For the persistent and optimistic romanticist, there were still one or
two idylls to be discovered flourishing under the shadow of the grim and
relentless Revolution. One such was that which had Esther Vincent and
Jack Kennard for hero and heroine. Esther, the orphaned daughter of one
of the richest bankers of pre-Revolution days, now a daily governess and
household drudge at ten francs a week in the house of a retired butcher
in the Rue Richelieu, and Jack Kennard, formerly the representative of a
big English firm of woollen manufacturers, who had thrown up his
employment and prospects in England in order to watch over the girl whom
he loved. He, himself an alien enemy, an Englishman, in deadly danger of
his life every hour that he remained in France; and she, unwilling at
the time to leave the horrors of revolutionary Paris while her father
was lingering at the Conciergerie awaiting condemnation, as such
forbidden to leave the city. So Kennard stayed on, unable to tear
himself away from her, and obtained an unlucrative post as accountant in
a small wine shop over by Montmartre. His life, like hers, was hanging
by a thread; any day, any hour now, some malevolent denunciation might,
in the sight of the Committee of Public Safety, turn the eighteen years
old "suspect" into a living peril to the State, or the alien enemy into
a dangerous spy.
Some of the happiest hours these two spent in one another's company were
embittered by that ever-present dread of the peremptory knock at the
door, the portentous: "Open, in the name of the Law!" the perquisition,
the arrest, to which the only issue, these days, was the guillotine.
But the girl was only just eighteen, and he not many years older, and at
that age, in spite of misery, sorrow, and dread, life always has its
compensations. Youth cries out to happiness so insistently that
happiness is forced to hear, and for a few moments, at the least, drives
care and even the bitterest anxiety away.
For Esther Vincent and her English lover there were moments when they
believed themselves to be almost happy. It was in the evenings mostly,
when she came home from her work and he was free to spend an hour or two
with her. Then old Lucienne, who had been Esther's nurse in the happy,
olden days, and was an unpaid maid-of-all-work and a loved and trusted
friend now, would bring in the lamp and pull the well-darned curtains
over the windows. She would spread a clean cloth upon the table and
bring in a meagre supper of coffee and black bread, perhaps a little
butter or a tiny square of cheese. And the two young people would talk
of the future, of the time when they would settle down in Kennard's old
home, over in England, where his mother and sister even now were eating
out their hearts with anxiety for him.
"Tell me all about the South Downs," Esther was very fond of saying;
"and your village, and your house, and the rambler roses and the
clematis arbour."
She never tired of hearing, or he of telling. The old Manor House,
bought with his father's savings; the garden which was his mother's
hobby; the cricket pitch on the village green. Oh, the cricket! She
thought that so funny--the men in high, sugar-loaf hats, grown-up men,
spending hours and hours, day after day, in banging at a ball with a
wooden bat!
"Oh, Jack! The English are a funny, nice, dear, kind lot of people. I
remember--"
She remembered so well that happy summer which she had spent with her
father in England four years ago. It was after the Bastille had been
stormed and taken, and the banker had journeyed to England with his
daughter in something of a hurry. Then her father had talked of
returning to France and leaving her behind with friends in England. But
Esther would not be left. Oh, no! Even now she glowed with pride at the
thought of her firmness in the matter. If she had remained in England
she would never have seen her dear father again. Here remembrances grew
bitter and sad, until Jack's hand reached soothingly, consolingly out to
her, and she brushed away her tears, so as not to sadden him still more.
Then she would ask more questions about his home and his garden, about
his mother and the dogs and the flowers; and once more they would forget
that hatred and envy and death were already stalking their door.