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The Crimson Flag
by
“She was a queen, she stood up there before me,
My blood went roarin’ when she touched my hand;
She kissed me on the lips, and then she swore me
To die for her–and happy was the land.”
A new and singular look came into her face. It trans formed her. “That,” she said in a whisper to herself–“that! He knows the way.”
As her husband turned towards his home, she turned also. He heard the rustle of garments, and he could just discern the cloaked figure in the shadows. He hurried on; the figure flitted ahead of him. A fear possessed him in spite of his will. He turned back. The figure stood still for a moment, then followed him. He braced himself, faced about, and walked towards it: it stopped and waited. He had not the courage. He went back again swiftly towards the house he had left. Again he looked behind him. The figure was standing, not far, in the pines. He wheeled suddenly towards the house, turned a key in the door, and entered.
Then the wife went to that which had been her home: Heldon did not go thither until the first flush of morning. Pierre, returning from an all-night sitting at cards, met him, and saw the careworn look on his face. The half-breed smiled. He knew that the event was doubling on the man. When Heldon reached his house, he went to his wife’s room. It was locked. Then he walked down to his mines with a miserable shame and anger at his heart. He did not pass The Crimson Flag. He went by another way.
That evening, in the dusk, a woman knocked at Tom Liffey’s door. He opened it.
“Are you alone”? she said. “I am alone, lady.”
“I will come in,” she added. “You will–come in”? he faltered.
She drew near him, and reached out and gently caught his hand.
“Ah!” he said, with a sound almost like a sob in its intensity, and the blood flushed to his hair.
He stepped aside, and she entered. In the light of the candle her eye burned into his, but her face wore a shining coldness. She leaned towards him.
“You said you could worship me,” she whispered, “and you cursed him. Well–worship me–altogether–and that will curse him, as he has killed me.”
“Dear lady!” he said, in an awed, overwhelmed murmur; and he fell back to the wall.
She came towards him. “Am I not beautiful”? she urged. She took his hand. His eye swam with hers. But his look was different from hers, though he could not know that. His was the madness of a man in a dream; hers was a painful thing. The Furies dwelt in her. She softly lifted his hand above his head, and whispered: “Swear.” And she kissed him. Her lips were icy, though he did not think so. The blood tossed in his veins. He swore: but, doing so, he could not conceive all that would be required of him. He was hers, body and soul, and she had resolved on a grim thing…. In the darkness, they left the hut and passed into the woods, and slowly up through the hills.
Heldon returned to his home that night to find it empty. There were no servants. There was no wife. Her cat and dog lay dead upon the hearthrug. Her clothing was cut into strips. Her wedding-dress was a charred heap on the fireplace. Her jewellery lay molten with it. Her portrait had been torn from its frame.
An intolerable fear possessed him. Drops of sweat hung on his forehead and his hands. He fled towards the town. He bit his finger-nails till they bled as he passed the house in the pines. He lifted his arm as if the flappings of The Crimson Flag were blows in his face.
At last he passed Tom Liffey’s hut. He saw Pierre, coming from it. The look on the gambler’s face was one, of gloomy wonder. His fingers trembled as he lighted a cigarette, and that was an unusual thing. The form of Heldon edged within the light. Pierre dropped the match and said to him,–“You are looking for your wife?”