with creepers, green-leaved, yellow, or purple, according to the caprices of that powerful colourist called Autumn. The wheel-ruts were full of limpid water, at the bottom of which glittered little white stones, smooth and transparent as onyx. Finally, this pretty nest was shaded by a cluster of birch-trees with reddish silvery trunks and foliage light and trembling.
Above this oasis spread ploughed fields on which hung, white and closely woven, the "Virgin-threads," floating and sparkling like an immense silver net.
Jacques' breakfast consisted of a hunch of bread and a piece of cheese, washed down with big draughts of cider claret, which he drank out of a stone pitcher, cooled in the water of the wheel ruts.
The peasant's strong white teeth buried themselves in the bread with an appetite which might have made a capitalist desire to share his frugal meal, which he only interrupted now and then to give a friendly word to his two horses, which, a few paces off, were feeding in brotherly fashion from the same wisp of hay.
"He's happy—he is!" murmured the murderer. Then, from the depths of his conscience he added: "Yes! work!—love of family!—peace and happiness are there!"
He was tempted to accost Jacques and ask him for a piece of bread; but a glance at his tattered dress forbade him showing himself; and then it seemed to him that his features bore the stamp of his crime, and must denounce him to whoever looked upon him.
A sound made him turn his head, and through the branches he saw an old man covered with rags. He walked bent double, a stick in his hand and a canvas bag slung to his neck by a cord. It was a beggar.
The murderer watched him with envious eyes, and again he murmured:
"What would I not give to be in his place! He begs, but he is free; he goes where he pleases in the wide air, in the broad sunlight, with a calm heart, with a tranquil conscience, eating without fear and agony the bread given to him in charity; able to look behind him without seeing a dead body, beside him without dreading to find a gendarme at his elbow, before him without seeing a vision of the scaffold. Yes, he is happy, that old mendicant, and I may well envy him his lot."
Suddenly he turned pale, a nervous trembling agitated all his limbs, and his features were drawn up like those of an epileptic.
"There they are!" he stammered, his eyes fixed upon a point on the road.
With haggard eye, bewildered, mad with terror, he looked on all sides, seeking to find a place of concealment; but so strangely was he overcome by fear that his eyes saw nothing, and his mind was incapable of thought.
During this time the gendarmes approached rapidly.
The gallop of the horses and the clanking of arms suddenly brought back to him his presence of mind, and, seeing before him an elm, the foliage of which was dense enough to hide him from sight, he climbed up it with the agility of a squirrel.
He was in safety when the two gendarmes halted on the road a few paces from him.
He listened, motionless, terrified, a prey to emotion so violent that he could hear the beating of the heart within him.
"What if we search this wood!" said one of the gendarmes.
"It's too small," said the other; "it's not there that our man would take refuge—rather in a forest."
"Anyhow, it will be prudent to beat it up."
"No," replied his comrade, "it would be time lost, and the assassin has already a ten hours' start of us."
And they went on at a trot.
The murderer breathed again; he felt a renewed life. But, this agony passed, a suffering, for a moment forgotten, made itself felt anew, and he cried:
"My God, how hungry I am!"
He had not eaten for forty-eight hours.
His legs gave way under him; he was seized with giddiness and a humming in the ears. And yet, he no more thought of going to the village for bread. The gendarmes! the scaffold! Those two phantoms ceaselessly rose before him, and over-mastered even the pangs of famine.
While his restless ears were on the watch for all sounds in the country, the dreary tolling of a bell made him start: it was the bell of the village church sounding the funeral knell. The murderer listened, pale, downcast, shuddering at every stroke, as if the clapper of the bell had struck upon his heart. Then big tears fell slowly from his eyes, and streamed down his cheeks unobserved by him, without his making any attempt to stop their flow.
It was because these funeral sounds evoked in his imagination a picture at once terrible and heartrending. At that same hour the bell of another village church was tolling like this for another death.
"Oh, wretch, wretch that I am!" sighed the murderer, covering his face with both his hands.
He listened again to the strokes of the church bell, which sounded to him like the sobs of the poor victim, and he murmured:
"Oh, idleness! it led me to the tavern—and the tavern, this is what has come of it!—three orphans, a poor wife in the ground, and I—a monster, hateful to all, hunted like a wild beast, pursued without rest or truce, until the hour when they shall have driven me to the scaffold. Horrible, horrible destiny!—and yet too mild a punishment."
He remained in the tree until night had come. When he saw the stars shine in the sky, when, in the vast solitude around him, he heard nothing but that vague breathing which seems like the respiration of the sleeping earth, then only he ventured to descend to rest himself.
He stretch himself at the foot of the tree, and closed his eyes; but fear which would not quit him, hunger which gnawed at his vitals, kept him constantly awake, and he rose at the first sign of dawn, overwhelmed, bowed down at once by alarm, fatigue, and the fasting of nearly three days.
At the end of a few hours his hunger, sharpened by the exciting air of the wood, ended by overcoming all his terror; and, feeling that his reason was beginning to reel in his brain, he decided to go into the village in search of bread.
He shook off the blades of grass which hung to his clothes, retied his neckerchief, passed his fingers through his tangled hair, then resolutely went out into the plain. Five minutes afterwards he entered the village, walking slowly, his head bent down, like a man overcome by fatigue, but casting a furtive and suspicious glance right and left, and ready to take flight at the first appearance of danger.
Not far from the church—that is to say, in the centre of the place—he perceived a tavern, the patriarchal aspect of which seemed to him to be reassuring. After convincing himself that neither cries nor disputes were coming from it—evidence that it was almost empty—he made up his mind to enter.
"What can I give you, my good man?" asked the landlord, a solidly built peasant, with broad shoulders, and a frank and open countenance.
"Bread and wine," replied the murderer, going and seating himself at a table near a window opening on to a garden.
He was speedily served.
"Here you are," said the landlord.
"Here you are!" said the landlord, "bread, wine, and cheese."
"I only asked for bread and wine," said the murderer, abruptly, hiding his face in his hands.
"Oh! the cheese is of no consequence to me, nor the bread either, for—no offence to you—you don't look too well off, my poor man, and it seems to me that you need to get up your strength; so eat and drink without worrying yourself about the rest."
"Thanks, thanks!"
At that moment the church bells began to ring loudly.
"What is that?" asked the murderer. "Why are the bells ringing in that way?"
"Why! Because the mass is over."
"The mass! What is to-day, then?"
"Sunday. You are not a Christian, then? Oh! you'll have companions presently."
The murderer felt himself becoming faint. He was tempted to rush out of the house; but a moment's reflection convinced him that such a course would ensure his certain destruction, and that prudence itself called on him to remain where he was.
He had hardly come to this decision when drinkers flocked into the tavern, which presently became full. The murderer began to eat and drink, taking care to keep his face turned towards the window, so as to hide his features as much as possible.
A quarter of an hour passed, an age of torment and anxiety for the fugitive, whom the most insignificant word caused to turn pale and to shudder. At length he was going to rise and leave the tavern, when one of the drinkers cried:
"Hallo! here comes Daddy Faucheux, our brigadier of gendarmerie!"
The murderer started frightfully, and his right hand flew to his head; all his blood had rushed to his heart, and from his heart to his brain, as if he had been stricken with apoplexy.
He came to himself little by little, but without recovering his powers; from the shock he had sustained there remained a weakness and nervous tremor which rendered him wholly incapable of effort.
On seeing the brigadier enter, he leaned his head upon the table, and pretended to fall asleep.
The welcome given to the gendarme attested the esteem in which he was held in the country; everyone was eager to offer him a place at his table.
"Thanks, friends," replied Daddy Faucheux, "a glass is not to be refused; but, as to sitting down, and taking it easy with you—the service forbids."
"The service! that's a good one. Today is Sunday, and thieves require a day of rest as well as other folks."
"Thieves, possibly; but it's different with assassins."
"Assassins! What do you mean by that, Daddy Faucheux?"
"Haven't you heard about the affair at Saint Didier?
"No; tell us about it."
"The more willingly, because I came in here to give you all a description of the scoundrel we are hunting."
The heart of the murderer throbbed heavily enough to burst his chest.
"He's a stone-mason, named Pierre Picard," the brigadier continued.
"And who has he murdered?"
"His wife."
"The beggar! What had she done to him?"
"Cried without complaining when he beat her; only sometimes she went to the tavern to ask him to give her some money to buy food for her little ones, whom she could not bear to see dying of starvation. That was the whole of her crime, poor creature! It was for that he killed her on Thursday night last. She was only five-and-twenty. He ought to have kissed the ground she walked on, the wretch! She spent her life in working and caring for him and the children, and she had never received any other reward save blows and misery."
"The infernal villain!" cried a young man, striking his fist violently on the table before him; "I'd think it a pleasure to go and see his head chopped off."
"That's why you all ought to know his description, so as to be able to arrest him if you come upon him; for we know that he is skulking somewhere hereabouts."
There was a deep silence.
The murderer, he too listened, mastering by a superhuman effort the fever raging in his blood and bewildering his brain.
"This is the description of Pierre Picard," said the brigadier, unfolding a paper: "Middle height, short neck, broad shoulders, high cheek bones, large nose, black eyes, sandy beard, thin lips, a brown mole on the forehead."
Folding up the paper, he added:
"Now you'll be sure to recognise him if you meet him!"
"With such a description, it would be impossible to mistake him."
"Then, as the song says, 'good night, my friends'; I leave you to go and hunt my game."
The murderer ceased to breathe. While listening to the brigadier's departure, he calculated that a few hours only separated him from the frontier, and already he saw himself in safety.
He was about raising his head, when the heavy boots of the gendarme, taking a new direction, resounded suddenly in his ears.
The gendarme stopped, two paces from the table at which he was seated; and the murderer felt his look turned upon him.
His blood seemed to freeze in his veins. A cold perspiration burst from all his pores, and his heart appeared to him to cease beating.
"By the way," cried the brigadier, "here's a party who is sleeping pretty soundly."
And he struck him on the shoulder.
"Hallo, my friend, hold your head up a little; I want to see your phiz."
Pierre Picard raised his head sharply; the expression of his face was frightful. His livid features were horribly contracted, his blood-shot eyes darted flames, and a nervous trembling agitated his thin and close-pressed lips.
"It's he!" cried ten voices at once.
The brigadier put out his hand to seize him by the collar, but before he could touch him, the murderer struck him two heavy blows with his fist in the eyes and blinded him; then, springing through the window into the garden, he disappeared.
Recovered from the surprise which had at first paralysed them, twenty young men dashed off in pursuit of him. At a bound he cleared the garden hedge, gained the fields, and in less than ten minutes was half a league away from the village.
After making sure that the unevenness of the ground prevented him from being seen, he paused for a moment to take breath, for he was quite exhausted and would have sunk down senseless if this furious flight had continued twenty seconds longer.
But he had hardly seated himself, before confused cries struck upon his ears. He rose and listened.
It was his pursuers.
What was he to do? Exhausted, breathless, he could run no further and they were there, on his heels. He cast a desperate glance around him. Everywhere he saw the level plain—without a rock, without a hollow, without a clump of trees, in which he could hide himself. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a shining pool of standing water, on the margin of which there was a growth of tall reeds, and he gasped:
"Let's try it."
"The murderer struck him two heavy blows."
He dragged himself to the pool, in which he hid himself up to the neck, drawing over his head the reeds and water-plants, then remained as motionless as if he had taken root in the mud.
The water had become still and smooth as a mirror when the twenty peasants arrived at the edge of the pool, preceded by the brigadier, who, thanks to the care of the landlord of the tavern, had speedily recovered from the stunning effects of the blows he had received.
"Now," cried Daddy Faucheux, from the back of his horse, and examining the country in all directions, "where in the name of wonder can that scoundrel have got to!"
"It's odd," said a young peasant; "five minutes ago I saw him plainly—and, now, not a glimpse of him! and yet the ground's flat and green for three leagues round, without so much as a mole's hole in which he could hide his nose."
"He can't be far off," said the brigadier. "Let us divide and spread over the plain, searching every bit of it, and coming back here last."
Pierre Picard heard the party disperse, uttering threats against him.
Still standing motionless in the pool, he trembled in every limb, and dared not change his position for fear of betraying his presence by agitating the water about him, or by deranging the reeds and water-plants with which he had covered his head. He passed an hour in this position, studying the sound of the steps crossing each other on the plain, of which his ears, eagerly strained, caught the least perceptible echoes.
At the end of that time the whole of the party were again collected about the pool.
"Thunder and lightning!" cried the brigadier, furiously; "the brigand has escaped us, but how the plague could he have done it?"
"He must be a sorcerer!" said a peasant.
"Sorcerer or not, I'll not give him up," replied Daddy Faucheux. I'll just give Sapajou time to swallow a mouthful of water at this pool, and we'll both slip off to the edge of the frontier, towards which the beggar is sure to make his way."
And turning his horse towards the pool, he reined him up just at the spot where the fugitive was hidden amid the tuft of reeds. The animal stretched forward his neck, sniffed the air strongly, then quickly drew back his head and refused to advance. Pierre Picard felt the beast's warm breath upon his cheek.
The brigadier gently flipped Sapajou's ears to force him to enter the pool, but the animal backed a couple of paces, and his master was unable, either by blows or pattings, to induce him to obey.
"Oh! we are in our tantrums!" cried the brigadier, furious at a resistance to which he was wholly unused; "we'll see which of us is going to give in to the other."
And he was preparing to flog poor Sapajou severely, when, as it understanding the impending danger, the animal wheeled suddenly to the left and entered the pool some paces further off.
"That's all the better for you," said the brigadier. Then, while his horse was drinking, he said to the peasants:
"Now, my good fellows, you can go back to the village; I and Sapajou will see to the rest."
The peasants moved off, wishing him good luck. Then the horse, having sufficiently satisfied his thirst, left the water and set off across the fields, stimulated by the voice of his master.
The murderer was left alone.
"The animal quickly drew back his head."
But, though he was benumbed with cold, he allowed more than a quarter of an hour to pass before venturing to quit his retreat. At length he came from the pool, dripping with water, his head and shoulders covered with water-grass and plants which clung to his skin and clothes, his body shivering, his face cadaverous. He cast a long glance over the deserted plain, and tried to speak, but his teeth clattered together so violently that it was some moments before he could articulate a word.
"Saved!" he gasped at length.
Then he continued, with profound dejection:
"Yes, saved—for the hour! But the brigadier waits for me on the frontier; the gendarmerie are warned, the whole population are on foot; the hunt is going to begin again against the common enemy—against the mad dog. The struggle—for ever the struggle—without cessation, without pity! All men against me, and God as well! It is too much—it is beyond my strength!"
While speaking he mechanically freed himself from the slimy weeds with which he was covered.
He gazed upon the solitude by which he was surrounded, and it appeared to terrify him: he seemed to feel in his heart the same cold, sullen, desolate solitude.
Then he took his head between his hands, and for five minutes remained plunged in his reflections.
"So be it," he said at length, in a resolute tone.
And he set in the direction of the village from which he had fled.
An hour afterwards he entered the tavern where the brigadier had been so near capturing him.
All the peasants who had pursued him were there.
"The assassin!" they cried in bewilderment.
"Yes," replied the murderer, calmly, "it is Pierre Picard, the assassin, who has come to give himself up. Go and find the gendarmes."
He seated himself in the middle of the tavern, calm and unmoved.
Two gendarmes speedily arrived. Pierre Picard recognised them as those who, the evening before, had passed close by the elm in which he had taken refuge. He held out his hands to them silently. They placed handcuffs upon his wrists, and led him to a room at the Mairie, which was to serve provisionally as his dungeon, before he was transferred to the neighbouring city.
When he found himself alone, shut up securely in this prison, the door of which was guarded by two gendarmes, the murderer sank upon his camp bed, and cried with a sort of fierce enjoyment:
"At last I can rest!"
