El Dorado - Part II

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El Dorado

PART II

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XXIV. The News

The grey January day was falling, drowsy, and dull into the arms of night.

Marguerite, sitting in the dusk beside the fire in her small boudoir, shivered a little as she drew her scarf closer round her shoulders.

Edwards, the butler, entered with the lamp. The room looked peculiarly cheery now, with the delicate white panelling of the wall glowing under the soft kiss of the flickering firelight and the steadier glow of the rose-shaded lamp.

“Has the courier not arrived yet, Edwards?” asked Marguerite, fixing the impassive face of the well-drilled servant with her large purple-rimmed eyes.

“Not yet, m’lady,” he replied placidly.

“It is his day, is it not?”

“Yes, m’lady. And the forenoon is his time. But there have been heavy rains, and the roads must be rare muddy. He must have been delayed, m’lady.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said listlessly. “That will do, Edwards. No, don’t close the shutters. I’ll ring presently.”

The man went out of the room as automatically as he had come. He closed the door behind him, and Marguerite was once more alone.

She picked up the book which she had fingered idly before the light gave out. She tried once more to fix her attention on this tale of love and adventure written by Mr. Fielding; but she had lost the thread of the story, and there was a mist between her eyes and the printed pages.

With an impatient gesture she threw down the book and passed her hand across her eyes, then seemed astonished to find that her hand was wet.

She rose and went to the window. The air outside had been singularly mild all day; the thaw was persisting, and a south wind came across the Channel⁠—from France.

Marguerite threw open the casement and sat down on the wide sill, leaning her head against the window-frame, and gazing out into the fast gathering gloom. From far away, at the foot of the gently sloping lawns, the river murmured softly in the night; in the borders to the right and left a few snowdrops still showed like tiny white specks through the surrounding darkness. Winter had begun the process of slowly shedding its mantle, coquetting with Spring, who still lingered in the land of Infinity. Gradually the shadows drew closer and closer; the reeds and rushes on the river bank were the first to sink into their embrace, then the big cedars on the lawn, majestic and defiant, but yielding still unconquered to the power of night.

The tiny stars of snowdrop blossoms vanished one by one, and at last the cool, grey ribbon of the river surface was wrapped under the mantle of evening.

Only the south wind lingered on, soughing gently in the drowsy reeds, whispering among the branches of the cedars, and gently stirring the tender corollas of the sleeping snowdrops.

Marguerite seemed to open out her lungs to its breath. It had come all the way from France, and on its wings had brought something of Percy⁠—a murmur as if he had spoken⁠—a memory that was as intangible as a dream.

She shivered again, though of a truth it was not cold. The courier’s delay had completely unsettled her nerves. Twice a week he came especially from Dover, and always he brought some message, some token which Percy had contrived to send from Paris. They were like tiny scraps of dry bread thrown to a starving woman, but they did just help to keep her heart alive⁠—that poor, aching, disappointed heart that so longed for enduring happiness which it could never get.

The man whom she loved with all her soul, her mind and her body, did not belong to her; he belonged to suffering humanity over there in terror-stricken France, where the cries of the innocent, the persecuted, the wretched called louder to him than she in her love could do.

He had been away three months now, during which time her starving heart had fed on its memories, and the happiness of a brief visit from him six weeks ago, when⁠—quite unexpectedly⁠—he had appeared before her⁠ ⁠… home between two desperate adventures that had given life and freedom to a number of innocent people, and nearly cost him his⁠—and she had lain in his arms in a swoon of perfect happiness.

But he had gone away again as suddenly as he had come, and for six weeks now she had lived partly in anticipation of the courier with messages from him, and partly on the fitful joy engendered by these messages. Today she had not even that, and the disappointment seemed just now more than she could bear.

She felt unaccountably restless, and could she but have analysed her feelings⁠—had she dared so to do⁠—she would have realised that the weight which oppressed her heart so that she could hardly breathe, was one of vague yet dark foreboding.

She closed the window and returned to her seat by the fire, taking up her hook with the strong resolution not to allow her nerves to get the better of her. But it was difficult to pin one’s attention down to the adventures of Master Tom Jones when one’s mind was fully engrossed with those of Sir Percy Blakeney.

The sound of carriage wheels on the gravelled forecourt in the front of the house suddenly awakened her drowsy senses. She threw down the book, and with trembling hands clutched the arms of her chair, straining her ears to listen. A carriage at this hour⁠—and on this damp winter’s evening! She racked her mind wondering who it could be.

Lady Ffoulkes was in London, she knew. Sir Andrew, of course, was in Paris. His Royal Highness, ever a faithful visitor, would surely not venture out to Richmond in this inclement weather⁠—and the courier always came on horseback.

There was a murmur of voices; that of Edwards, mechanical and placid, could be heard quite distinctly saying:

“I’m sure that her ladyship will be at home for you, m’lady. But I’ll go and ascertain.”

Marguerite ran to the door and with joyful eagerness tore it open.

“Suzanne!” she called⁠—“my little Suzanne! I thought you were in London. Come up quickly! In the boudoir⁠—yes. Oh! what good fortune hath brought you?”

Suzanne flew into her arms, holding the friend whom she loved so well close and closer to her heart, trying to hide her face, which was wet with tears, in the folds of Marguerite’s kerchief.

“Come inside, my darling,” said Marguerite. “Why, how cold your little hands are!”

She was on the point of turning back to her boudoir, drawing Lady Ffoulkes by the hand, when suddenly she caught sight of Sir Andrew, who stood at a little distance from her, at the top of the stairs.

“Sir Andrew!” she exclaimed with unstinted gladness.

Then she paused. The cry of welcome died on her lips, leaving them dry and parted. She suddenly felt as if some fearful talons had gripped her heart and were tearing at it with sharp, long nails; the blood flew from her cheeks and from her limbs, leaving her with a sense of icy numbness.

She backed into the room, still holding Suzanne’s hand, and drawing her in with her. Sir Andrew followed them, then closed the door behind him. At last the word escaped Marguerite’s parched lips:

“Percy! Something has happened to him! He is dead?”

“No, no!” exclaimed Sir Andrew quickly.

Suzanne put her loving arms round her friend and drew her down into the chair by the fire. She knelt at her feet on the hearthrug, and pressed her own burning lips on Marguerite’s icy-cold hands. Sir Andrew stood silently by, a world of loving friendship, of heartbroken sorrow, in his eyes.

There was silence in the pretty white-panelled room for a while. Marguerite sat with her eyes closed, bringing the whole armoury of her will power to bear her up outwardly now.

“Tell me!” she said at last, and her voice was toneless and dull, like one that came from the depths of a grave⁠—“tell me⁠—exactly⁠—everything. Don’t be afraid. I can bear it. Don’t be afraid.”

Sir Andrew remained standing, with bowed head and one hand resting on the table. In a firm, clear voice he told her the events of the past few days as they were known to him. All that he tried to hide was Armand’s disobedience, which, in his heart, he felt was the primary cause of the catastrophe. He told of the rescue of the Dauphin from the Temple, the midnight drive in the coal-cart, the meeting with Hastings and Tony in the spinney. He only gave vague explanations of Armand’s stay in Paris which caused Percy to go back to the city, even at the moment when his most daring plan had been so successfully carried through.

“Armand, I understand, has fallen in love with a beautiful woman in Paris, Lady Blakeney,” he said, seeing that a strange, puzzled look had appeared in Marguerite’s pale face. “She was arrested the day before the rescue of the Dauphin from the Temple. Armand could not join us. He felt that he could not leave her. I am sure that you will understand.”

Then as she made no comment, he resumed his narrative:

“I had been ordered to go back to La Villette, and there to resume my duties as a labourer in the daytime, and to wait for Percy during the night. The fact that I had received no message from him for two days had made me somewhat worried, but I have such faith in him, such belief in his good luck and his ingenuity, that I would not allow myself to be really anxious. Then on the third day I heard the news.”

“What news?” asked Marguerite mechanically.

“That the Englishman who was known as the Scarlet Pimpernel had been captured in a house in the Rue de la Croix Blanche, and had been imprisoned in the Conciergerie.”

“The Rue de la Croix Blanche? Where is that?”

“In the Montmartre quarter. Armand lodged there. Percy, I imagine, was working to get him away; and those brutes captured him.”

“Having heard the news, Sir Andrew, what did you do?”

“I went into Paris and ascertained its truth.”

“And there is no doubt of it?”

“Alas, none! I went to the house in the Rue de la Croix Blanche. Armand had disappeared. I succeeded in inducing the concierge to talk. She seems to have been devoted to her lodger. Amidst tears she told me some of the details of the capture. Can you bear to hear them, Lady Blakeney?”

“Yes⁠—tell me everything⁠—don’t be afraid,” she reiterated with the same dull monotony.

“It appears that early on the Tuesday morning the son of the concierge⁠—a lad about fifteen⁠—was sent off by her lodger with a message to No. 9 Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois. That was the house where Percy was staying all last week, where he kept disguises and so on for us all, and where some of our meetings were held. Percy evidently expected that Armand would try and communicate with him at that address, for when the lad arrived in front of the house he was accosted⁠—so he says⁠—by a big, rough workman, who browbeat him into giving up the lodger’s letter, and finally pressed a piece of gold into his hand. The workman was Blakeney, of course. I imagine that Armand, at the time that he wrote the letter, must have been under the belief that Mademoiselle Lange was still in prison; he could not know then that Blakeney had already got her into comparative safety. In the letter he must have spoken of the terrible plight in which he stood, and also of his fears for the woman whom he loved. Percy was not the man to leave a comrade in the lurch! He would not be the man whom we all love and admire, whose word we all obey, for whose sake we would gladly all of us give our life⁠—he would not be that man if he did not brave even certain dangers in order to be of help to those who call on him. Armand called and Percy went to him. He must have known that Armand was being spied upon, for Armand, alas! was already a marked man, and the watchdogs of those infernal committees were already on his heels. Whether these sleuthhounds had followed the son of the concierge and seen him give the letter to the workman in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois, or whether the concierge in the Rue de la Croix Blanche was nothing but a spy of Héron’s, or, again whether the Committee of General Security kept a company of soldiers in constant alert in that house, we shall, of course, never know. All that I do know is that Percy entered that fatal house at half-past ten, and that a quarter of an hour later the concierge saw some of the soldiers descending the stairs, carrying a heavy burden. She peeped out of her lodge, and by the light in the corridor she saw that the heavy burden was the body of a man bound closely with ropes: his eyes were closed, his clothes were stained with blood. He was seemingly unconscious. The next day the official organ of the Government proclaimed the capture of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and there was a public holiday in honour of the event.”

Marguerite had listened to this terrible narrative dry-eyed and silent. Now she still sat there, hardly conscious of what went on around her⁠—of Suzanne’s tears, that fell unceasingly upon her fingers⁠—of Sir Andrew, who had sunk into a chair, and buried his head in his hands. She was hardly conscious that she lived; the universe seemed to have stood still before this awful, monstrous cataclysm.

But, nevertheless, she was the first to return to the active realities of the present.

“Sir Andrew,” she said after a while, “tell me, where are my Lords Tony and Hastings?”

“At Calais, madam,” he replied. “I saw them there on my way hither. They had delivered the Dauphin safely into the hands of his adherents at Mantes, and were awaiting Blakeney’s further orders, as he had commanded them to do.”

“Will they wait for us there, think you?”

“For us, Lady Blakeney?” he exclaimed in puzzlement.

“Yes, for us, Sir Andrew,” she replied, whilst the ghost of a smile flitted across her drawn face; “you had thought of accompanying me to Paris, had you not?”

“But Lady Blakeney⁠—”

“Ah! I know what you would say, Sir Andrew. You will speak of dangers, of risks, of death, mayhap; you will tell me that I as a woman can do nothing to help my husband⁠—that I could be but a hindrance to him, just as I was in Boulogne. But everything is so different now. Whilst those brutes planned his capture he was clever enough to outwit them, but now they have actually got him, think you they’ll let him escape? They’ll watch him night and day, my friend, just as they watched the unfortunate Queen; but they’ll not keep him months, weeks, or even days in prison⁠—even Chauvelin now will no longer attempt to play with the Scarlet Pimpernel. They have him, and they will hold him until such time as they take him to the guillotine.”

Her voice broke in a sob; her self-control was threatening to leave her. She was but a woman, young and passionately in love with the man who was about to die an ignominious death, far away from his country, his kindred, his friends.

“I cannot let him die alone, Sir Andrew; he will be longing for me, and⁠—and, after all, there is you, and my Lord Tony, and Lord Hastings and the others; surely⁠—surely we are not going to let him die, not like that, and not alone.”

“You are right, Lady Blakeney,” said Sir Andrew earnestly; “we are not going to let him die, if human agency can do aught to save him. Already Tony, Hastings and I have agreed to return to Paris. There are one or two hidden places in and around the city known only to Percy and to the members of the League where he must find one or more of us if he succeeds in getting away. All the way between Paris and Calais we have places of refuge, places where any of us can hide at a given moment; where we can find disguises when we want them, or horses in an emergency. No! no! we are not going to despair, Lady Blakeney; there are nineteen of us prepared to lay down our lives for the Scarlet Pimpernel. Already I, as his lieutenant, have been selected as the leader of as determined a gang as has ever entered on a work of rescue before. We leave for Paris tomorrow, and if human pluck and devotion can destroy mountains then we’ll destroy them. Our watchword is: ‘God save the Scarlet Pimpernel.’ ”

He knelt beside her chair and kissed the cold fingers which, with a sad little smile, she held out to him.

“And God bless you all!” she murmured.

Suzanne had risen to her feet when her husband knelt; now he stood up beside her. The dainty young woman hardly more than a child⁠—was doing her best to restrain her tears.

“See how selfish I am,” said Marguerite. “I talk calmly of taking your husband from you, when I myself know the bitterness of such partings.”

“My husband will go where his duty calls him,” said Suzanne with charming and simple dignity. “I love him with all my heart, because he is brave and good. He could not leave his comrade, who is also his chief, in the lurch. God will protect him, I know. I would not ask him to play the part of a coward.”

Her brown eyes glowed with pride. She was the true wife of a soldier, and with all her dainty ways and childlike manners she was a splendid woman and a staunch friend. Sir Percy Blakeney had saved her entire family from death, the Comte and Comtesse de Tournai, the Vicomte, her brother, and she herself all owed their lives to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

This she was not like to forget.

“There is but little danger for us, I fear me,” said Sir Andrew lightly; “the revolutionary Government only wants to strike at a head, it cares nothing for the limbs. Perhaps it feels that without our leader we are enemies not worthy of persecution. If there are any dangers, so much the better,” he added; “but I don’t anticipate any, unless we succeed in freeing our chief; and having freed him, we fear nothing more.”

“The same applies to me, Sir Andrew,” rejoined Marguerite earnestly. “Now that they have captured Percy, those human fiends will care naught for me. If you succeed in freeing Percy I, like you, will have nothing more to fear, and if you fail⁠—”

She paused and put her small, white hand on Sir Andrew’s arm.

“Take me with you, Sir Andrew,” she entreated; “do not condemn me to the awful torture of weary waiting, day after day, wondering, guessing, never daring to hope, lest hope deferred be more hard to bear than dreary hopelessness.”

Then as Sir Andrew, very undecided, yet half inclined to yield, stood silent and irresolute, she pressed her point, gently but firmly insistent.

“I would not be in the way, Sir Andrew; I would know how to efface myself so as not to interfere with your plans. But, oh!” she added, while a quivering note of passion trembled in her voice, “can’t you see that I must breathe the air that he breathes else I shall stifle or mayhap go mad?”

Sir Andrew turned to his wife, a mute query in his eyes.

“You would do an inhuman and a cruel act,” said Suzanne with seriousness that sat quaintly on her baby face, “if you did not afford your protection to Marguerite, for I do believe that if you did not take her with you tomorrow she would go to Paris alone.”

Marguerite thanked her friend with her eyes. Suzanne was a child in nature, but she had a woman’s heart. She loved her husband, and, therefore, knew and understood what Marguerite must be suffering now.

Sir Andrew no longer could resist the unfortunate woman’s earnest pleading. Frankly, he thought that if she remained in England while Percy was in such deadly peril she ran the grave risk of losing her reason before the terrible strain of suspense. He knew her to be a woman of courage, and one capable of great physical endurance; and really he was quite honest when he said that he did not believe there would be much danger for the headless League of the Scarlet Pimpernel unless they succeeded in freeing their chief. And if they did succeed, then indeed there would be nothing to fear, for the brave and loving wife who, like every true woman does, and has done in like circumstances since the beginning of time, was only demanding with passionate insistence the right to share the fate, good or ill, of the man whom she loved.

XXV. Paris Once More

Sir Andrew had just come in. He was trying to get a little warmth into his half-frozen limbs, for the cold had set in again, and this time with renewed vigour, and Marguerite was pouring out a cup of hot coffee which she had been brewing for him. She had not asked for news. She knew that he had none to give her, else he had not worn that wearied, despondent look in his kind face.

“I’ll just try one more place this evening,” he said as soon as he had swallowed some of the hot coffee⁠—“a restaurant in the Rue de la Harpe; the members of the Cordeliers’ Club often go there for supper, and they are usually well informed. I might glean something definite there.”

“It seems very strange that they are so slow in bringing him to trial,” said Marguerite in that dull, toneless voice which had become habitual to her. “When you first brought me the awful news that⁠ ⁠… I made sure that they would bring him to trial at once, and was in terror lest we arrived here too late to⁠—to see him.”

She checked herself quickly, bravely trying to still the quiver of her voice.

“And of Armand?” she asked.

He shook his head sadly.

“With regard to him I am at a still greater loss,” he said: “I cannot find his name on any of the prison registers, and I know that he is not in the Conciergerie. They have cleared out all the prisoners from there; there is only Percy⁠—”

“Poor Armand!” she sighed; “it must be almost worse for him than for any of us; it was his first act of thoughtless disobedience that brought all this misery upon our heads.”

She spoke sadly but quietly. Sir Andrew noted that there was no bitterness in her tone. But her very quietude was heartbreaking; there was such an infinity of despair in the calm of her eyes.

“Well! though we cannot understand it all, Lady Blakeney,” he said with forced cheerfulness, “we must remember one thing⁠—that whilst there is life there is hope.”

“Hope!” she exclaimed with a world of pathos in her sigh, her large eyes dry and circled, fixed with indescribable sorrow on her friend’s face.

Ffoulkes turned his head away, pretending to busy himself with the coffee-making utensils. He could not bear to see that look of hopelessness in her face, for in his heart he could not find the wherewithal to cheer her. Despair was beginning to seize on him too, and this he would not let her see.

They had been in Paris three days now, and it was six days since Blakeney had been arrested. Sir Andrew and Marguerite had found temporary lodgings inside Paris, Tony and Hastings were just outside the gates, and all along the route between Paris and Calais, at St. Germain, at Mantes, in the villages between Beauvais and Amiens, wherever money could obtain friendly help, members of the devoted League of the Scarlet Pimpernel lay in hiding, waiting to aid their chief.

Ffoulkes had ascertained that Percy was kept a close prisoner in the Conciergerie, in the very rooms occupied by Marie Antoinette during the last months of her life. He left poor Marguerite to guess how closely that elusive Scarlet Pimpernel was being guarded, the precautions surrounding him being even more minute than those which had made the unfortunate Queen’s closing days a martyrdom for her.

But of Armand he could glean no satisfactory news, only the negative probability that he was not detained in any of the larger prisons of Paris, as no register which he, Ffoulkes, so laboriously consulted bore record of the name of St. Just.

Haunting the restaurants and drinking booths where the most advanced Jacobins and Terrorists were wont to meet, he had learned one or two details of Blakeney’s incarceration which he could not possibly impart to Marguerite. The capture of the mysterious Englishman known as the Scarlet Pimpernel had created a great deal of popular satisfaction; but it was obvious that not only was the public mind not allowed to associate that capture with the escape of little Capet from the Temple, but it soon became clear to Ffoulkes that the news of that escape was still being kept a profound secret.

On one occasion he had succeeded in spying on the Chief Agent of the Committee of General Security, whom he knew by sight, while the latter was sitting at dinner in the company of a stout, florid man with pockmarked face and podgy hands covered with rings.

Sir Andrew marvelled who this man might be. Héron spoke to him in ambiguous phrases that would have been unintelligible to anyone who did not know the circumstances of the Dauphin’s escape and the part that the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel had played in it. But to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, who⁠—cleverly disguised as a farrier, grimy after his day’s work⁠—was straining his ears to listen whilst apparently consuming huge slabs of boiled beef, it soon became clear that the chief agent and his fat friend were talking of the Dauphin and of Blakeney.

“He won’t hold out much longer, citizen,” the chief agent was saying in a confident voice; “our men are absolutely unremitting in their task. Two of them watch him night and day; they look after him well, and practically never lose sight of him, but the moment he tries to get any sleep one of them rushes into the cell with a loud banging of bayonet and sabre, and noisy tread on the flagstones, and shouts at the top of his voice: ‘Now then, aristo, where’s the brat? Tell us now, and you shall be down and go to sleep.’ I have done it myself all through one day just for the pleasure of it. It’s a little tiring for you to have to shout a good deal now, and sometimes give the cursed Englishman a good shakeup. He has had five days of it, and not one wink of sleep during that time⁠—not one single minute of rest⁠—and he only gets enough food to keep him alive. I tell you he can’t last. Citizen Chauvelin had a splendid idea there. It will all come right in a day or two.”

“H’m!” grunted the other sulkily; “those Englishmen are tough.”

“Yes!” retorted Héron with a grim laugh and a leer of savagery that made his gaunt face look positively hideous⁠—“you would have given out after three days, friend de Batz, would you not? And I warned you, didn’t I? I told you if you tampered with the brat I would make you cry in mercy to me for death.”

“And I warned you,” said the other imperturbably, “not to worry so much about me, but to keep your eyes open for those cursed Englishmen.”

“I am keeping my eyes open for you, nevertheless, my friend. If I thought you knew where the vermin’s spawn was at this moment I would⁠—”

“You would put me on the same rack that you or your precious friend, Chauvelin, have devised for the Englishman. But I don’t know where the lad is. If I did I would not be in Paris.”

“I know that,” assented Héron with a sneer; “you would soon be after the reward⁠—over in Austria, what?⁠—but I have your movements tracked day and night, my friend. I dare say you are as anxious as we are as to the whereabouts of the child. Had he been taken over the frontier you would have been the first to hear of it, eh? No,” he added confidently, and as if anxious to reassure himself, “my firm belief is that the original idea of these confounded Englishmen was to try and get the child over to England, and that they alone know where he is. I tell you it won’t be many days before that very withered Scarlet Pimpernel will order his followers to give little Capet up to us. Oh! they are hanging about Paris some of them, I know that; citizen Chauvelin is convinced that the wife isn’t very far away. Give her a sight of her husband now, say I, and she’ll make the others give the child up soon enough.”

The man laughed like some hyena gloating over its prey. Sir Andrew nearly betrayed himself then. He had to dig his nails into his own flesh to prevent himself from springing then and there at the throat of that wretch whose monstrous ingenuity had invented torture for the fallen enemy far worse than any that the cruelties of medieval inquisitions had devised.

So they would not let him sleep! A simple idea born in the brain of a fiend. Héron had spoken of Chauvelin as the originator of the devilry; a man weakened deliberately day by day by insufficient food, and the horrible process of denying him rest. It seemed inconceivable that human, sentient beings should have thought of such a thing. Perspiration stood up in beads on Sir Andrew’s brow when he thought of his friend, brought down by want of sleep to⁠—what? His physique was splendidly powerful, but could it stand against such racking torment for long? And the clear, the alert mind, the scheming brain, the reckless daring⁠—how soon would these become enfeebled by the slow, steady torture of an utter want of rest?

Ffoulkes had to smother a cry of horror, which surely must have drawn the attention of that fiend on himself had he not been so engrossed in the enjoyment of his own devilry. As it is, he ran out of the stuffy eating-house, for he felt as if its fetid air must choke him.

For an hour after that he wandered about the streets, not daring to face Marguerite, lest his eyes betrayed some of the horror which was shaking his very soul.

That was twenty-four hours ago. Today he had learnt little else. It was generally known that the Englishman was in the Conciergerie prison, that he was being closely watched, and that his trial would come on within the next few days; but no one seemed to know exactly when. The public was getting restive, demanding that trial and execution to which everyone seemed to look forward as to a holiday. In the meanwhile the escape of the Dauphin had been kept from the knowledge of the public; Héron and his gang, fearing for their lives, had still hopes of extracting from the Englishman the secret of the lad’s hiding-place, and the means they employed for arriving at this end was worthy of Lucifer and his host of devils in hell.

From other fragments of conversation which Sir Andrew Ffoulkes had gleaned that same evening, it seemed to him that in order to hide their defalcations Héron and the four commissaries in charge of little Capet had substituted a deaf and dumb child for the escaped little prisoner. This miserable small wreck of humanity was reputed to be sick and kept in a darkened room, in bed, and was in that condition exhibited to any member of the Convention who had the right to see him. A partition had been very hastily erected in the inner room once occupied by the Simons, and the child was kept behind that partition, and no one was allowed to come too near to him. Thus the fraud was succeeding fairly well. Héron and his accomplices only cared to save their skins, and the wretched little substitute being really ill, they firmly hoped that he would soon die, when no doubt they would bruit abroad the news of the death of Capet, which would relieve them of further responsibility.

That such ideas, such thoughts, such schemes should have engendered in human minds it is almost impossible to conceive, and yet we know from no less important a witness than Madame Simon herself that the child who died in the Temple a few weeks later was a poor little imbecile, a deaf and dumb child brought hither from one of the asylums and left to die in peace. There was nobody but kindly Death to take him out of his misery, for the giant intellect that had planned and carried out the rescue of the uncrowned King of France, and which alone might have had the power to save him too, was being broken on the rack of enforced sleeplessness.

XXVI. The Bitterest Foe

That same evening Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, having announced his intention of gleaning further news of Armand, if possible, went out shortly after seven o’clock, promising to be home again about nine.

Marguerite, on the other hand, had to make her friend a solemn promise that she would try and eat some supper which the landlady of these miserable apartments had agreed to prepare for her. So far they had been left in peaceful occupation of these squalid lodgings in a tumble-down house on the Quai de la Ferraille, facing the house of Justice, the grim walls of which Marguerite would watch with wide-open dry eyes for as long as the grey wintry light lingered over them.

Even now, though the darkness had set in, and snow, falling in close, small flakes, threw a thick white veil over the landscape, she sat at the open window long after Sir Andrew had gone out, watching the few small flicks of light that blinked across from the other side of the river, and which came from the windows of the Châtelet towers. The windows of the Conciergerie she could not see, for these gave on one of the inner courtyards; but there was a melancholy consolation even in the gazing on those walls that held in their cruel, grim embrace all that she loved in the world.

It seemed so impossible to think of Percy⁠—the laughter-loving, irresponsible, lighthearted adventurer⁠—as the prey of those fiends who would revel in their triumph, who would crush him, humiliate him, insult him⁠—ye gods alive! even torture him, perhaps⁠—that they might break the indomitable spirit that would mock them even on the threshold of death.

Surely, surely God would never allow such monstrous infamy as the deliverance of the noble soaring eagle into the hands of those preying jackals! Marguerite⁠—though her heart ached beyond what human nature could endure, though her anguish on her husband’s account was doubled by that which she felt for her brother⁠—could not bring herself to give up all hope. Sir Andrew said it rightly; while there was life there was hope. While there was life in those vigorous limbs, spirit in that daring mind, how could puny, rampant beasts gain the better of the immortal soul? As for Armand⁠—why, if Percy were free she would have no cause to fear for Armand.

She sighed a sigh of deep, of passionate regret and longing. If she could only see her husband; if she could only look for one second into those laughing, lazy eyes, wherein she alone knew how to fathom the infinity of passion that lay within their depths; if she could but once feel his ardent kiss on her lips, she could more easily endure this agonising suspense, and wait confidently and courageously for the issue.

She turned away from the window, for the night was getting bitterly cold. From the tower of St. Germain l’Auxerrois the clock slowly struck eight. Even as the last sound of the historic bell died away in the distance she heard a timid knocking at the door.

“Enter!” she called unthinkingly.

She thought it was her landlady, come up with more wood, mayhap, for the fire, so she did not turn to the door when she heard it being slowly opened, then closed again, and presently a soft tread on the threadbare carpet.

“May I crave your kind attention, Lady Blakeney?” said a harsh voice, subdued to tones of ordinary courtesy.

She quickly repressed a cry of terror. How well she knew that voice! When last she heard it it was at Boulogne, dictating that infamous letter⁠—the weapon wherewith Percy had so effectually foiled his enemy. She turned and faced the man who was her bitterest foe⁠—hers in the person of the man she loved.

“Chauvelin!” she gasped.

“Himself at your service, dear lady,” he said simply.

He stood in the full light of the lamp, his trim, small figure boldly cut out against the dark wall beyond. He wore the usual sable-coloured clothes which he affected, with the primly-folded jabot and cuffs edged with narrow lace.

Without waiting for permission from her he quietly and deliberately placed his hat and cloak on a chair. Then he turned once more toward her, and made a movement as if to advance into the room; but instinctively she put up a hand as if to ward off the calamity of his approach.

He shrugged his shoulders, and the shadow of a smile, that had neither mirth nor kindliness in it, hovered round the corners of his thin lips.

“Have I your permission to sit?” he asked.

“As you will,” she replied slowly, keeping her wide-open eyes fixed upon him as does a frightened bird upon the serpent whom it loathes and fears.

“And may I crave a few moments of your undivided attention, Lady Blakeney?” he continued, taking a chair, and so placing it beside the table that the light of the lamp when he sat remained behind him and his face was left in shadow.

“Is it necessary?” asked Marguerite.

“It is,” he replied curtly, “if you desire to see and speak with your husband⁠—to be of use to him before it is too late.”

“Then, I pray you, speak, citizen, and I will listen.”

She sank into a chair, not heeding whether the light of the lamp fell on her face or not, whether the lines in her haggard cheeks, or her tear-dimmed eyes showed plainly the sorrow and despair that had traced them. She had nothing to hide from this man, the cause of all the tortures which she endured. She knew that neither courage nor sorrow would move him, and that hatred for Percy⁠—personal deadly hatred for the man who had twice foiled him⁠—had long crushed the last spark of humanity in his heart.

“Perhaps, Lady Blakeney,” he began after a slight pause and in his smooth, even voice, “it would interest you to hear how I succeeded in procuring for myself this pleasure of an interview with you?”

“Your spies did their usual work, I suppose,” she said coldly.

“Exactly. We have been on your track for three days, and yesterday evening an unguarded movement on the part of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes gave us the final clue to your whereabouts.”

“Of Sir Andrew Ffoulkes?” she asked, greatly puzzled.

“He was in an eating-house, cleverly disguised, I own, trying to glean information, no doubt as to the probable fate of Sir Percy Blakeney. As chance would have it, my friend Héron, of the Committee of General Security, chanced to be discussing with reprehensible openness⁠—er⁠—certain⁠—what shall I say?⁠—certain measures which, at my advice, the Committee of Public Safety have been forced to adopt with a view to⁠—”

“A truce on your smooth-tongued speeches, citizen Chauvelin,” she interposed firmly. “Sir Andrew Ffoulkes has told me naught of this⁠—so I pray you speak plainly and to the point, if you can.”

He bowed with marked irony.

“As you please,” he said. “Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, hearing certain matters of which I will tell you anon, made a movement which betrayed him to one of our spies. At a word from citizen Héron this man followed on the heels of the young farrier who had shown such interest in the conversation of the Chief Agent. Sir Andrew, I imagine, burning with indignation at what he had heard, was perhaps not quite so cautious as he usually is. Anyway, the man on his track followed him to this door. It was quite simple, as you see. As for me, I had guessed a week ago that we would see the beautiful Lady Blakeney in Paris before long. When I knew where Sir Andrew Ffoulkes lodged, I had no difficulty in guessing that Lady Blakeney would not be far off.”

“And what was there in citizen Héron’s conversation last night,” she asked quietly, “that so aroused Sir Andrew’s indignation?”

“He has not told you?”

“No.”

“Oh! It is very simple. Let me tell you, Lady Blakeney, exactly how matters stand. Sir Percy Blakeney⁠—before lucky chance at last delivered him into our hands⁠—thought fit, as no doubt you know, to meddle with our most important prisoner of State.”

“A child. I know it, sir⁠—the son of a murdered father whom you and your friends were slowly doing to death.”

“That is as it may be, Lady Blakeney,” rejoined Chauvelin calmly; “but it was none of Sir Percy Blakeney’s business. This, however, he chose to disregard. He succeeded in carrying little Capet from the Temple, and two days later we had him under lock, and key.”

“Through some infamous and treacherous trick, sir,” she retorted.

Chauvelin made no immediate reply; his pale, inscrutable eyes were fixed upon her face, and the smile of irony round his mouth appeared more strongly marked than before.

“That, again, is as it may be,” he said suavely; “but anyhow for the moment we have the upper hand. Sir Percy is in the Conciergerie, guarded day and night, more closely than Marie Antoinette even was guarded.”

“And he laughs at your bolts and bars, sir,” she rejoined proudly. “Remember Calais, remember Boulogne. His laugh at your discomfiture, then, must resound in your ear even today.”

“Yes; but for the moment laughter is on our side. Still we are willing to forego even that pleasure, if Sir Percy will but move a finger towards his own freedom.”

“Again some infamous letter?” she asked with bitter contempt; “some attempt against his honour?”

“No, no, Lady Blakeney,” he interposed with perfect blandness. “Matters are so much simpler now, you see. We hold Sir Percy at our mercy. We could send him to the guillotine tomorrow, but we might be willing⁠—remember, I only say we might⁠—to exercise our prerogative of mercy if Sir Percy Blakeney will on his side accede to a request from us.”

“And that request?”

“Is a very natural one. He took Capet away from us, and it is but credible that he knows at the present moment exactly where the child is. Let him instruct his followers⁠—and I mistake not, Lady Blakeney, there are several of them not very far from Paris just now⁠—let him, I say, instruct these followers of his to return the person of young Capet to us, and not only will we undertake to give these same gentlemen a safe conduct back to England, but we even might be inclined to deal somewhat less harshly with the gallant Scarlet Pimpernel himself.”

She laughed a harsh, mirthless, contemptuous laugh.

“I don’t think that I quite understand,” she said after a moment or two, whilst he waited calmly until her outbreak of hysterical mirth had subsided. “You want my husband⁠—the Scarlet Pimpernel, citizen⁠—to deliver the little King of France to you after he has risked his life to save the child out of your clutches? Is that what you are trying to say?”

“It is,” rejoined Chauvelin complacently, “just what we have been saying to Sir Percy Blakeney for the past six days, madame.”

“Well! then you have had your answer, have you not?”

“Yes,” he replied slowly; “but the answer has become weaker day by day.”

“Weaker? I don’t understand.”

“Let me explain, Lady Blakeney,” said Chauvelin, now with measured emphasis. He put both elbows on the table and leaned well forward, peering into her face, lest one of its varied expressions escaped him. “Just now you taunted me with my failure in Calais, and again at Boulogne, with a proud toss of the head, which I own is excessive becoming; you threw the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel in my face like a challenge which I no longer dare to accept. ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel,’ you would say to me, ‘stands for loyalty, for honour, and for indomitable courage. Think you he would sacrifice his honour to obtain your mercy? Remember Boulogne and your discomfiture!’ All of which, dear lady, is perfectly charming and womanly and enthusiastic, and I, bowing my humble head, must own that I was fooled in Calais and baffled in Boulogne. But in Boulogne I made a grave mistake, and one from which I learned a lesson, which I am putting into practice now.”

He paused a while as if waiting for her reply. His pale, keen eyes had already noted that with every phrase he uttered the lines in her beautiful face became more hard and set. A look of horror was gradually spreading over it, as if the icy-cold hand of death had passed over her eyes and cheeks, leaving them rigid like stone.

“In Boulogne,” resumed Chauvelin quietly, satisfied that his words were hitting steadily at her heart⁠—“in Boulogne Sir Percy and I did not fight an equal fight. Fresh from a pleasant sojourn in his own magnificent home, full of the spirit of adventure which puts the essence of life into a man’s veins, Sir Percy Blakeney’s splendid physique was pitted against my feeble powers. Of course I lost the battle. I made the mistake of trying to subdue a man who was in the zenith of his strength, whereas now⁠—”

“Yes, citizen Chauvelin,” she said, “whereas now⁠—”

“Sir Percy Blakeney has been in the prison of the Conciergerie for exactly one week, Lady Blakeney,” he replied, speaking very slowly, and letting every one of his words sink individually into her mind. “Even before he had time to take the bearings of his cell or to plan on his own behalf one of those remarkable escapes for which he is so justly famous, our men began to work on a scheme which I am proud to say originated with myself. A week has gone by since then, Lady Blakeney, and during that time a special company of prison guard, acting under the orders of the Committee of General Security and of Public Safety, have questioned the prisoner unremittingly⁠—unremittingly, remember⁠—day and night. Two by two these men take it in turns to enter the prisoner’s cell every quarter of an hour⁠—lately it has had to be more often⁠—and ask him the one question, ‘Where is little Capet?’ Up to now we have received no satisfactory reply, although we have explained to Sir Percy that many of his followers are honouring the neighbourhood of Paris with their visit, and that all we ask for from him are instructions to those gallant gentlemen to bring young Capet back to us. It is all very simple, unfortunately the prisoner is somewhat obstinate. At first, even, the idea seemed to amuse him; he used to laugh and say that he always had the faculty of sleeping with his eyes open. But our soldiers are untiring in their efforts, and the want of sleep as well as of a sufficiency of food and of fresh air is certainly beginning to tell on Sir Percy Blakeney’s magnificent physique. I don’t think that it will be very long before he gives way to our gentle persuasions; and in any case now, I assure you, dear lady, that we need not fear any attempt on his part to escape. I doubt if he could walk very steadily across this room⁠—”

Marguerite had sat quite silent and apparently impassive all the while that Chauvelin had been speaking; even now she scarcely stirred. Her face expressed absolutely nothing but deep puzzlement. There was a frown between her brows, and her eyes, which were always of such liquid blue, now looked almost black. She was trying to visualise that which Chauvelin had put before her: a man harassed day and night, unceasingly, unremittingly, with one question allowed neither respite nor sleep⁠—his brain, soul, and body fagged out at every hour, every moment of the day and night, until mind and body and soul must inevitably give way under anguish ten thousand times more unendurable than any physical torment invented by monsters in barbaric times.

That man thus harassed, thus fagged out, thus martyrised at all hours of the day and night, was her husband, whom she loved with every fibre of her being, with every throb of her heart.

Torture? Oh, no! these were advanced and civilised times that could afford to look with horror on the excesses of medieval days. This was a revolution that made for progress, and challenged the opinion of the world. The cells of the Temple of La Force or the Conciergerie held no secret inquisition with iron maidens and racks and thumbscrews; but a few men had put their tortuous brains together, and had said one to another: “We want to find out from that man where we can lay our hands on little Capet, so we won’t let him sleep until he has told us. It is not torture⁠—oh, no! Who would dare to say that we torture our prisoners? It is only a little horseplay, worrying to the prisoner, no doubt; but, after all, he can end the unpleasantness at any moment. He need but to answer our question, and he can go to sleep as comfortably as a little child. The want of sleep is very trying, the want of proper food and of fresh air is very weakening; the prisoner must give way sooner or later⁠—”

So these fiends had decided it between them, and they had put their idea into execution for one whole week. Marguerite looked at Chauvelin as she would on some monstrous, inscrutable Sphinx, marveling if God⁠—even in His anger⁠—could really have created such a fiendish brain, or, having created it, could allow it to wreak such devilry unpunished.

Even now she felt that he was enjoying the mental anguish which he had put upon her, and she saw his thin, evil lips curled into a smile.

“So you came tonight to tell me all this?” she asked as soon as she could trust herself to speak. Her impulse was to shriek out her indignation, her horror of him, into his face. She longed to call down God’s eternal curse upon this fiend; but instinctively she held herself in check. Her indignation, her words of loathing would only have added to his delight.

“You have had your wish,” she added coldly; “now, I pray you, go.”

“Your pardon, Lady Blakeney,” he said with all his habitual blandness; “my object in coming to see you tonight was twofold. Methought that I was acting as your friend in giving you authentic news of Sir Percy, and in suggesting the possibility of your adding your persuasion to ours.”

“My persuasion? You mean that I⁠—”

“You would wish to see your husband, would you not, Lady Blakeney?”

“Yes.”

“Then I pray you command me. I will grant you the permission whenever you wish to go.”

“You are in the hope, citizen,” she said, “that I will do my best to break my husband’s spirit by my tears or my prayers⁠—is that it?”

“Not necessarily,” he replied pleasantly. “I assure you that we can manage to do that ourselves, in time.”

“You devil!” The cry of pain and of horror was involuntarily wrung from the depths of her soul. “Are you not afraid that God’s hand will strike you where you stand?”

“No,” he said lightly; “I am not afraid, Lady Blakeney. You see, I do not happen to believe in God. Come!” he added more seriously, “have I not proved to you that my offer is disinterested? Yet I repeat it even now. If you desire to see Sir Percy in prison, command me, and the doors shall be open to you.”

She waited a moment, looking him straight and quite dispassionately in the face; then she said coldly:

“Very well! I will go.”

“When?” he asked.

“This evening.”

“Just as you wish. I would have to go and see my friend Héron first, and arrange with him for your visit.”

“Then go. I will follow in half an hour.”

“C’est entendu. Will you be at the main entrance of the Conciergerie at half-past nine? You know it, perhaps⁠—no? It is in the Rue de la Barillerie, immediately on the right at the foot of the great staircase of the house of Justice.”

“Of the house of Justice!” she exclaimed involuntarily, a world of bitter contempt in her cry. Then she added in her former matter-of-fact tones:

“Very good, citizen. At half-past nine I will be at the entrance you name.”

“And I will be at the door prepared to escort you.”

He took up his hat and coat and bowed ceremoniously to her. Then he turned to go. At the door a cry from her⁠—involuntarily enough, God knows!⁠—made him pause.

“My interview with the prisoner,” she said, vainly trying, poor soul! to repress that quiver of anxiety in her voice, “it will be private?”

“Oh, yes! Of course,” he replied with a reassuring smile. “Au revoir, Lady Blakeney! Half-past nine, remember⁠—”

She could no longer trust herself to look on him as he finally took his departure. She was afraid⁠—yes, absolutely afraid that her fortitude would give way⁠—meanly, despicably, uselessly give way; that she would suddenly fling herself at the feet of that sneering, inhuman wretch, that she would pray, implore⁠—Heaven above! what might she not do in the face of this awful reality, if the last lingering shred of vanishing reason, of pride, and of courage did not hold her in check?

Therefore she forced herself not to look on that departing, sable-clad figure, on that evil face, and those hands that held Percy’s fate in their cruel grip; but her ears caught the welcome sound of his departure⁠—the opening and shutting of the door, his light footstep echoing down the stone stairs.

When at last she felt that she was really alone she uttered a loud cry like a wounded doe, and falling on her knees she buried her face in her hands in a passionate fit of weeping. Violent sobs shook her entire frame; it seemed as if an overwhelming anguish was tearing at her heart⁠—the physical pain of it was almost unendurable. And yet even through this paroxysm of tears her mind clung to one root idea: when she saw Percy she must be brave and calm, be able to help him if he wanted her, to do his bidding if there was anything that she could do, or any message that she could take to the others. Of hope she had none. The last lingering ray of it had been extinguished by that fiend when he said, “We need not fear that he will escape. I doubt if he could walk very steadily across this room now.”

XXVII. In the Conciergerie

Marguerite, accompanied by Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, walked rapidly along the quay. It lacked ten minutes to the half hour; the night was dark and bitterly cold. Snow was still falling in sparse, thin flakes, and lay like a crisp and glittering mantle over the parapets of the bridges and the grim towers of the Châtelet prison.

They walked on silently now. All that they had wanted to say to one another had been said inside the squalid room of their lodgings when Sir Andrew Ffoulkes had come home and learned that Chauvelin had been.

“They are killing him by inches, Sir Andrew,” had been the heartrending cry which burst from Marguerite’s oppressed heart as soon as her hands rested in the kindly ones of her best friend. “Is there aught that we can do?”

There was, of course, very little that could be done. One or two fine steel files which Sir Andrew gave her to conceal beneath the folds of her kerchief; also a tiny dagger with sharp, poisoned blade, which for a moment she held in her hand hesitating, her eyes filling with tears, her heart throbbing with unspeakable sorrow.

Then slowly⁠—very slowly⁠—she raised the small, death-dealing instrument to her lips, and reverently kissed the narrow blade.

“If it must be!” she murmured, “God in His mercy will forgive!”

She sheathed the dagger, and this, too, she hid in the folds of her gown.

“Can you think of anything else, Sir Andrew, that he might want?” she asked. “I have money in plenty, in case those soldiers⁠—”

Sir Andrew sighed, and turned away from her so as to hide the hopelessness which he felt. Since three days now he had been exhausting every conceivable means of getting at the prison guard with bribery and corruption. But Chauvelin and his friends had taken excellent precautions. The prison of the Conciergerie, situated as it was in the very heart of the labyrinthine and complicated structure of the Châtelet and the house of Justice, and isolated from every other group of cells in the building, was inaccessible save from one narrow doorway which gave on the guardroom first, and thence on the inner cell beyond. Just as all attempts to rescue the late unfortunate Queen from that prison had failed, so now every attempt to reach the imprisoned Scarlet Pimpernel was equally doomed to bitter disappointment.

The guardroom was filled with soldiers day and night; the windows of the inner cell, heavily barred, were too small to admit of the passage of a human body, and they were raised twenty feet from the corridor below. Sir Andrew had stood in the corridor two days ago, he had looked on the window behind which he knew that his friend must be eating out his noble heart in a longing for liberty, and he had realised then that every effort at help from the outside was foredoomed to failure.

“Courage, Lady Blakeney,” he said to Marguerite, when anon they had crossed the Pont au Change, and were wending their way slowly along the Rue de la Barillerie; “remember our proud dictum: the Scarlet Pimpernel never fails! and also this, that whatever messages Blakeney gives you for us, whatever he wishes us to do, we are to a man ready to do it, and to give our lives for our chief. Courage! Something tells me that a man like Percy is not going to die at the hands of such vermin as Chauvelin and his friends.”

They had reached the great iron gates of the house of Justice. Marguerite, trying to smile, extended her trembling band to this faithful, loyal comrade.

“I’ll not be far,” he said. “When you come out do not look to the right or left, but make straight for home; I’ll not lose sight of you for a moment, and as soon as possible will overtake you. God bless you both.”

He pressed his lips on her cold little hand, and watched her tall, elegant figure as she passed through the great gates until the veil of falling snow hid her from his gaze. Then with a deep sigh of bitter anguish and sorrow he turned away and was soon lost in the gloom.

Marguerite found the gate at the bottom of the monumental stairs open when she arrived. Chauvelin was standing immediately inside the building waiting for her.

“We are prepared for your visit, Lady Blakeney,” he said, “and the prisoner knows that you are coming.”

He led the way down one of the numerous and interminable corridors of the building, and she followed briskly, pressing her hand against her bosom there where the folds of her kerchief hid the steel files and the precious dagger.

Even in the gloom of these ill-lighted passages she realised that she was surrounded by guards. There were soldiers everywhere; two had stood behind the door when first she entered, and had immediately closed it with a loud clang behind her; and all the way down the corridors, through the half-light engendered by feebly flickering lamps, she caught glimpses of the white facings on the uniforms of the town guard, or occasionally the glint of steel of a bayonet. Presently Chauvelin paused beside a door, which he had just reached. His hand was on the latch, for it did not appear to be locked, and he turned toward Marguerite.

“I am very sorry, Lady Blakeney,” he said in simple, deferential tones, “that the prison authorities, who at my request are granting you this interview at such an unusual hour, have made a slight condition to your visit.”

“A condition?” she asked. “What is it?”

“You must forgive me,” he said, as if purposely evading her question, “for I give you my word that I had nothing to do with a regulation that you might justly feel was derogatory to your dignity. If you will kindly step in here a wardress in charge will explain to you what is required.”

He pushed open the door, and stood aside ceremoniously in order to allow her to pass in. She looked on him with deep puzzlement and a look of dark suspicion in her eyes. But her mind was too much engrossed with the thought of her meeting with Percy to worry over any trifle that might⁠—as her enemy had inferred⁠—offend her womanly dignity.

She walked into the room, past Chauvelin, who whispered as she went by:

“I will wait for you here. And, I pray you, if you have aught to complain of summon me at once.”

Then he closed the door behind her. The room in which Marguerite now found herself was a small unventilated quadrangle, dimly lighted by a hanging lamp. A woman in a soiled cotton gown and lank grey hair brushed away from a parchment-like forehead rose from the chair in which she had been sitting when Marguerite entered, and put away some knitting on which she had apparently been engaged.

“I was to tell you, citizeness,” she said the moment the door had been closed and she was alone with Marguerite, “that the prison authorities have given orders that I should search you before you visit the prisoner.”

She repeated this phrase mechanically like a child who has been taught to say a lesson by heart. She was a stoutish middle-aged woman, with that pasty, flabby skin peculiar to those who live in want of fresh air; but her small, dark eyes were not unkindly, although they shifted restlessly from one object to another as if she were trying to avoid looking the other woman straight in the face.

“That you should search me!” reiterated Marguerite slowly, trying to understand.

“Yes,” replied the woman. “I was to tell you to take off your clothes, so that I might look them through and through. I have often had to do this before when visitors have been allowed inside the prison, so it is no use your trying to deceive me in any way. I am very sharp at finding out if anyone has papers, or files or ropes concealed in an underpetticoat. Come,” she added more roughly, seeing that Marguerite had remained motionless in the middle of the room; “the quicker you are about it the sooner you will be taken to see the prisoner.”

These words had their desired effect. The proud Lady Blakeney, inwardly revolting at the outrage, knew that resistance would be worse than useless. Chauvelin was the other side of the door. A call from the woman would bring him to her assistance, and Marguerite was only longing to hasten the moment when she could be with her husband.

She took off her kerchief and her gown and calmly submitted to the woman’s rough hands as they wandered with sureness and accuracy to the various pockets and folds that might conceal prohibited articles. The woman did her work with peculiar stolidity; she did not utter a word when she found the tiny steel files and placed them on a table beside her. In equal silence she laid the little dagger beside them, and the purse which contained twenty gold pieces. These she counted in front of Marguerite and then replaced them in the purse. Her face expressed neither surprise, nor greed nor pity. She was obviously beyond the reach of bribery⁠—just a machine paid by the prison authorities to do this unpleasant work, and no doubt terrorised into doing it conscientiously.

When she had satisfied herself that Marguerite had nothing further concealed about her person, she allowed her to put her dress on once more. She even offered to help her on with it. When Marguerite was fully dressed she opened the door for her. Chauvelin was standing in the passage waiting patiently. At sight of Marguerite, whose pale, set face betrayed nothing of the indignation which she felt, he turned quick, inquiring eyes on the woman.

“Two files, a dagger and a purse with twenty louis,” said the latter curtly.

Chauvelin made no comment. He received the information quite placidly, as if it had no special interest for him. Then he said quietly:

“This way, citizeness!”

Marguerite followed him, and two minutes later he stood beside a heavy nail-studded door that had a small square grating let into one of the panels, and said simply:

“This is it.”

Two soldiers of the National Guard were on sentry at the door, two more were pacing up and down outside it, and had halted when citizen Chauvelin gave his name and showed his tricolour scarf of office. From behind the small grating in the door a pair of eyes peered at the newcomers.

“Qui va là?” came the quick challenge from the guardroom within.

“Citizen Chauvelin of the Committee of Public Safety,” was the prompt reply.

There was the sound of grounding of arms, of the drawing of bolts and the turning of a key in a complicated lock. The prison was kept locked from within, and very heavy bars had to be moved ere the ponderous door slowly swung open on its hinges.

Two steps led up into the guardroom. Marguerite mounted them with the same feeling of awe and almost of reverence as she would have mounted the steps of a sacrificial altar.

The guardroom itself was more brilliantly lighted than the corridor outside. The sudden glare of two or three lamps placed about the room caused her momentarily to close her eyes that were aching with many shed and unshed tears. The air was rank and heavy with the fumes of tobacco, of wine and stale food. A large barred window gave on the corridor immediately above the door.

When Marguerite felt strong enough to look around her, she saw that the room was filled with soldiers. Some were sitting, others standing, others lay on rugs against the wall, apparently asleep. There was one who appeared to be in command, for with a word he checked the noise that was going on in the room when she entered, and then he said curtly:

“This way, citizeness!”

He turned to an opening in the wall on the left, the stone-lintel of a door, from which the door itself had been removed; an iron bar ran across the opening, and this the sergeant now lifted, nodding to Marguerite to go within.

Instinctively she looked round for Chauvelin.

But he was nowhere to be seen.

XXVIII. The Caged Lion

Was there some instinct of humanity left in the soldier who allowed Marguerite through the barrier into the prisoner’s cell? Had the wan face of this beautiful woman stirred within his heart the last chord of gentleness that was not wholly atrophied by the constant cruelties, the excesses, the mercilessness which his service under this fraternising republic constantly demanded of him?

Perhaps some recollection of former years, when first he served his King and country, recollection of wife or sister or mother pleaded within him in favour of this sorely-stricken woman with the look of unspeakable sorrow in her large blue eyes.

Certain it is that as soon as Marguerite passed the barrier he put himself on guard against it with his back to the interior of the cell and to her.

Marguerite had paused on the threshold.

After the glaring light of the guardroom the cell seemed dark, and at first she could hardly see. The whole length of the long, narrow cubicle lay to her left, with a slight recess at its further end, so that from the threshold of the doorway she could not see into the distant corner. Swift as a lightning flash the remembrance came back to her of proud Marie Antoinette narrowing her life to that dark corner where the insolent eyes of the rabble soldiery could not spy her every movement.

Marguerite stepped further into the room. Gradually by the dim light of an oil lamp placed upon a table in the recess she began to distinguish various objects: one or two chairs, another table, and a small but very comfortable-looking camp bedstead.

Just for a few seconds she only saw these inanimate things, then she became conscious of Percy’s presence.

He sat on a chair, with his left arm half-stretched out upon the table, his head hidden in the bend of the elbow.

Marguerite did not utter a cry; she did not even tremble. Just for one brief instant she closed her eyes, so as to gather up all her courage before she dared to look again. Then with a steady and noiseless step she came quite close to him. She knelt on the flagstones at his feet and raised reverently to her lips the hand that hung nerveless and limp by his side.

He gave a start; a shiver seemed to go right through him; he half raised his head and murmured in a hoarse whisper:

“I tell you that I do not know, and if I did⁠—”

She put her arms round him and pillowed her head upon his breast. He turned his head slowly toward her, and now his eyes⁠—hollowed and rimmed with purple⁠—looked straight into hers.

“My beloved,” he said, “I knew that you would come.” His arms closed round her. There was nothing of lifelessness or of weariness in the passion of that embrace; and when she looked up again it seemed to her as if that first vision which she had had of him with weary head bent, and wan, haggard face was not reality, only a dream born of her own anxiety for him, for now the hot, ardent blood coursed just as swiftly as ever through his veins, as if life⁠—strong, tenacious, pulsating life⁠—throbbed with unabated vigour in those massive limbs, and behind that square, clear brow as though the body, but half subdued, had transferred its vanishing strength to the kind and noble heart that was beating with the fervour of self-sacrifice.

“Percy,” she said gently, “they will only give us a few moments together. They thought that my tears would break your spirit where their devilry had failed.”

He held her glance with his own, with that close, intent look which binds soul to soul, and in his deep blue eyes there danced the restless flames of his own undying mirth:

“La! little woman,” he said with enforced lightness, even whilst his voice quivered with the intensity of passion engendered by her presence, her nearness, the perfume of her hair, “how little they know you, eh? Your brave, beautiful, exquisite soul, shining now through your glorious eyes, would defy the machinations of Satan himself and his horde. Close your dear eyes, my love. I shall go mad with joy if I drink their beauty in any longer.”

He held her face between his two hands, and indeed it seemed as if he could not satiate his soul with looking into her eyes. In the midst of so much sorrow, such misery and such deadly fear, never had Marguerite felt quite so happy, never had she felt him so completely her own. The inevitable bodily weakness, which of necessity had invaded even his splendid physique after a whole week’s privations, had made a severe breach in the invincible barrier of self-control with which the soul of the inner man was kept perpetually hidden behind a mask of indifference and of irresponsibility.

And yet the agony of seeing the lines of sorrow so plainly writ on the beautiful face of the woman he worshipped must have been the keenest that the bold adventurer had ever experienced in the whole course of his reckless life. It was he⁠—and he alone⁠—who was making her suffer; her for whose sake he would gladly have shed every drop of his blood, endured every torment, every misery and every humiliation; her whom he worshipped only one degree less than he worshipped his honour and the cause which he had made his own.

Yet, in spite of that agony, in spite of the heartrending pathos of her pale wan face, and through the anguish of seeing her tears, the ruling passion⁠—strong in death⁠—the spirit of adventure, the mad, wild, devil-may-care irresponsibility was never wholly absent.

“Dear heart,” he said with a quaint sigh, whilst he buried his face in the soft masses of her hair, “until you came I was so d⁠⸺⁠d fatigued.”

He was laughing, and the old look of boyish love of mischief illumined his haggard face.

“Is it not lucky, dear heart,” he said a moment or two later, “that those brutes do not leave me unshaved? I could not have faced you with a week’s growth of beard round my chin. By dint of promises and bribery I have persuaded one of that rabble to come and shave me every morning. They will not allow me to handle a razor myself. They are afraid I should cut my throat⁠—or one of theirs. But mostly I am too d⁠⸺⁠d sleepy to think of such a thing.”

“Percy!” she exclaimed with tender and passionate reproach.

“I know⁠—I know, dear,” he murmured, “what a brute I am! Ah, God did a cruel thing the day that He threw me in your path. To think that once⁠—not so very long ago⁠—we were drifting apart, you and I. You would have suffered less, dear heart, if we had continued to drift.”

Then as he saw that his bantering tone pained her, he covered her hands with kisses, entreating her forgiveness.

“Dear heart,” he said merrily, “I deserve that you should leave me to rot in this abominable cage. They haven’t got me yet, little woman, you know; I am not yet dead⁠—only d⁠⸺⁠d sleepy at times. But I’ll cheat them even now, never fear.”

“How, Percy⁠—how?” she moaned, for her heart was aching with intolerable pain; she knew better than he did the precautions which were being taken against his escape, and she saw more clearly than he realised it himself the terrible barrier set up against that escape by ever encroaching physical weakness.

“Well, dear,” he said simply, “to tell you the truth I have not yet thought of that all-important ‘how.’ I had to wait, you see, until you came. I was so sure that you would come! I have succeeded in putting on paper all my instructions for Ffoulkes and the others. I will give them to you anon. I knew that you would come, and that I could give them to you; until then I had but to think of one thing, and that was of keeping body and soul together. My chance of seeing you was to let them have their will with me. Those brutes were sure, sooner or later, to bring you to me, that you might see the caged fox worn down to imbecility, eh? That you might add your tears to their persuasion, and succeed where they have failed.”

He laughed lightly with an unstrained note of gaiety, only Marguerite’s sensitive ears caught the faint tone of bitterness which rang through the laugh.

“Once I know that the little King of France is safe,” he said, “I can think of how best to rob those d⁠⸺⁠d murderers of my skin.”

Then suddenly his manner changed. He still held her with one arm closely to, him, but the other now lay across the table, and the slender, emaciated hand was tightly clutched. He did not look at her, but straight ahead; the eyes, unnaturally large now, with their deep purple rims, looked far ahead beyond the stone walls of this grim, cruel prison.

The passionate lover, hungering for his beloved, had vanished; there sat the man with a purpose, the man whose firm hand had snatched men and women and children from death, the reckless enthusiast who tossed his life against an ideal.

For a while he sat thus, while in his drawn and haggard face she could trace every line formed by his thoughts⁠—the frown of anxiety, the resolute setting of the lips, the obstinate look of will around the firm jaw. Then he turned again to her.

“My beautiful one,” he said softly, “the moments are very precious. God knows I could spend eternity thus with your dear form nestling against my heart. But those d⁠⸺⁠d murderers will only give us half an hour, and I want your help, my beloved, now that I am a helpless cur caught in their trap. Will you listen attentively, dear heart, to what I am going to say?

“Yes, Percy, I will listen,” she replied.

“And have you the courage to do just what I tell you, dear?”

“I would not have courage to do aught else,” she said simply.

“It means going from hence today, dear heart, and perhaps not meeting again. Hush-sh-sh, my beloved,” he said, tenderly placing his thin hand over her mouth, from which a sharp cry of pain had well-nigh escaped; “your exquisite soul will be with me always. Try⁠—try not to give way to despair. Why! your love alone, which I see shining from your dear eyes, is enough to make a man cling to life with all his might. Tell me! will you do as I ask you?”

And she replied firmly and courageously:

“I will do just what you ask, Percy.”

“God bless you for your courage, dear. You will have need of it.”

XXIX. For the Sake of That Helpless Innocent

The next instant he was kneeling on the floor and his hands were wandering over the small, irregular flagstones immediately underneath the table. Marguerite had risen to her feet; she watched her husband with intent and puzzled eyes; she saw him suddenly pass his slender fingers along a crevice between two flagstones, then raise one of these slightly and from beneath it extract a small bundle of papers, each carefully folded and sealed. Then he replaced the stone and once more rose to his knees.

He gave a quick glance toward the doorway. That corner of his cell, the recess wherein stood the table, was invisible to anyone who had not actually crossed the threshold. Reassured that his movements could not have been and were not watched, he drew Marguerite closer to him.

“Dear heart,” he whispered, “I want to place these papers in your care. Look upon them as my last will and testament. I succeeded in fooling those brutes one day by pretending to be willing to accede to their will. They gave me pen and ink and paper and wax, and I was to write out an order to my followers to bring the Dauphin hither. They left me in peace for one quarter of an hour, which gave me time to write three letters⁠—one for Armand and the other two for Ffoulkes, and to hide them under the flooring of my cell. You see, dear, I knew that you would come and that I could give them to you then.”

He paused, and that ghost of a smile once more hovered round his lips. He was thinking of that day when he had fooled Héron and Chauvelin into the belief that their devilry had succeeded, and that they had brought the reckless adventurer to his knees. He smiled at the recollection of their wrath when they knew that they had been tricked, and after a quarter of an hour’s anxious waiting found a few sheets of paper scribbled over with incoherent words or satirical verse, and the prisoner having apparently snatched ten minutes’ sleep, which seemingly had restored to him quite a modicum of his strength.

But of this he told Marguerite nothing, nor of the insults and the humiliation which he had had to bear in consequence of that trick. He did not tell her that directly afterwards the order went forth that the prisoner was to be kept on bread and water in the future, nor that Chauvelin had stood by laughing and jeering while⁠ ⁠…

No! he did not tell her all that; the recollection of it all had still the power to make him laugh; was it not all a part and parcel of that great gamble for human lives wherein he had held the winning cards himself for so long?

“It is your turn now,” he had said even then to his bitter enemy.

“Yes!” Chauvelin had replied, “our turn at last. And you will not bend my fine English gentleman, we’ll break you yet, never fear.”

It was the thought of it all, of that hand to hand, will to will, spirit to spirit struggle that lighted up his haggard face even now, gave him a fresh zest for life, a desire to combat and to conquer in spite of all, in spite of the odds that had martyred his body but left the mind, the will, the power still unconquered.

He was pressing one of the papers into her hand, holding her fingers tightly in his, and compelling her gaze with the ardent excitement of his own.

“This first letter is for Ffoulkes,” he said. “It relates to the final measures for the safety of the Dauphin. They are my instructions to those members of the League who are in or near Paris at the present moment. Ffoulkes, I know, must be with you⁠—he was not likely, God bless his loyalty, to let you come to Paris alone. Then give this letter to him, dear heart, at once, tonight, and tell him that it is my express command that he and the others shall act in minute accordance with my instructions.”

“But the Dauphin surely is safe now,” she urged. “Ffoulkes and the others are here in order to help you.”

“To help me, dear heart?” he interposed earnestly. “God alone can do that now, and such of my poor wits as these devils do not succeed in crushing out of me within the next ten days.”

Ten days!

“I have waited a week, until this hour when I could place this packet in your hands; another ten days should see the Dauphin out of France⁠—after that, we shall see.”

“Percy,” she exclaimed in an agony of horror, “you cannot endure this another day⁠—and live!”

“Nay!” he said in a tone that was almost insolent in its proud defiance, “there is but little that a man cannot do an he sets his mind to it. For the rest, ’tis in God’s hands!” he added more gently. “Dear heart! you swore that you would be brave. The Dauphin is still in France, and until he is out of it he will not really be safe; his friends wanted to keep him inside the country. God only knows what they still hope; had I been free I should not have allowed him to remain so long; now those good people at Mantes will yield to my letter and to Ffoulkes’ earnest appeal⁠—they will allow one of our League to convey the child safely out of France, and I’ll wait here until I know that he is safe. If I tried to get away now, and succeeded⁠—why, Heaven help us! the hue and cry might turn against the child, and he might be captured before I could get to him. Dear heart! dear, dear heart! try to understand. The safety of that child is bound with mine honour, but I swear to you, my sweet love, that the day on which I feel that that safety is assured I will save mine own skin⁠—what there is left of it⁠—if I can!”

“Percy!” she cried with a sudden outburst of passionate revolt, “you speak as if the safety of that child were of more moment than your own. Ten days!⁠—but, God in Heaven! have you thought how I shall live these ten days, whilst slowly, inch by inch, you give your dear, your precious life for a forlorn cause?

“I am very tough, m’dear,” he said lightly; “ ’tis not a question of life. I shall only be spending a few more very uncomfortable days in this d⁠⸺⁠d hole; but what of that?”

Her eyes spoke the reply; her eyes veiled with tears, that wandered with heartbreaking anxiety from the hollow circles round his own to the lines of weariness about the firm lips and jaw. He laughed at her solicitude.

“I can last out longer than these brutes have any idea of,” he said gaily.

“You cheat yourself, Percy,” she rejoined with quiet earnestness. “Every day that you spend immured between these walls, with that ceaseless nerve-racking torment of sleeplessness which these devils have devised for the breaking of your will⁠—every day thus spent diminishes your power of ultimately saving yourself. You see, I speak calmly⁠—dispassionately⁠—I do not even urge my claims upon your life. But what you must weigh in the balance is the claim of all those for whom in the past you have already staked your life, whose lives you have purchased by risking your own. What, in comparison with your noble life, is that of the puny descendant of a line of decadent kings? Why should it be sacrificed⁠—ruthlessly, hopelessly sacrificed that a boy might live who is as nothing to the world, to his country⁠—even to his own people?”

She had tried to speak calmly, never raising her voice beyond a whisper. Her hands still clutched that paper, which seemed to sear her fingers, the paper which she felt held writ upon its smooth surface the death-sentence of the man she loved.

But his look did not answer her firm appeal; it was fixed far away beyond the prison walls, on a lonely country road outside Paris, with the rain falling in a thin drizzle, and leaden clouds overhead chasing one another, driven by the gale.

“Poor mite,” he murmured softly; “he walked so bravely by my side, until the little feet grew weary; then he nestled in my arms and slept until we met Ffoulkes waiting with the cart. He was no King of France just then, only a helpless innocent whom Heaven aided me to save.”

Marguerite bowed her head in silence. There was nothing more that she could say, no plea that she could urge. Indeed, she had understood, as he had begged her to understand. She understood that long ago he had mapped out the course of his life, and now that that course happened to lead up a Calvary of humiliation and of suffering he was not likely to turn back, even though, on the summit, death already was waiting and beckoning with no uncertain hand; not until he could murmur, in the wake of the great and divine sacrifice itself, the sublime words:

“It is accomplished.”

“But the Dauphin is safe enough now,” was all that she said, after that one moment’s silence when her heart, too, had offered up to God the supreme abnegation of self, and calmly faced a sorrow which threatened to break it at last.

“Yes!” he rejoined quietly, “safe enough for the moment. But he would be safer still if he were out of France. I had hoped to take him one day with me to England. But in this plan damnable Fate has interfered. His adherents wanted to get him to Vienna, and their wish had best be fulfilled now. In my instructions to Ffoulkes I have mapped out a simple way for accomplishing the journey. Tony will be the one best suited to lead the expedition, and I want him to make straight for Holland; the Northern frontiers are not so closely watched as are the Austrian ones. There is a faithful adherent of the Bourbon cause who lives at Delft, and who will give the shelter of his name and home to the fugitive King of France until he can be conveyed to Vienna. He is named Nauudorff. Once I feel that the child is safe in his hands I will look after myself, never fear.”

He paused, for his strength, which was only factitious, born of the excitement that Marguerite’s presence had called forth, was threatening to give way. His voice, though he had spoken in a whisper all along, was very hoarse, and his temples were throbbing with the sustained effort to speak.

“If those friends had only thought of denying me food instead of sleep,” he murmured involuntarily, “I could have held out until⁠—”

Then with characteristic swiftness his mood changed in a moment. His arms closed round Marguerite once more with a passion of self-reproach.

“Heaven forgive me for a selfish brute,” he said, whilst the ghost of a smile once more lit up the whole of his face. “Dear soul, I must have forgotten your sweet presence, thus brooding over my own troubles, whilst your loving heart has a graver burden⁠—God help me!⁠—than it can possibly bear. Listen, my beloved, for I don’t know how many minutes longer they intend to give us, and I have not yet spoken to you about Armand⁠—”

“Armand!” she cried.

A twinge of remorse had gripped her. For fully ten minutes now she had relegated all thoughts of her brother to a distant cell of her memory.

“We have no news of Armand,” she said. “Sir Andrew has searched all the prison registers. Oh! were not my heart atrophied by all that it has endured this past sennight it would feel a final throb of agonising pain at every thought of Armand.”

A curious look, which even her loving eyes failed to interpret, passed like a shadow over her husband’s face. But the shadow lifted in a moment, and it was with a reassuring smile that he said to her:

“Dear heart! Armand is comparatively safe for the moment. Tell Ffoulkes not to search the prison registers for him, rather to seek out Mademoiselle Lange. She will know where to find Armand.”

“Jeanne Lange!” she exclaimed with a world of bitterness in the tone of her voice, “the girl whom Armand loved, it seems, with a passion greater than his loyalty. Oh! Sir Andrew tried to disguise my brother’s folly, but I guessed what he did not choose to tell me. It was his disobedience, his want of trust, that brought this unspeakable misery on us all.”

“Do not blame him overmuch, dear heart. Armand was in love, and love excuses every sin committed in its name. Jeanne Lange was arrested and Armand lost his reason temporarily. The very day on which I rescued the Dauphin from the Temple I had the good fortune to drag the little lady out of prison. I had given my promise to Armand that she should be safe, and I kept my word. But this Armand did not know⁠—or else⁠—”

He checked himself abruptly, and once more that strange, enigmatical look crept into his eyes.

“I took Jeanne Lange to a place of comparative safety,” he said after a slight pause, “but since then she has been set entirely free.”

“Free?”

“Yes. Chauvelin himself brought me the news,” he replied with a quick, mirthless laugh, wholly unlike his usual lighthearted gaiety. “He had to ask me where to find Jeanne, for I alone knew where she was. As for Armand, they’ll not worry about him whilst I am here. Another reason why I must bide a while longer. But in the meanwhile, dear, I pray you find Mademoiselle Lange; she lives at No. 5 Square du Roule. Through her I know that you can get to see Armand. This second letter,” he added, pressing a smaller packet into her hand, “is for him. Give it to him, dear heart; it will, I hope, tend to cheer him. I fear me the poor lad frets; yet he only sinned because he loved, and to me he will always be your brother⁠—the man who held your affection for all the years before I came into your life. Give him this letter, dear; they are my instructions to him, as the others are for Ffoulkes; but tell him to read them when he is all alone. You will do that, dear heart, will you not?”

“Yes, Percy,” she said simply. “I promise.”

Great joy, and the expression of intense relief, lit up his face, whilst his eyes spoke the gratitude which he felt.

“Then there is one thing more,” he said. “There are others in this cruel city, dear heart, who have trusted me, and whom I must not fail⁠—Marie de Marmontel and her brother, faithful servants of the late queen; they were on the eve of arrest when I succeeded in getting them to a place of comparative safety; and there are others there, too all of these poor victims have trusted me implicitly. They are waiting for me there, trusting in my promise to convey them safely to England. Sweetheart, you must redeem my promise to them. You will?⁠—you will? Promise me that you will⁠—”

“I promise, Percy,” she said once more.

“Then go, dear, tomorrow, in the late afternoon, to No. 98, Rue de Charonne. It is a narrow house at the extreme end of that long street which abuts on the fortifications. The lower part of the house is occupied by a dealer in rags and old clothes. He and his wife and family are wretchedly poor, but they are kind, good souls, and for a consideration and a minimum of risk to themselves they will always render service to the English milors, whom they believe to be a band of inveterate smugglers. Ffoulkes and all the others know these people and know the house; Armand by the same token knows it too. Marie de Marmontel and her brother are there, and several others; the old Comte de Lézardière, the Abbè de Firmont; their names spell suffering, loyalty, and hopelessness. I was lucky enough to convey them safely to that hidden shelter. They trust me implicitly, dear heart. They are waiting for me there, trusting in my promise to them. Dear heart, you will go, will you not?”

“Yes, Percy,” she replied. “I will go; I have promised.”

“Ffoulkes has some certificates of safety by him, and the old clothes dealer will supply the necessary disguises; he has a covered cart which he uses for his business, and which you can borrow from him. Ffoulkes will drive the little party to Achard’s farm in St. Germain, where other members of the League should be in waiting for the final journey to England. Ffoulkes will know how to arrange for everything; he was always my most able lieutenant. Once everything is organised he can appoint Hastings to lead the party. But you, dear heart, must do as you wish. Achard’s farm would be a safe retreat for you and for Ffoulkes: if⁠ ⁠… I know⁠—I know, dear,” he added with infinite tenderness. “See I do not even suggest that you should leave me. Ffoulkes will be with you, and I know that neither he nor you would go even if I commanded. Either Achard’s farm, or even the house in the Rue de Charonne, would be quite safe for you, dear, under Ffoulkes’s protection, until the time when I myself can carry you back⁠—you, my precious burden⁠—to England in mine own arms, or until⁠ ⁠… Hush-sh-sh, dear heart,” he entreated, smothering with a passionate kiss the low moan of pain which had escaped her lips; “it is all in God’s hands now; I am in a tight corner⁠—tighter than ever I have been before; but I am not dead yet, and those brutes have not yet paid the full price for my life. Tell me, dear heart, that you have understood⁠—that you will do all that I asked. Tell me again, my dear, dear love; it is the very essence of life to hear your sweet lips murmur this promise now.”

And for the third time she reiterated firmly:

“I have understood every word that you said to me, Percy, and I promise on your precious life to do what you ask.”

He sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction, and even at that moment there came from the guardroom beyond the sound of a harsh voice, saying peremptorily:

“That half-hour is nearly over, sergeant; ’tis time you interfered.”

“Three minutes more, citizen,” was the curt reply.

“Three minutes, you devils,” murmured Blakeney between set teeth, whilst a sudden light which even Marguerite’s keen gaze failed to interpret leapt into his eyes. Then he pressed the third letter into her hand.

Once more his close, intent gaze compelled hers; their faces were close one to the other, so near to him did he draw her, so tightly did he hold her to him. The paper was in her hand and his fingers were pressed firmly on hers.

“Put this in your kerchief, my beloved,” he whispered. “Let it rest on your exquisite bosom where I so love to pillow my head. Keep it there until the last hour when it seems to you that nothing more can come between me and shame.⁠ ⁠… Hush-sh-sh, dear,” he added with passionate tenderness, checking the hot protest that at the word “shame” had sprung to her lips, “I cannot explain more fully now. I do not know what may happen. I am only a man, and who knows what subtle devilry those brutes might not devise for bringing the untamed adventurer to his knees. For the next ten days the Dauphin will be on the high roads of France, on his way to safety. Every stage of his journey will be known to me. I can from between these four walls follow him and his escort step by step. Well, dear, I am but a man, already brought to shameful weakness by mere physical discomfort⁠—the want of sleep⁠—such a trifle after all; but in case my reason tottered⁠—God knows what I might do⁠—then give this packet to Ffoulkes⁠—it contains my final instructions⁠—and he will know how to act. Promise me, dear heart, that you will not open the packet unless⁠—unless mine own dishonour seems to you imminent⁠—unless I have yielded to these brutes in this prison, and sent Ffoulkes or one of the others orders to exchange the Dauphin’s life for mine; then, when mine own handwriting hath proclaimed me a coward, then and then only, give this packet to Ffoulkes. Promise me that, and also that when you and he have mastered its contents you will act exactly as I have commanded. Promise me that, dear, in your own sweet name, which may God bless, and in that of Ffoulkes, our loyal friend.”

Through the sobs that well-nigh choked her she murmured the promise he desired.

His voice had grown hoarser and more spent with the inevitable reaction after the long and sustained effort, but the vigour of the spirit was untouched, the fervour, the enthusiasm.

“Dear heart,” he murmured, “do not look on me with those dear, scared eyes of yours. If there is aught that puzzles you in what I said, try and trust me a while longer. Remember, I must save the Dauphin at all costs; mine honour is bound with his safety. What happens to me after that matters but little, yet I wish to live for your dear sake.”

He drew a long breath which had naught of weariness in it. The haggard look had completely vanished from his face, the eyes were lighted up from within, the very soul of reckless daring and immortal gaiety illumined his whole personality.

“Do not look so sad, little woman,” he said with a strange and sudden recrudescence of power; “those d⁠⸺⁠d murderers have not got me yet⁠—even now.”

Then he went down like a log.

The effort had been too prolonged⁠—weakened nature reasserted her rights and he lost consciousness. Marguerite, helpless and almost distraught with grief, had yet the strength of mind not to call for assistance. She pillowed the loved one’s head upon her breast, she kissed the dear, tired eyes, the poor throbbing temples. The unutterable pathos of seeing this man, who was always the personification of extreme vitality, energy, and boundless endurance and pluck, lying thus helpless, like a tired child, in her arms, was perhaps the saddest moment of this day of sorrow. But in her trust she never wavered for one instant. Much that he had said had puzzled her; but the word “shame” coming from his own lips as a comment on himself never caused her the slightest pang of fear. She had quickly hidden the tiny packet in her kerchief. She would act point by point exactly as he had ordered her to do, and she knew that Ffoulkes would never waver either.

Her heart ached well-nigh to breaking point. That which she could not understand had increased her anguish tenfold. If she could only have given way to tears she could have borne this final agony more easily. But the solace of tears was not for her; when those loved eyes once more opened to consciousness they should see hers glowing with courage and determination.

There had been silence for a few minutes in the little cell. The soldiery outside, inured to their hideous duty, thought no doubt that the time had come for them to interfere. The iron bar was raised and thrown back with a loud crash, the butt-ends of muskets were grounded against the floor, and two soldiers made noisy irruption into the cell.

“Holà, citizen! Wake up,” shouted one of the men; “you have not told us yet what you have done with Capet!”

Marguerite uttered a cry of horror. Instinctively her arms were interposed between the unconscious man and these inhuman creatures, with a beautiful gesture of protecting motherhood.

“He has fainted,” she said, her voice quivering with indignation. “My God! are you devils that you have not one spark of manhood in you?”

The men shrugged their shoulders, and both laughed brutally. They had seen worse sights than these, since they served a Republic that ruled by bloodshed and by terror. They were own brothers in callousness and cruelty to those men who on this selfsame spot a few months ago had watched the daily agony of a martyred Queen, or to those who had rushed into the Abbaye prison on that awful day in September, and at a word from their infamous leaders had put eighty defenceless prisoners⁠—men, women, and children⁠—to the sword.

“Tell him to say what he has done with Capet,” said one of the soldiers now, and this rough command was accompanied with a coarse jest that sent the blood flaring up into Marguerite’s pale cheeks.

The brutal laugh, the coarse words which accompanied it, the insult flung at Marguerite, had penetrated to Blakeney’s slowly returning consciousness. With sudden strength, that appeared almost supernatural, he jumped to his feet, and before any of the others could interfere he had with clenched fist struck the soldier a full blow on the mouth.

The man staggered back with a curse, the other shouted for help; in a moment the narrow place swarmed with soldiers; Marguerite was roughly torn away from the prisoner’s side, and thrust into the far corner of the cell, from where she only saw a confused mass of blue coats and white belts, and⁠—towering for one brief moment above what seemed to her fevered fancy like a veritable sea of heads⁠—the pale face of her husband, with wide dilated eyes searching the gloom for hers.

“Remember!” he shouted, and his voice for that brief moment rang out clear and sharp above the din.

Then he disappeared behind the wall of glistening bayonets, of blue coats and uplifted arms; mercifully for her she remembered nothing more very clearly. She felt herself being dragged out of the cell, the iron bar being thrust down behind her with a loud clang. Then in a vague, dreamy state of semi-unconsciousness she saw the heavy bolts being drawn back from the outer door, heard the grating of the key in the monumental lock, and the next moment a breath of fresh air brought the sensation of renewed life into her.

XXX. Afterwards

“I am sorry, Lady Blakeney,” said a harsh, dry voice close to her; “the incident at the end of your visit was none of our making, remember.”

She turned away, sickened with horror at thought of contact with this wretch. She had heard the heavy oaken door swing to behind her on its ponderous hinges, and the key once again turn in the lock. She felt as if she had suddenly been thrust into a coffin, and that clods of earth were being thrown upon her breast, oppressing her heart so that she could not breathe.

Had she looked for the last time on the man whom she loved beyond everything else on earth, whom she worshipped more ardently day by day? Was she even now carrying within the folds of her kerchief a message from a dying man to his comrades?

Mechanically she followed Chauvelin down the corridor and along the passages which she had traversed a brief half-hour ago. From some distant church tower a clock tolled the hour of ten. It had then really only been little more than thirty brief minutes since first she had entered this grim building, which seemed less stony than the monsters who held authority within it; to her it seemed that centuries had gone over her head during that time. She felt like an old woman, unable to straighten her back or to steady her limbs; she could only dimly see some few paces ahead the trim figure of Chauvelin walking with measured steps, his hands held behind his back, his head thrown up with what looked like triumphant defiance.

At the door of the cubicle where she had been forced to submit to the indignity of being searched by a wardress, the latter was now standing, waiting with characteristic stolidity. In her hand she held the steel files, the dagger and the purse which, as Marguerite passed, she held out to her.

“Your property, citizeness,” she said placidly.

She emptied the purse into her own hand, and solemnly counted out the twenty pieces of gold. She was about to replace them all into the purse, when Marguerite pressed one of them back into her wrinkled hand.

“Nineteen will be enough, citizeness,” she said; “keep one for yourself, not only for me, but for all the poor women who come here with their heart full of hope, and go hence with it full of despair.”

The woman turned calm, lacklustre eyes on her, and silently pocketed the gold piece with a grudgingly muttered word of thanks.

Chauvelin during this brief interlude, had walked thoughtlessly on ahead. Marguerite, peering down the length of the narrow corridor, spied his sable-clad figure some hundred mètres further on as it crossed the dim circle of light thrown by one of the lamps.

She was about to follow, when it seemed to her as if someone was moving in the darkness close beside her. The wardress was even now in the act of closing the door of her cubicle, and there were a couple of soldiers who were disappearing from view round one end of the passage, whilst Chauvelin’s retreating form was lost in the gloom at the other.

There was no light close to where she herself was standing, and the blackness around her was as impenetrable as a veil; the sound of a human creature moving and breathing close to her in this intense darkness acted weirdly on her overwrought nerves.

“Qui va là?” she called.

There was a more distinct movement among the shadows this time, as of a swift tread on the flagstones of the corridor. All else was silent round, and now she could plainly hear those footsteps running rapidly down the passage away from her. She strained her eyes to see more clearly, and anon in one of the dim circles of light on ahead she spied a man’s figure⁠—slender and darkly clad⁠—walking quickly yet furtively like one pursued. As he crossed the light the man turned to look back. It was her brother Armand.

Her first instinct was to call to him; the second checked that call upon her lips.

Percy had said that Armand was in no danger; then why should he be sneaking along the dark corridors of this awful house of Justice if he was free and safe?

Certainly, even at a distance, her brother’s movements suggested to Marguerite that he was in danger of being seen. He cowered in the darkness, tried to avoid the circles of light thrown by the lamps in the passage. At all costs Marguerite felt that she must warn him that the way he was going now would lead him straight into Chauvelin’s arms, and she longed to let him know that she was close by.

Feeling sure that he would recognise her voice, she made pretence to turn back to the cubicle through the door of which the wardress had already disappeared, and called out as loudly as she dared:

“Good night, citizeness!”

But Armand⁠—who surely must have heard⁠—did not pause at the sound. Rather was he walking on now more rapidly than before. In less than a minute he would be reaching the spot where Chauvelin stood waiting for Marguerite. That end of the corridor, however, received no light from any of the lamps; strive how she might, Marguerite could see nothing now either of Chauvelin or of Armand.

Blindly, instinctively, she ran forward, thinking only to reach Armand, and to warn him to turn back before it was too late; before he found himself face to face with the most bitter enemy he and his nearest and dearest had ever had. But as she at last came to a halt at the end of the corridor, panting with the exertion of running and the fear for Armand, she almost fell up against Chauvelin, who was standing there alone and imperturbable, seemingly having waited patiently for her. She could only dimly distinguish his face, the sharp features and thin cruel mouth, but she felt⁠—more than she actually saw⁠—his cold steely eyes fixed with a strange expression of mockery upon her.

But of Armand there was no sign, and she⁠—poor soul!⁠—had difficulty in not betraying the anxiety which she felt for her brother. Had the flagstones swallowed him up? A door on the right was the only one that gave on the corridor at this point; it led to the concierge’s lodge, and thence out into the courtyard. Had Chauvelin been dreaming, sleeping with his eyes open, whilst he stood waiting for her, and had Armand succeeded in slipping past him under cover of the darkness and through that door to safety that lay beyond these prison walls?

Marguerite, miserably agitated, not knowing what to think, looked somewhat wild-eyed on Chauvelin; he smiled, that inscrutable, mirthless smile of his, and said blandly:

“Is there aught else that I can do for you, citizeness? This is your nearest way out. No doubt Sir Andrew will be waiting to escort you home.”

Then as she⁠—not daring either to reply or to question⁠—walked straight up to the door, he hurried forward, prepared to open it for her. But before he did so he turned to her once again:

“I trust that your visit has pleased you, Lady Blakeney,” he said suavely. “At what hour do you desire to repeat it tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” she reiterated in a vague, absent manner, for she was still dazed with the strange incident of Armand’s appearance and his flight.

“Yes. You would like to see Sir Percy again tomorrow, would you not? I myself would gladly pay him a visit from time to time, but he does not care for my company. My colleague, citizen Héron, on the other hand, calls on him four times in every twenty-four hours; he does so a few moments before the changing of the guard, and stays chatting with Sir Percy until after the guard is changed, when he inspects the men and satisfies himself that no traitor has crept in among them. All the men are personally known to him, you see. These hours are at five in the morning and again at eleven, and then again at five and eleven in the evening. My friend Héron, as you see, is zealous and assiduous, and, strangely enough, Sir Percy does not seem to view his visit with any displeasure. Now at any other hour of the day, Lady Blakeney, I pray you command me and I will arrange that citizen Héron grant you a second interview with the prisoner.”

Marguerite had only listened to Chauvelin’s lengthy speech with half an ear; her thoughts still dwelt on the past half-hour with its bitter joy and its agonising pain; and fighting through her thoughts of Percy there was the recollection of Armand which so disquieted her. But though she had only vaguely listened to what Chauvelin was saying, she caught the drift of it.

Madly she longed to accept his suggestion. The very thought of seeing Percy on the morrow was solace to her aching heart; it could feed on hope tonight instead of on its own bitter pain. But even during this brief moment of hesitancy, and while her whole being cried out for this joy that her enemy was holding out to her, even then in the gloom ahead of her she seemed to see a vision of a pale face raised above a crowd of swaying heads, and of the eyes of the dreamer searching for her own, whilst the last sublime cry of perfect self-devotion once more echoed in her ear:

“Remember!”

The promise which she had given him, that would she fulfil. The burden which he had laid on her shoulders she would try to bear as heroically as he was bearing his own. Aye, even at the cost of the supreme sorrow of never resting again in the haven of his arms.

But in spite of sorrow, in spite of anguish so terrible that she could not imagine Death itself to have a more cruel sting, she wished above all to safeguard that final, attenuated thread of hope which was wound round the packet that lay hidden on her breast.

She wanted, above all, not to arouse Chauvelin’s suspicions by markedly refusing to visit the prisoner again⁠—suspicions that might lead to her being searched once more and the precious packet filched from her. Therefore she said to him earnestly now:

“I thank you, citizen, for your solicitude on my behalf, but you will understand, I think, that my visit to the prisoner has been almost more than I could bear. I cannot tell you at this moment whether tomorrow I should be in a fit state to repeat it.”

“As you please,” he replied urbanely. “But I pray you to remember one thing, and that is⁠—”

He paused a moment while his restless eyes wandered rapidly over her face, trying, as it were, to get at the soul of this woman, at her innermost thoughts, which he felt were hidden from him.

“Yes, citizen,” she said quietly; “what is it that I am to remember?”

“That it rests with you, Lady Blakeney, to put an end to the present situation.”

“How?”

“Surely you can persuade Sir Percy’s friends not to leave their chief in durance vile. They themselves could put an end to his troubles tomorrow.”

“By giving up the Dauphin to you, you mean?” she retorted coldly.

“Precisely.”

“And you hoped⁠—you still hope that by placing before me the picture of your own fiendish cruelty against my husband you will induce me to act the part of a traitor towards him and a coward before his followers?”

“Oh!” he said deprecatingly, “the cruelty now is no longer mine. Sir Percy’s release is in your hands, Lady Blakeney⁠—in that of his followers. I should only be too willing to end the present intolerable situation. You and your friends are applying the last turn of the thumbscrew, not I⁠—”

She smothered the cry of horror that had risen to her lips. The man’s cold-blooded sophistry was threatening to make a breach in her armour of self-control.

She would no longer trust herself to speak, but made a quick movement towards the door.

He shrugged his shoulders as if the matter were now entirely out of his control. Then he opened the door for her to pass out, and as her skirts brushed against him he bowed with studied deference, murmuring a cordial “Good night!”

“And remember, Lady Blakeney,” he added politely, “that should you at any time desire to communicate with me at my rooms, 19, Rue Dupuy, I hold myself entirely at your service.”

Then as her tall, graceful figure disappeared in the outside gloom he passed his thin hand over his mouth as if to wipe away the last lingering signs of triumphant irony:

“The second visit will work wonders, I think, my fine lady,” he murmured under his breath.

XXXI. An Interlude

It was close on midnight now, and still they sat opposite one another, he the friend and she the wife, talking over that brief half-hour that had meant an eternity to her.

Marguerite had tried to tell Sir Andrew everything; bitter as it was to put into actual words the pathos and misery which she had witnessed, yet she would hide nothing from the devoted comrade whom she knew Percy would trust absolutely. To him she repeated every word that Percy had uttered, described every inflection of his voice, those enigmatical phrases which she had not understood, and together they cheated one another into the belief that hope lingered somewhere hidden in those words.

“I am not going to despair, Lady Blakeney,” said Sir Andrew firmly; “and, moreover, we are not going to disobey. I would stake my life that even now Blakeney has some scheme in his mind which is embodied in the various letters which he has given you, and which⁠—Heaven help us in that case!⁠—we might thwart by disobedience. Tomorrow in the late afternoon I will escort you to the Rue de Charonne. It is a house that we all know well, and which Armand, of course, knows too. I had already inquired there two days ago to ascertain whether by chance St. Just was not in hiding there, but Lucas, the landlord and old-clothes dealer, knew nothing about him.”

Marguerite told him about her swift vision of Armand in the dark corridor of the house of Justice.

“Can you understand it, Sir Andrew?” she asked, fixing her deep, luminous eyes inquiringly upon him.

“No, I cannot,” he said, after an almost imperceptible moment of hesitancy; “but we shall see him tomorrow. I have no doubt that Mademoiselle Lange will know where to find him; and now that we know where she is, all our anxiety about him, at any rate, should soon be at an end.”

He rose and made some allusion to the lateness of the hour. Somehow it seemed to her that her devoted friend was trying to hide his innermost thoughts from her. She watched him with an anxious, intent gaze.

“Can you understand it all, Sir Andrew?” she reiterated with a pathetic note of appeal.

“No, no!” he said firmly. “On my soul, Lady Blakeney, I know no more of Armand than you do yourself. But I am sure that Percy is right. The boy frets because remorse must have assailed him by now. Had he but obeyed implicitly that day, as we all did⁠—”

But he could not frame the whole terrible proposition in words. Bitterly as he himself felt on the subject of Armand, he would not add yet another burden to this devoted woman’s heavy load of misery.

“It was Fate, Lady Blakeney,” he said after a while. “Fate! a damnable fate which did it all. Great God! to think of Blakeney in the hands of those brutes seems so horrible that at times I feel as if the whole thing were a nightmare, and that the next moment we shall both wake hearing his merry voice echoing through this room.”

He tried to cheer her with words of hope that he knew were but chimeras. A heavy weight of despondency lay on his heart. The letter from his chief was hidden against his breast; he would study it anon in the privacy of his own apartment so as to commit every word to memory that related to the measures for the ultimate safety of the child-King. After that it would have to be destroyed, lest it fell into inimical hands.

Soon he bade Marguerite good night. She was tired out, body and soul, and he⁠—her faithful friend⁠—vaguely wondered how long she would be able to withstand the strain of so much sorrow, such unspeakable misery.

When at last she was alone Marguerite made brave efforts to compose her nerves so as to obtain a certain modicum of sleep this night. But, strive how she might, sleep would not come. How could it, when before her wearied brain there rose constantly that awful vision of Percy in the long, narrow cell, with weary head bent over his arm, and those friends shouting persistently in his ear:

“Wake up, citizen! Tell us, where is Capet?”

The fear obsessed her that his mind might give way; for the mental agony of such intense weariness must be well-nigh impossible to bear. In the dark, as she sat hour after hour at the open window, looking out in the direction where through the veil of snow the grey walls of the Châtelet prison towered silent and grim, she seemed to see his pale, drawn face with almost appalling reality; she could see every line of it, and could study it with the intensity born of a terrible fear.

How long would the ghostly glimmer of merriment still linger in the eyes? When would the hoarse, mirthless laugh rise to the lips, that awful laugh that proclaims madness? Oh! she could have screamed now with the awfulness of this haunting terror. Ghouls seemed to be mocking her out of the darkness, every flake of snow that fell silently on the windowsill became a grinning face that taunted and derided; every cry in the silence of the night, every footstep on the quay below turned to hideous jeers hurled at her by tormenting fiends.

She closed the window quickly, for she feared that she would go mad. For an hour after that she walked up and down the room making violent efforts to control her nerves, to find a glimmer of that courage which she promised Percy that she would have.

XXXII. Sisters

The morning found her fagged out, but more calm. Later on she managed to drink some coffee, and having washed and dressed, she prepared to go out.

Sir Andrew appeared in time to ascertain her wishes.

“I promised Percy to go to the Rue de Charonne in the late afternoon,” she said. “I have some hours to spare, and mean to employ them in trying to find speech with Mademoiselle Lange.”

“Blakeney has told you where she lives?”

“Yes. In the Square du Roule. I know it well. I can be there in half an hour.”

He, of course, begged to be allowed to accompany her, and anon they were walking together quickly up toward the Faubourg St. Honoré. The snow had ceased falling, but it was still very cold, but neither Marguerite nor Sir Andrew were conscious of the temperature or of any outward signs around them. They walked on silently until they reached the torn-down gates of the Square du Roule; there Sir Andrew parted from Marguerite after having appointed to meet her an hour later at a small eating-house he knew of where they could have some food together, before starting on their long expedition to the Rue de Charonne.

Five minutes later Marguerite Blakeney was shown in by worthy Madame Belhomme, into the quaint and pretty drawing-room with its soft-toned hangings and old-world air of faded grace. Mademoiselle Lange was sitting there, in a capacious armchair, which encircled her delicate figure with its framework of dull old gold.

She was ostensibly reading when Marguerite was announced, for an open book lay on a table beside her; but it seemed to the visitor that mayhap the young girl’s thoughts had played truant from her work, for her pose was listless and apathetic, and there was a look of grave trouble upon the childlike face.

She rose when Marguerite entered, obviously puzzled at the unexpected visit, and somewhat awed at the appearance of this beautiful woman with the sad look in her eyes.

“I must crave your pardon, mademoiselle,” said Lady Blakeney as soon as the door had once more closed on Madame Belhomme, and she found herself alone with the young girl. “This visit at such an early hour must seem to you an intrusion. But I am Marguerite St. Just, and⁠—”

Her smile and outstretched hand completed the sentence.

“St. Just!” exclaimed Jeanne.

“Yes. Armand’s sister!”

A swift blush rushed to the girl’s pale cheeks; her brown eyes expressed unadulterated joy. Marguerite, who was studying her closely, was conscious that her poor aching heart went out to this exquisite child, the far-off innocent cause of so much misery.

Jeanne, a little shy, a little confused and nervous in her movements, was pulling a chair close to the fire, begging Marguerite to sit. Her words came out all the while in short jerky sentences, and from time to time she stole swift shy glances at Armand’s sister.

“You will forgive me, mademoiselle,” said Marguerite, whose simple and calm manner quickly tended to soothe Jeanne Lange’s confusion; “but I was so anxious about my brother⁠—I do not know where to find him.”

“And so you came to me, madame?”

“Was I wrong?”

“Oh, no! But what made you think that⁠—that I would know?”

“I guessed,” said Marguerite with a smile.

“You had heard about me then?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Through whom? Did Armand tell you about me?”

“No, alas! I have not seen him this past fortnight, since you, mademoiselle, came into his life; but many of Armand’s friends are in Paris just now; one of them knew, and he told me.”

The soft blush had now overspread the whole of the girl’s face, even down to her graceful neck. She waited to see Marguerite comfortably installed in an armchair, then she resumed shyly:

“And it was Armand who told me all about you. He loves you so dearly.”

“Armand and I were very young children when we lost our parents,” said Marguerite softly, “and we were all in all to each other then. And until I married he was the man I loved best in all the world.”

“He told me you were married⁠—to an Englishman.”

“Yes?”

“He loves England too. At first he always talked of my going there with him as his wife, and of the happiness we should find there together.”

“Why do you say ‘at first’?”

“He talks less about England now.”

“Perhaps he feels that now you know all about it, and that you understand each other with regard to the future.”

“Perhaps.”

Jeanne sat opposite to Marguerite on a low stool by the fire. Her elbows were resting on her knees, and her face just now was half-hidden by the wealth of her brown curls. She looked exquisitely pretty sitting like this, with just the suggestion of sadness in the listless pose. Marguerite had come here today prepared to hate this young girl, who in a few brief days had stolen not only Armand’s heart, but his allegiance to his chief, and his trust in him. Since last night, when she had seen her brother sneak silently past her like a thief in the night, she had nurtured thoughts of ill-will and anger against Jeanne.

But hatred and anger had melted at the sight of this child. Marguerite, with the perfect understanding born of love itself, had soon realised the charm which a woman like Mademoiselle Lange must of necessity exercise over a chivalrous, enthusiastic nature like Armand’s. The sense of protection⁠—the strongest perhaps that exists in a good man’s heart⁠—would draw him irresistibly to this beautiful child, with the great, appealing eyes, and the look of pathos that pervaded the entire face. Marguerite, looking in silence on the dainty picture before her, found it in her heart to forgive Armand for disobeying his chief when those eyes beckoned to him in a contrary direction.

How could he, how could any chivalrous man endure the thought of this delicate, fresh flower lying crushed and drooping in the hands of monsters who respected neither courage nor purity? And Armand had been more than human, or mayhap less, if he had indeed consented to leave the fate of the girl whom he had sworn to love and protect in other hands than his own.

It seemed almost as if Jeanne was conscious of the fixity of Marguerite’s gaze, for though she did not turn to look at her, the flush gradually deepened in her cheeks.

“Mademoiselle Lange,” said Marguerite gently, “do you not feel that you can trust me?”

She held out her two hands to the girl, and Jeanne slowly turned to her. The next moment she was kneeling at Marguerite’s feet, and kissing the beautiful kind hands that had been stretched out to her with such sisterly love.

“Indeed, indeed, I do trust you,” she said, and looked with tear-dimmed eyes in the pale face above her. “I have longed for someone in whom I could confide. I have been so lonely lately, and Armand⁠—”

With an impatient little gesture she brushed away the tears which had gathered in her eyes.

“What has Armand been doing?” asked Marguerite with an encouraging smile.

“Oh, nothing to grieve me!” replied the young girl eagerly, “for he is kind and good, and chivalrous and noble. Oh, I love him with all my heart! I loved him from the moment that I set eyes on him, and then he came to see me⁠—perhaps you know! And he talked so beautiful about England, and so nobly about his leader the Scarlet Pimpernel⁠—have you heard of him?”

“Yes,” said Marguerite, smiling. “I have heard of him.”

“It was that day that citizen Héron came with his soldiers! Oh! you do not know citizen Héron. He is the most cruel man in France. In Paris he is hated by everyone, and no one is safe from his spies. He came to arrest Armand, but I was able to fool him and to save Armand. And after that,” she added with charming naivete, “I felt as if, having saved Armand’s life, he belonged to me⁠—and his love for me had made me his.”

“Then I was arrested,” she continued after a slight pause, and at the recollection of what she had endured then her fresh voice still trembled with horror.

“They dragged me to prison, and I spent two days in a dark cell, where⁠—”

She hid her face in her hands, whilst a few sobs shook her whole frame; then she resumed more calmly:

“I had seen nothing of Armand. I wondered where he was, and I knew that he would be eating out his heart with anxiety for me. But God was watching over me. At first I was transferred to the Temple prison, and there a kind creature⁠—a sort of man-of-all work in the prison took compassion on me. I do not know how he contrived it, but one morning very early he brought me some filthy old rags which he told me to put on quickly, and when I had done that he bade me follow him. Oh! he was a very dirty, wretched man himself, but he must have had a kind heart. He took me by the hand and made me carry his broom and brushes. Nobody took much notice of us, the dawn was only just breaking, and the passages were very dark and deserted; only once some soldiers began to chaff him about me: ‘C’est ma fille⁠—quoi?’ he said roughly. I very nearly laughed then, only I had the good sense to restrain myself, for I knew that my freedom, and perhaps my life, depended on my not betraying myself. My grimy, tattered guide took me with him right through the interminable corridors of that awful building, whilst I prayed fervently to God for him and for myself. We got out by one of the service stairs and exit, and then he dragged me through some narrow streets until we came to a corner where a covered cart stood waiting. My kind friend told me to get into the cart, and then he bade the driver on the box take me straight to a house in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois. Oh! I was infinitely grateful to the poor creature who had helped me to get out of that awful prison, and I would gladly have given him some money, for I am sure he was very poor; but I had none by me. He told me that I should be quite safe in the house in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and begged me to wait there patiently for a few days until I heard from one who had my welfare at heart, and who would further arrange for my safety.”

Marguerite had listened silently to this narrative so naively told by this child, who obviously had no idea to whom she owed her freedom and her life. While the girl talked, her mind could follow with unspeakable pride and happiness every phase of that scene in the early dawn, when that mysterious, ragged man-of-all-work, unbeknown even to the woman whom he was saving, risked his own noble life for the sake of her whom his friend and comrade loved.

“And did you never see again the kind man to whom you owe your life?” she asked.

“No!” replied Jeanne. “I never saw him since; but when I arrived at the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois I was told by the good people who took charge of me that the ragged man-of-all-work had been none other than the mysterious Englishman whom Armand reveres, he whom they call the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“But you did not stay very long in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois, did you?”

“No. Only three days. The third day I received a communiqué from the Committee of General Security, together with an unconditional certificate of safety. It meant that I was free⁠—quite free. Oh! I could scarcely believe it. I laughed and I cried until the people in the house thought that I had gone mad. The past few days had been such a horrible nightmare.”

“And then you saw Armand again?”

“Yes. They told him that I was free. And he came here to see me. He often comes; he will be here anon.”

“But are you not afraid on his account and your own? He is⁠—he must be still⁠—‘suspect’; a well-known adherent of the Scarlet Pimpernel, he would be safer out of Paris.”

“No! oh, no! Armand is in no danger. He, too, has an unconditional certificate of safety.”

“An unconditional certificate of safety?” asked Marguerite, whilst a deep frown of grave puzzlement appeared between her brows. “What does that mean?”

“It means that he is free to come and go as he likes; that neither he nor I have anything to fear from Héron and his awful spies. Oh! but for that sad and careworn look on Armand’s face we could be so happy; but he is so unlike himself. He is Armand and yet another; his look at times quite frightens me.”

“Yet you know why he is so sad,” said Marguerite in a strange, toneless voice which she seemed quite unable to control, for that tonelessness came from a terrible sense of suffocation, of a feeling as if her heartstrings were being gripped by huge, hard hands.

“Yes, I know,” said Jeanne half hesitatingly, as if knowing, she was still unconvinced.

“His chief, his comrade, the friend of whom you speak, the Scarlet Pimpernel, who risked his life in order to save yours, mademoiselle, is a prisoner in the hands of those that hate him.”

Marguerite had spoken with sudden vehemence. There was almost an appeal in her voice now, as if she were trying not to convince Jeanne only, but also herself, of something that was quite simple, quite straightforward, and yet which appeared to be receding from her, an intangible something, a spirit that was gradually yielding to a force as yet unborn, to a phantom that had not yet emerged from out chaos.

But Jeanne seemed unconscious of all this. Her mind was absorbed in Armand, the man whom she loved in her simple, wholehearted way, and who had seemed so different of late.

“Oh, yes!” she said with a deep, sad sigh, whilst the ever-ready tears once more gathered in her eyes, “Armand is very unhappy because of him. The Scarlet Pimpernel was his friend; Armand loved and revered him. Did you know,” added the girl, turning large, horror-filled eyes on Marguerite, “that they want some information from him about the Dauphin, and to force him to give it they⁠—they⁠—”

“Yes, I know,” said Marguerite.

“Can you wonder, then, that Armand is unhappy. Oh! last night, after he went from me, I cried for hours, just because he had looked so sad. He no longer talks of happy England, of the cottage we were to have, and of the Kentish orchards in May. He has not ceased to love me, for at times his love seems so great that I tremble with a delicious sense of fear. But oh! his love for me no longer makes him happy.”

Her head had gradually sunk lower and lower on her breast, her voice died down in a murmur broken by heartrending sighs. Every generous impulse in Marguerite’s noble nature prompted her to take that sorrowing child in her arms, to comfort her if she could, to reassure her if she had the power. But a strange icy feeling had gradually invaded her heart, even whilst she listened to the simple unsophisticated talk of Jeanne Lange. Her hands felt numb and clammy, and instinctively she withdrew away from the near vicinity of the girl. She felt as if the room, the furniture in it, even the window before her were dancing a wild and curious dance, and that from everywhere around strange whistling sounds reached her ears, which caused her head to whirl and her brain to reel.

Jeanne had buried her head in her hands. She was crying⁠—softly, almost humbly at first, as if half ashamed of her grief; then, suddenly it seemed, as if she could not contain herself any longer, a heavy sob escaped her throat and shook her whole delicate frame with its violence. Sorrow no longer would be gainsaid, it insisted on physical expression⁠—that awful tearing of the heartstrings which leaves the body numb and panting with pain.

In a moment Marguerite had forgotten; the dark and shapeless phantom that had knocked at the gate of her soul was relegated back into chaos. It ceased to be, it was made to shrivel and to burn in the great seething cauldron of womanly sympathy. What part this child had played in the vast cataclysm of misery which had dragged a noble-hearted enthusiast into the dark torture-chamber, whence the only outlet led to the guillotine, she⁠—Marguerite Blakeney⁠—did not know; what part Armand, her brother, had played in it, that she would not dare to guess; all that she knew was that here was a loving heart that was filled with pain⁠—a young, inexperienced soul that was having its first tussle with the grim realities of life⁠—and every motherly instinct in Marguerite was aroused.

She rose and gently drew the young girl up from her knees, and then closer to her; she pillowed the grief-stricken head against her shoulder, and murmured gentle, comforting words into the tiny ear.

“I have news for Armand,” she whispered, “that will comfort him, a message⁠—a letter from his friend. You will see, dear, that when Armand reads it he will become a changed man; you see, Armand acted a little foolishly a few days ago. His chief had given him orders which he disregarded⁠—he was so anxious about you⁠—he should have obeyed; and now, mayhap, he feels that his disobedience may have been the⁠—the innocent cause of much misery to others; that is, no doubt, the reason why he is so sad. The letter from his friend will cheer him, you will see.”

“Do you really think so, madame?” murmured Jeanne, in whose tear-stained eyes the indomitable hopefulness of youth was already striving to shine.

“I am sure of it,” assented Marguerite.

And for the moment she was absolutely sincere. The phantom had entirely vanished. She would even, had he dared to reappear, have mocked and derided him for his futile attempt at turning the sorrow in her heart to a veritable hell of bitterness.

XXXIII. Little Mother

The two women, both so young still, but each of them with a mark of sorrow already indelibly graven in her heart, were clinging to one another, bound together by the strong bond of sympathy. And but for the sadness of it all it were difficult to conjure up a more beautiful picture than that which they presented as they stood side by side; Marguerite, tall and stately as an exquisite lily, with the crown of her ardent hair and the glory of her deep blue eyes, and Jeanne Lange, dainty and delicate, with the brown curls and the childlike droop of the soft, moist lips.

Thus Armand saw them when, a moment or two later, he entered unannounced. He had pushed open the door and looked on the two women silently for a second or two; on the girl whom he loved so dearly, for whose sake he had committed the great, the unpardonable sin which would send him forever henceforth, Cain-like, a wanderer on the face of the earth; and the other, his sister, her whom a Judas act would condemn to lonely sorrow and widowhood.

He could have cried out in an agony of remorse, and it was the groan of acute soul anguish which escaped his lips that drew Marguerite’s attention to his presence.

Even though many things that Jeanne Lange had said had prepared her for a change in her brother, she was immeasurably shocked by his appearance. He had always been slim and rather below the average in height, but now his usually upright and trim figure seemed to have shrunken within itself; his clothes hung baggy on his shoulders, his hands appeared waxen and emaciated, but the greatest change was in his face, in the wide circles round the eyes, that spoke of wakeful nights, in the hollow cheeks, and the mouth that had wholly forgotten how to smile.

Percy after a week’s misery immured in a dark and miserable prison, deprived of food and rest, did not look such a physical wreck as did Armand St. Just, who was free.

Marguerite’s heart reproached her for what she felt had been neglect, callousness on her part. Mutely, within herself, she craved his forgiveness for the appearance of that phantom which should never have come forth from out that chaotic hell which had engendered it.

“Armand!” she cried.

And the loving arms that had guided his baby footsteps long ago, the tender hands that had wiped his boyish tears, were stretched out with unalterable love toward him.

“I have a message for you, dear,” she said gently⁠—“a letter from him. Mademoiselle Jeanne allowed me to wait here for you until you came.”

Silently, like a little shy mouse, Jeanne had slipped out of the room. Her pure love for Armand had ennobled every one of her thoughts, and her innate kindliness and refinement had already suggested that brother and sister would wish to be alone. At the door she had turned and met Armand’s look. That look had satisfied her; she felt that in it she had read the expression of his love, and to it she had responded with a glance that spoke of hope for a future meeting.

As soon as the door had closed on Jeanne Lange, Armand, with an impulse that refused to be checked, threw himself into his sister’s arms. The present, with all its sorrows, its remorse and its shame, had sunk away; only the past remained⁠—the unforgettable past, when Marguerite was “little mother”⁠—the soother, the comforter, the healer, the ever-willing receptacle wherein he had been wont to pour the burden of his childish griefs, of his boyish escapades.

Conscious that she could not know everything⁠—not yet, at any rate⁠—he gave himself over to the rapture of this pure embrace, the last time, mayhap, that those fond arms would close round him in unmixed tenderness, the last time that those fond lips would murmur words of affection and of comfort.

Tomorrow those same lips would, perhaps, curse the traitor, and the small hand be raised in wrath, pointing an avenging finger on the Judas.

“Little mother,” he whispered, babbling like a child, “it is good to see you again.”

“And I have brought you a message from Percy,” she said, “a letter which he begged me to give you as soon as may be.”

“You have seen him?” he asked.

She nodded silently, unable to speak. Not now, not when her nerves were strung to breaking pitch, would she trust herself to speak of that awful yesterday. She groped in the folds of her gown and took the packet which Percy had given her for Armand. It felt quite bulky in her hand.

“There is quite a good deal there for you to read, dear,” she said. “Percy begged me to give you this, and then to let you read it when you were alone.”

She pressed the packet into his hand. Armand’s face was ashen pale. He clung to her with strange, nervous tenacity; the paper which he held in one hand seemed to sear his fingers as with a branding-iron.

“I will slip away now,” she said, for strangely enough since Percy’s message had been in Armand’s hands she was once again conscious of that awful feeling of iciness round her heart, a sense of numbness that paralysed her very thoughts.

“You will make my excuses to Mademoiselle Lange,” she said, trying to smile. “When you have read, you will wish to see her alone.”

Gently she disengaged herself from Armand’s grasp and made for the door. He appeared dazed, staring down at that paper which was scorching his fingers. Only when her hand was on the latch did he seem to realise that she was going.

“Little mother,” came involuntarily to his lips.

She came straight back to him and took both his wrists in her small hands. She was taller than he, and his head was slightly bent forward. Thus she towered over him, loving but strong, her great, earnest eyes searching his soul.

“When shall I see you again, little mother?” he asked.

“Read your letter, dear,” she replied, “and when you have read it, if you care to impart its contents to me, come tonight to my lodgings, Quai de la Ferraille, above the saddler’s shop. But if there is aught in it that you do not wish me to know, then do not come; I shall understand. Goodbye, dear.”

She took his head between her two cold hands, and as it was still bowed she placed a tender kiss, as of a long farewell, upon his hair.

Then she went out of the room.

XXXIV. The Letter

Armand sat in the armchair in front of the fire. His head rested against one hand; in the other he held the letter written by the friend whom he had betrayed.

Twice he had read it now, and already was every word of that minute, clear writing graven upon the innermost fibres of his body, upon the most secret cells of his brain.

Armand, I know. I knew even before Chauvelin came to me, and stood there hoping to gloat over the soul-agony a man who finds that he has been betrayed by his dearest friend. But that d⁠⸺⁠d reprobate did not get that satisfaction, for I was prepared. Not only do I know, Armand, but I understand. I, who do not know what love is, have realised how small a thing is honour, loyalty, or friendship when weighed in the balance of a loved one’s need.

To save Jeanne you sold me to Héron and his crowd. We are men, Armand, and the word forgiveness has only been spoken once these past two thousand years, and then it was spoken by Divine lips. But Marguerite loves you, and mayhap soon you will be all that is left her to love on this earth. Because of this she must never know.⁠ ⁠… As for you, Armand⁠—well, God help you! But meseems that the hell which you are enduring now is ten thousand times worse than mine. I have heard your furtive footsteps in the corridor outside the grated window of this cell, and would not then have exchanged my hell for yours. Therefore, Armand, and because Marguerite loves you, I would wish to turn to you in the hour that I need help. I am in a tight corner, but the hour may come when a comrade’s hand might mean life to me. I have thought of you, Armand partly because having taken more than my life, your own belongs to me, and partly because the plan which I have in my mind will carry with it grave risks for the man who stands by me.

I swore once that never would I risk a comrade’s life to save mine own; but matters are so different now⁠ ⁠… we are both in hell, Armand, and I in striving to get out of mine will be showing you a way out of yours.

Will you retake possession of your lodgings in the Rue de la Croix Blanche? I should always know then where to find you in an emergency. But if at any time you receive another letter from me, be its contents what they may, act in accordance with the letter, and send a copy of it at once to Ffoulkes or to Marguerite. Keep in close touch with them both. Tell her I so far forgave your disobedience (there was nothing more) that I may yet trust my life and mine honour in your hands.

I shall have no means of ascertaining definitely whether you will do all that I ask; but somehow, Armand, I know that you will.

For the third time Armand read the letter through.

“But, Armand,” he repeated, murmuring the words softly under his breath, “I know that you will.”

Prompted by some indefinable instinct, moved by a force that compelled, he allowed himself to glide from the chair on to the floor, on to his knees.

All the pent-up bitterness, the humiliation, the shame of the past few days, surged up from his heart to his lips in one great cry of pain.

“My God!” he whispered, “give me the chance of giving my life for him.”

Alone and unwatched, he gave himself over for a few moments to the almost voluptuous delight of giving free rein to his grief. The hot Latin blood in him, tempestuous in all its passions, was firing his heart and brain now with the glow of devotion and of self-sacrifice.

The calm, self-centred Anglo-Saxon temperament⁠—the almost fatalistic acceptance of failure without reproach yet without despair, which Percy’s letter to him had evidenced in so marked a manner⁠—was, mayhap, somewhat beyond the comprehension of this young enthusiast, with pure Gallic blood in his veins, who was ever wont to allow his most elemental passions to sway his actions. But though he did not altogether understand, Armand St. Just could fully appreciate. All that was noble and loyal in him rose triumphant from beneath the devastating ashes of his own shame.

Soon his mood calmed down, his look grew less wan and haggard. Hearing Jeanne’s discreet and mouselike steps in the next room, he rose quickly and hid the letter in the pocket of his coat.

She came in and inquired anxiously about Marguerite; a hurriedly expressed excuse from him, however, satisfied her easily enough. She wanted to be alone with Armand, happy to see that he held his head more erect today, and that the look as of a hunted creature had entirely gone from his eyes.

She ascribed this happy change to Marguerite, finding it in her heart to be grateful to the sister for having accomplished what the fiancée had failed to do.

For awhile they remained together, sitting side by side, speaking at times, but mostly silent, seeming to savour the return of truant happiness. Armand felt like a sick man who has obtained a sudden surcease from pain. He looked round him with a kind of melancholy delight on this room which he had entered for the first time less than a fortnight ago, and which already was so full of memories.

Those first hours spent at the feet of Jeanne Lange, how exquisite they had been, how fleeting in the perfection of their happiness! Now they seemed to belong to a far distant past, evanescent like the perfume of violets, swift in their flight like the winged steps of youth. Blakeney’s letter had effectually taken the bitter sting from out his remorse, but it had increased his already over-heavy load of inconsolable sorrow.

Later in the day he turned his footsteps in the direction of the river, to the house in the Quai de la Ferraille above the saddler’s shop. Marguerite had returned alone from the expedition to the Rue de Charonne. Whilst Sir Andrew took charge of the little party of fugitives and escorted them out of Paris, she came back to her lodgings in order to collect her belongings, preparatory to taking up her quarters in the house of Lucas, the old-clothes dealer. She returned also because she hoped to see Armand.

“If you care to impart the contents of the letter to me, come to my lodgings tonight,” she had said.

All day a phantom had haunted her, the phantom of an agonising suspicion.

But now the phantom had vanished never to return. Armand was sitting close beside her, and he told her that the chief had selected him amongst all the others to stand by him inside the walls of Paris until the last.

“I shall mayhap,” thus closed that precious document, “have no means of ascertaining definitely whether you will act in accordance with this letter. But somehow, Armand, I know that you will.”

“I know that you will, Armand,” reiterated Marguerite fervently.

She had only been too eager to be convinced; the dread and dark suspicion which had been like a hideous poisoned sting had only vaguely touched her soul; it had not gone in very deeply. How could it, when in its death-dealing passage it encountered the rampart of tender, almost motherly love?

Armand, trying to read his sister’s thoughts in the depths of her blue eyes, found the look in them limpid and clear. Percy’s message to Armand had reassured her just as he had intended that it should do. Fate had dealt over harshly with her as it was, and Blakeney’s remorse for the sorrow which he had already caused her, was scarcely less keen than Armand’s. He did not wish her to bear the intolerable burden of hatred against her brother; and by binding St. Just close to him at the supreme hour of danger he hoped to prove to the woman whom he loved so passionately that Armand was worthy of trust.

Part III