Before we come to the dark story of that night in the inn, it is but fair to Frances to say that she came there with no definite evil purpose. She had been cheerful on her journey from Munich. There was one clear fact in her brain: She was on her way to George.
The countless toy farms of southern France, trimmed neatly by the inch, swept past her. In Brittany came melancholy stretches of brown heath and rain-beaten hills; or great affluent estates, the Manor houses covered with thatch, stagnant pools close to the doors, the cattle breaking through the slovenly wattled walls.
Frances, being a farmer, felt a vague amusement at these things, but they were all dim to her as a faded landscape hanging on the wall.
She was going to George.
Sometimes she seemed to be in Lucy's room again, with the sweet, clean air of youth about her. All of that purity and love might have gone into George's life—before it fell into the slough.
But she was going now to take it out of the slough.
There was a merchant and his wife from Geneva in the carriage with their little boy, a pretty child of five. Frances played and joked with him.
"Has madam also a son?" his mother asked civilly.
She said yes, and presently added, "My son has now a great trouble, but I am going to relieve him of it."
The woman, startled, stared at her.
"Is it not right for me to rid him of it?" she demanded loudly.
"Mais oui, certainement," said the Swiss. She watched Frances after that furtively. Her eyes, she thought, were quite sane. But how eccentric all of these Americans were!
Mrs. Waldeaux reached Vannes at nightfall. At last! Here was the place in this great empty world where he was.
When the diligence entered the courtyard, George was so near to the gate that the smoke of his cigar was blown into her face, but he did not see her. He was lean and pale, and his eyes told his misery. When she saw them his mother grew sick from head to foot with a sudden nausea. This was his wife's doing. She was killing him! Frances hurried into the inn, her legs giving way under her. She could not speak to him. She must think what to do.
She was taken to her room. It was dark, and across the corridor she saw Lisa in her lighted chamber. This was good luck! God had put the creature at once into her hands to deal with!
She was conscious of a strange exaltation, as if from wine—as if she would never need to sleep nor eat again. Her thoughts came and went like flashes of fire. She watched Lisa as she would a vampire, a creeping deadly beast. Pauline Felix—all that was adulterous and vile in women—there it was!
Her mind too, as never before, was full of a haughty complacency in herself. She felt like the member of some petty sect who is sure that God communes with him inside of his altar rails, while the man is outside whom he believes that God made only to be damned.
Lisa began to undress. Frances quickly turned away, ashamed of peeping into her chamber. But the one fact burned on into her brain:
The woman was killing George.
If God would rid the world of her! If a storm should rise now, and the lightning strike the house, and these stone walls should fall on her, now—now!
But the walls stood firm and the moonlight shone tranquilly on the world outside.
She told herself to be calm—to be just. But there was no justice while this woman went on with her work! God saw. He meant her to be stopped. Frances prayed to him frantically that Lisa might soon be put off of the earth. Just as the Catholic used to pray before he massacred the Huguenot, or the Protestant, when he tied his Catholic brother to the stake. If this woman was mad for blood, it was a madness that many sincere people have shared.
Colette was busy with her mistress for a long time. She was very gentle and tender, being fond of Lisa, as people of her class always were. She raised her voice as she made ready to leave the room.
"If the pain returns, here is the powder of morphia, mixed, within madame's reach," she said.
Frances came close to the door.
"And if it continues?" asked Lisa.
"Let monsieur call me. I would not trust him to measure a powder," Colette said, laughing. "It is too dangerous. He is not used to it—like me."
Mrs. Waldeaux saw her lay a paper package on a shelf.
"I will pray that the pain will not return," the girl said. "But if it does, let monsieur knock at my door. Here is the tisane when you are thirsty." She placed a goblet of milky liquid near the bed.
What more she said Frances did not hear.
It was to be! There was the morphia, and yonder the night drink within her reach. It was God's will.
Colette turned out the lamp, hesitated, and sat down by the fire. Presently she rose softly, bent over her mistress, and, finding her asleep, left the room noiselessly. Her door closed far down the corridor.
Mrs. Waldeaux was quite alone, now.
It was but a step across the hall. So easy to do—easy. It must be done at once.
But her feet were like lead, she could not move; her tongue lay icy cold in her mouth. Her soul was willing, but her body rebelled.
What folly was this? It was the work of a moment. George would be free. She would have freed him.
In God's name then——
She crossed the hall softly. Into the hell of her thoughts flashed a little womanish shame, that she, Frances Waldeaux, should be walking on tiptoe, like a thief.
She took down the package, and leaning over the table at the side of the bed, shook the white powder into the glass. Then she went back to her room and shut the door.
The casement was open and the moonlight was white outside. She was conscious that the glare hurt her eyes, and that there was a strange stricture about her jaws and the base of her brain, like an iron hand.
It seemed to her but a minute that she stood there, but the dawn was breaking when there was a sudden confusion in the opposite room. She heard Colette's voice, and then George's, calling Lisa.
There was no answer.
Frances stood up, to listen. "Will she not speak?" she cried. "Make her speak!"
But in reality she said nothing. Even her breath had stopped to listen.
There was no answer.
Frances was awake now, for the rest of her life. She knew what she had done.
"Why, George," she said, "she cannot speak. She is dead. I did it."
She stood in the room a minute, looking from side to side, and then went with measured steps out of it, down the corridor and into the street.
"I did it," she said to herself again and again, as she walked slowly on.
The old cathedral is opposite to the inn. Her eyes, as she passed, rested on the gargoyles, and she thought how fine they were. One was a ridiculous head with lolling tongue.
A priest's voice inside was chanting mass. A dozen Breton women in their huge white winged caps and wooden shoes hurried up to the door, through the gray fog. They met Mrs. Waldeaux and saw her face. They huddled to one side, crossing themselves, and when she passed, stood still, forgetting the mass and looking, frightened, up the steep street behind her to find what horror had pursued her.
"They know what I have done," she said aloud.
Once when she was a child she had accidentally seen a bloated wretch, a murderer, on his way to the gallows.
"I am he," she thought. "I—I, Frances."
Then the gargoyle came into her mind again. What a capital headpiece it would make for "Quigg's" next column! It was time this week's jokes were sent.
But at last these ghosts of yesterday's life faded out, and she saw the fact.
She had hated her son's wife and had killed her!
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