When she reopened her eyes she was in what appeared to be the lodge of a
concierge. She was lying on a horsehair sofa. There was a sense of
warmth and of security around her. No wonder that it still seemed like a
dream. Before her stood a man, tall and straight, surely a being from
another world--or so he appeared to the poor wretch who, since
uncountable time, had set eyes on none but the most miserable dregs of
struggling humanity, who had seen little else but rags, and faces either
cruel or wretched. This man was clad in a huge caped coat, which made
his powerful figure seem preternaturally large. His hair was fair and
slightly curly above his low, square brow; the eyes beneath their heavy
lids looked down on her with unmistakable kindness.
The poor woman struggled to her feet. With a quick and pathetically
humble gesture she drew her ragged, muddy skirts over her ankles and her
tattered kerchief across her breast.
"I had best go now, Monsieur ... citizen," she murmured, while a hot
flush rose to the roots of her unkempt hair. "I must not stop here....
I--"
"You are not going, Madame," he broke in, speaking now in perfect French
and with a great air of authority, as one who is accustomed to being
implicitly obeyed, "until you have told me how, a lady of culture and of
refinement, comes to be masquerading as a street-dancer. The game is a
dangerous one, as you have experienced to-night."
"It is no game, Monsieur ... citizen," she stammered; "nor yet a
masquerade. I have been a street-dancer all my life, and--"
By way of an answer he took her hand, always with that air of authority
which she never thought to resent.
"This is not a street-dancer's hand; Madame," he said quietly. "Nor is
your speech that of the people."
She drew her hand away quickly, and the flush on her haggard face
deepened.
"If you will honour me with your confidence, Madame," he insisted.
The kindly words, the courtesy of the man, went to the poor creature's
heart. She fell back upon the sofa and with her face buried in her arms
she sobbed out her heart for a minute or two. The man waited quite
patiently. He had seen many women weep these days, and had dried many a
tear through deeds of valour and of self-sacrifice, which were for ever
recorded in the hearts of those whom he had succoured.
When this poor woman had succeeded in recovering some semblance of
self-control, she turned her wan, tear-stained face to him and said
simply:
"My name is Madeleine Lannoy, Monsieur. My husband was killed during the
emeutes at Versailles, whilst defending the persons of the Queen and of
the royal children against the fury of the mob. When I was a girl I had
the misfortune to attract the attentions of a young doctor named Jean
Paul Marat. You have heard of him, Monsieur?"
The other nodded.
"You know him, perhaps," she continued, "for what he is: the most cruel
and revengeful of men. A few years ago he threw up his lucrative
appointment as Court physician to Monseigneur le Comte d'Artois, and
gave up the profession of medicine for that of journalist and
politician. Politician! Heaven help him! He belongs to the most
bloodthirsty section of revolutionary brigands. His creed is pillage,
murder, and revenge; and he chooses to declare that it is I who, by
rejecting his love, drove him to these foul extremities. May God forgive
him that abominable lie! The evil we do, Monsieur, is within us; it does
not come from circumstance. I, in the meanwhile, was a happy wife. My
husband, M. de Lannoy, who was an officer in the army, idolised me. We
had one child, a boy--"
She paused, with another catch in her throat. Then she resumed, with
calmness that, in view of the tale she told, sounded strangely weird:
"In June last year my child was stolen from me--stolen by Marat in
hideous revenge for the supposed wrong which I had done him. The details
of that execrable outrage are of no importance. I was decoyed from home
one day through the agency of a forged message purporting to come from a
very dear friend whom I knew to be in grave trouble at the time. Oh! the
whole thing was thoroughly well thought out, I can assure you!" she
continued, with a harsh laugh which ended in a heartrending sob. "The
forged message, the suborned servant, the threats of terrible reprisals
if anyone in the village gave me the slightest warning or clue. When the
whole miserable business was accomplished, I was just like a trapped
animal inside a cage, held captive by immovable bars of obstinate
silence and cruel indifference. No one would help me. No one ostensibly
knew anything; no one had seen anything, heard anything. The child was
gone! My servants, the people in the village--some of whom I could have
sworn were true and sympathetic--only shrugged their shoulders. 'Que
voulez-vous, Madame? Children of bourgeois as well as of aristos were
often taken up by the State to be brought up as true patriots and no
longer pampered like so many lap-dogs.'
"Three days later I received a letter from that inhuman monster, Jean
Paul Marat. He told me that he had taken my child away from me, not from
any idea of revenge for my disdain in the past, but from a spirit of
pure patriotism. My boy, he said, should not be brought up with the same
ideas of bourgeois effeteness and love of luxury which had disgraced the
nation for centuries. No! he should be reared amongst men who had
realised the true value of fraternity and equality and the ideal of
complete liberty for the individual to lead his own life, unfettered by
senseless prejudices of education and refinement. Which means,
Monsieur," the poor woman went on with passionate misery, "that my child
is to be reared up in the company of all that is most vile and most
degraded in the disease-haunted slums of indigent Paris; that, with the
connivance of that execrable fiend Marat, my only son will, mayhap, come
back to me one day a potential thief, a criminal probably, a
drink-sodden reprobate at best. Such things are done every day in this
glorious Revolution of ours--done in the sacred name of France and of
Liberty. And the moral murder of my child is to be my punishment for
daring to turn a deaf ear to the indign passion of a brute!"
Once more she paused, and when the melancholy echo of her broken voice
had died away in the narrow room, not another murmur broke the stillness
of this far-away corner of the great city.
The man did not move. He stood looking down upon the poor woman before
him, a world of pity expressed in his deep-set eyes. Through the
absolute silence around there came the sound as of a gentle flutter, the
current of cold air, mayhap, sighing through the ill-fitting shutters,
or the soft, weird soughing made by unseen things. The man's heart was
full of pity, and it seemed as if the Angel of Compassion had come at
his bidding and enfolded the sorrowing woman with his wings.
A moment or two later she was able to finish her pathetic narrative.
"Do you marvel, Monsieur," she said, "that I am still sane--still alive?
But I only live to find my child. I try and keep my reason in order to
fight the devilish cunning of a brute on his own ground. Up to now all
my inquiries have been in vain. At first I squandered money, tried
judicial means, set an army of sleuth-hounds on the track. I tried
bribery, corruption. I went to the wretch himself and abased myself in
the dust before him. He only laughed at me and told me that his love for
me had died long ago; he now was lavishing its treasures upon the
faithful friend and companion--that awful woman, Simonne Evrard--who had
stood by him in the darkest hours of his misfortunes. Then it was that I
decided to adopt different tactics. Since my child was to be reared in
the midst of murderers and thieves, I, too, would haunt their abodes. I
became a street-singer, dancer, what you will. I wear rags now and
solicit alms. I haunt the most disreputable cabarets in the lowest slums
of Paris. I listen and I spy; I question every man, woman, and child who
might afford some clue, give me some indication. There is hardly a house
in these parts that I have not visited and whence I have not been kicked
out as an importunate beggar or worse. Gradually I am narrowing the
circle of my investigations. Presently I shall get a clue. I shall! I
know I shall! God cannot allow this monstrous thing to go on!"
Again there was silence. The poor woman had completely broken down.
Shame, humiliation, passionate grief, had made of her a mere miserable
wreckage of humanity.
The man waited awhile until she was composed, then he said simply:
"You have suffered terribly, Madame; but chiefly, I think, because you
have been alone in your grief. You have brooded over it until it has
threatened your reason. Now, if you will allow me to act as your friend,
I will pledge you my word that I will find your son for you. Will you
trust me sufficiently to give up your present methods and place yourself
entirely in my hands? There are more than a dozen gallant gentlemen, who
are my friends, and who will help me in my search. But for this I must
have a free hand, and only help from you when I require it. I can find
you lodgings where you will be quite safe under the protection of my
wife, who is as like an angel as any man or woman I have ever met on
this earth. When your son is once more in your arms, you will, I hope,
accompany us to England, where so many of your friends have already
found a refuge. If this meets with your approval, Madame, you may
command me, for with your permission I mean to be your most devoted
servant."
Dante, in his wild imaginations of hell and of purgatory and fleeting
glimpses of paradise, never put before us the picture of a soul that was
lost and found heaven, after a cycle of despair. Nor could Madeleine
Lannoy ever explain her feelings at that moment, even to herself. To
begin with, she could not quite grasp the reality of this ray of hope,
which came to her at the darkest hour of her misery. She stared at the
man before her as she would on an ethereal vision; she fell on her knees
and buried her face in her hands.
What happened afterwards she hardly knew; she was in a state of
semi-consciousness. When she once more woke to reality, she was in
comfortable lodgings; she moved and talked and ate and lived like a
human being. She was no longer a pariah, an outcast, a poor,
half-demented creature, insentient save for an infinite capacity for
suffering. She suffered still, but she no longer despaired. There had
been such marvellous power and confidence in that man's voice when he
said: "I pledge you my word." Madeleine Lannoy lived now in hope and a
sweet sense of perfect mental and bodily security. Around her there was
an influence, too, a presence which she did not often see, but always
felt to be there: a woman, tall and graceful and sympathetic, who was
always ready to cheer, to comfort, and to help. Her name was Marguerite.
Madame Lannoy never knew her by any other. The man had spoken of her as
being as like an angel as could be met on this earth, and poor Madeleine
Lannoy fully agreed with him.