IV

"Open, in the name of the Law!"

It had come at last. A bolt from out the serene blue of their happiness.

A rough, dirty, angry, cursing crowd, who burst through the heavy door

even before they had time to open it. Lucienne collapsed into a chair,

weeping and lamenting, with her apron thrown over her head. But Esther

and Kennard stood quite still and calm, holding one another by the hand,

just to give one another courage.

Some half dozen men stalked into the little room. Men? They looked like

ravenous beasts, and were unspeakably dirty, wore soiled tricolour

scarves above their tattered breeches in token of their official status.

Two of them fell on the remnants of the meagre supper and devoured

everything that remained on the table--bread, cheese, a piece of

home-made sausage. The others ransacked the two attic-rooms which had

been home for Esther and Lucienne: the little living-room under the

sloping roof, with the small hearth on which very scanty meals were wont

to be cooked, and the bare, narrow room beyond, with the iron bedstead,

and the palliasse on the floor for Lucienne.

The men poked about everywhere, struck great, spiked sticks through the

poor bits of bedding, and ripped up the palliasse. They tore open the

drawers of the rickety chest and of the broken-down wardrobe, and did

not spare the unfortunate young girl a single humiliation or a single

indignity.

Kennard, burning with wrath, tried to protest.

"Hold that cub!" commanded the leader of the party, almost as soon as

the young Englishman's hot, indignant words had resounded above the din

of overturned furniture. "And if he opens his mouth again throw him into

the street!" And Kennard, terrified lest he should be parted from

Esther, thought it wiser to hold his peace.

They looked at one another, like two young trapped beasts--not

despairing, but trying to infuse courage one into the other by a look of

confidence and of love. Esther, in fact, kept her eyes fixed on her

good-looking English lover, firmly keeping down the shudder of loathing

which went right through her when she saw those awful men coming nigh

her. There was one especially whom she abominated worse than the others,

a bandy-legged ruffian, who regarded her with a leer that caused her an

almost physical nausea. He did not take part in the perquisition, but

sat down in the centre of the room and sprawled over the table with the

air of one who was in authority. The others addressed him as "citizen

Merri," and alternately ridiculed and deferred to him. And there was

another, equally hateful, a horrible, cadaverous creature, with huge

bare feet thrust into sabots, and lank hair, thick with grime. He did

most of the talking, even though his loquacity occasionally broke down

in a racking cough, which literally seemed to tear at his chest, and

left him panting, hoarse, and with beads of moisture upon his low,

pallid forehead.

Of course, the men found nothing that could even remotely be termed

compromising. Esther had been very prudent in deference to Kennard's

advice; she also had very few possessions. Nevertheless, when the

wretches had turned every article of furniture inside out, one of them

asked curtly:

"What do we do next, citizen Merri?"

"Do?" broke in the cadaverous creature, even before Merri had time to

reply. "Do? Why, take the wench to--to--"

He got no further, became helpless with coughing. Esther, quite

instinctively, pushed the carafe of water towards him.

"Nothing of the sort!" riposted Merri sententiously. "The wench stays

here!"

Both Esther and Jack had much ado to suppress an involuntary cry of

relief, which at this unexpected pronouncement had risen to their lips.

The man with the cough tried to protest.

"But--" he began hoarsely.

"I said, the wench stays here!" broke in Merri peremptorily. "Ah ca!" he

added, with a savage imprecation. "Do you command here, citizen Rateau,

or do I?"

The other at once became humble, even cringing.

"You, of course, citizen," he rejoined in his hollow voice. "I would

only remark--"

"Remark nothing," retorted the other curtly. "See to it that the cub is

out of the house. And after that put a sentry outside the wench's door.

No one to go in and out of here under any pretext whatever. Understand?"

Kennard this time uttered a cry of protest. The helplessness of his

position exasperated him almost to madness. Two men were holding him

tightly by his sinewy arms. With an Englishman's instinct for a fight,

he would not only have tried, but also succeeded in knocking these two

down, and taken the other four on after that, with quite a reasonable

chance of success. That tuberculous creature, now! And that bandy-legged

ruffian! Jack Kennard had been an amateur middle-weight champion in his

day, and these brutes had no more science than an enraged bull! But even

as he fought against that instinct he realised the futility of a

struggle. The danger of it, too--not for himself, but for her. After

all, they were not going to take her away to one of those awful places

from which the only egress was the way to the guillotine; and if there

was that amount of freedom there was bound to be some hope. At twenty

there is always hope!

So when, in obedience to Merri's orders, the two ruffians began to drag

him towards the door, he said firmly:

"Leave me alone. I'll go without this unnecessary struggling."

Then, before the wretches realised his intention, he had jerked himself

free from them and run to Esther.

"Have no fear," he said to her in English, and in a rapid whisper. "I'll

watch over you. The house opposite. I know the people. I'll manage it

somehow. Be on the look-out."

They would not let him say more, and she only had the chance of

responding firmly: "I am not afraid, and I'll be on the look-out." The

next moment Merri's compeers seized him from behind--four of them this

time.

Then, of course, prudence went to the winds. He hit out to the right and

left. Knocked two of those recreants down, and already was prepared to

seize Esther in his arms, make a wild dash for the door, and run with

her, whither only God knew, when Rateau, that awful consumptive

reprobate, crept slyly up behind him and dealt him a swift and heavy

blow on the skull with his weighted stick. Kennard staggered, and the

bandits closed upon him. Those on the floor had time to regain their

feet. To make assurance doubly sure, one of them emulated Rateau's

tactics, and hit the Englishman once more on the head from behind. After

that, Kennard became inert; he had partly lost consciousness. His head

ached furiously. Esther, numb with horror, saw him bundled out of the

room. Rateau, coughing and spluttering, finally closed the door upon the

unfortunate and the four brigands who had hold of him.

Only Merri and that awful Rateau had remained in the room. The latter,

gasping for breath now, poured himself out a mugful of water and drank

it down at one draught. Then he swore, because he wanted rum, or brandy,

or even wine. Esther watched him and Merri, fascinated. Poor old

Lucienne was quietly weeping behind her apron.

"Now then, my wench," Merri began abruptly, "suppose you sit down here

and listen to what I have to say."

He pulled a chair close to him and, with one of those hideous leers

which had already caused her to shudder, he beckoned her to sit. Esther

obeyed as if in a dream. Her eyes were dilated like those of one in a

waking trance. She moved mechanically, like a bird attracted by a

serpent, terrified, yet unresisting. She felt utterly helpless between

these two villainous brutes, and anxiety for her English lover seemed

further to numb her senses. When she was sitting she turned her gaze,

with an involuntary appeal for pity, upon the bandy-legged ruffian

beside her. He laughed.

"No! I am not going to hurt you," he said with smooth condescension,

which was far more loathsome to Esther's ears than his comrades' savage

oaths had been. "You are pretty and you have pleased me. 'Tis no small

matter, forsooth!" he added, with loud-voiced bombast, "to have earned

the good-will of citizen Merri. You, my wench, are in luck's way. You

realise what has occurred just now. You are amenable to the law which

has decreed you to be suspect. I hold an order for your arrest. I can

have you seized at once by my men, dragged to the Conciergerie, and from

thence nothing can save you--neither your good looks nor the protection

of citizen Merri. It means the guillotine. You understand that, don't

you?"

She sat quite still; only her hands were clutched convulsively together.

But she contrived to say quite firmly:

"I do, and I am not afraid."

Merri waved a huge and very dirty hand with a careless gesture.

"I know," he said with a harsh laugh. "They all say that, don't they,

citizen Rateau?"

"Until the time comes," assented that worthy dryly.

"Until the time comes," reiterated the other. "Now, my wench," he added,

once more turning to Esther, "I don't want that time to come. I don't

want your pretty head to go rolling down into the basket, and to receive

the slap on the face which the citizen executioner has of late taken to

bestowing on those aristocratic cheeks which Mme. la Guillotine has

finally blanched for ever. Like this, you see."

And the inhuman wretch took up one of the round cushions from the

nearest chair, held it up at arm's length, as if it were a head which he

held by the hair, and then slapped it twice with the palm of his left

hand. The gesture was so horrible and withal so grotesque, that Esther

closed her eyes with a shudder, and her pale cheeks took on a leaden

hue. Merri laughed aloud and threw the cushion down again.

"Unpleasant, what? my pretty wench! Well, you know what to expect ...

unless," he added significantly, "you are reasonable and will listen to

what I am about to tell you."

Esther was no fool, nor was she unsophisticated. These were not times

when it was possible for any girl, however carefully nurtured and

tenderly brought up, to remain ignorant of the realities and the

brutalities of life. Even before Merri had put his abominable

proposition before her, she knew what he was driving at.

Marriage--marriage to him! that ignoble wretch, more vile than any dumb

creature! In exchange for her life!

It was her turn now to laugh. The very thought of it was farcical in its

very odiousness. Merri, who had embarked on his proposal with

grandiloquent phraseology, suddenly paused, almost awed by that strange,

hysterical laughter.

"By Satan and all his ghouls!" he cried, and jumped to his feet, his

cheeks paling beneath the grime.

Then rage seized him at his own cowardice. His egregious vanity, wounded

by that laughter, egged him on. He tried to seize Esther by the waist.

But she, quick as some panther on the defence, had jumped up, too, and

pounced upon a knife--the very one she had been using for that happy

little supper with her lover a brief half hour ago. Unguarded,

unthinking, acting just with a blind instinct, she raised it and cried

hoarsely:

"If you dare touch me, I'll kill you!"

It was ludicrous, of course. A mouse threatening a tiger. The very next

moment Rateau had seized her hand and quietly taken away the knife.

Merri shook himself like a frowsy dog.

"Whew!" he ejaculated. "What a vixen! But," he added lightly, "I like

her all the better for that--eh, Rateau? Give me a wench with a

temperament, I say!"

But Esther, too, had recovered herself. She realised her helplessness,

and gathered courage from the consciousness of it! Now she faced the

infamous villain more calmly.

"I will never marry you," she said loudly and firmly. "Never! I am not

afraid to die. I am not afraid of the guillotine. There is no shame

attached to death. So now you may do as you please--denounce me, and

send me to follow in the footsteps of my dear father, if you wish. But

whilst I am alive you will never come nigh me. If you ever do but lay a

finger upon me, it will be because I am dead and beyond the reach of

your polluting touch. And now I have said all that I will ever say to

you in this life. If you have a spark of humanity left in you, you will,

at least, let me prepare for death in peace."

She went round to where poor old Lucienne still sat, like an insentient

log, panic-stricken. She knelt down on the floor and rested her arm on

the old woman's knees. The light of the lamp fell full upon her, her

pale face, and mass of chestnut-brown hair. There was nothing about her

at this moment to inflame a man's desire. She looked pathetic in her

helplessness, and nearly lifeless through the intensity of her pallor,

whilst the look in her eyes was almost maniacal.

Merri cursed and swore, tried to hearten himself by turning on his

friend. But Rateau had collapsed--whether with excitement or the ravages

of disease, it were impossible to say. He sat upon a low chair, his long

legs, his violet-circled eyes staring out with a look of hebetude and

overwhelming fatigue. Merri looked around him and shuddered. The

atmosphere of the place had become strangely weird and uncanny; even the

tablecloth, dragged half across the table, looked somehow like a shroud.

"What shall we do, Rateau?" he asked tremulously at last.

"Get out of this infernal place," replied the other huskily. "I feel as

if I were in my grave-clothes already."

"Hold your tongue, you miserable coward! You'll make the aristo think

that we are afraid."

"Well?" queried Rateau blandly. "Aren't you?"

"No!" replied Merri fiercely. "I'll go now because ... because ... well!

because I have had enough to-day. And the wench sickens me. I wish to

serve the Republic by marrying her, but just now I feel as if I should

never really want her. So I'll go! But, understand!" he added, and

turned once more to Esther, even though he could not bring himself to go

nigh her again. "Understand that to-morrow I'll come again for my

answer. In the meanwhile, you may think matters over, and, maybe, you'll

arrive at a more reasonable frame of mind. You will not leave these

rooms until I set you free. My men will remain as sentinels at your

door."

He beckoned to Rateau, and the two men went out of the room without

another word.

V

The whole of that night Esther remained shut up in her apartment in the

Petite Rue Taranne. All night she heard the measured tramp, the

movements, the laughter and loud talking of men outside her door. Once

or twice she tried to listen to what they said. But the doors and walls

in these houses of old Paris were too stout to allow voices to filter

through, save in the guise of a confused murmur. She would have felt

horribly lonely and frightened but for the fact that in one window on

the third floor in the house opposite the light of a lamp appeared like

a glimmer of hope. Jack Kennard was there, on the watch. He had the

window open and sat beside it until a very late hour; and after that he

kept the light in, as a beacon, to bid her be of good cheer.

In the middle of the night he made an attempt to see her, hoping to

catch the sentinels asleep or absent. But, having climbed the five

stories of the house wherein she dwelt, he arrived on the landing

outside her door and found there half a dozen ruffians squatting on the

stone floor and engaged in playing hazard with a pack of greasy cards.

That wretched consumptive, Rateau, was with them, and made a facetious

remark as Kennard, pale and haggard, almost ghostlike, with a white

bandage round his head, appeared upon the landing.

"Go back to bed, citizen," the odious creature said, with a raucous

laugh. "We are taking care of your sweetheart for you."

Never in all his life had Jack Kennard felt so abjectly wretched as he

did then, so miserably helpless. There was nothing that he could do,

save to return to the lodging, which a kind friend had lent him for the

occasion, and from whence he could, at any rate, see the windows behind

which his beloved was watching and suffering.

When he went a few moments ago, he had left the porte cochere ajar. Now

he pushed it open and stepped into the dark passage beyond. A tiny

streak of light filtrated through a small curtained window in the

concierge's lodge; it served to guide Kennard to the foot of the narrow

stone staircase which led to the floors above. Just at the foot of the

stairs, on the mat, a white paper glimmered in the dim shaft of light.

He paused, puzzled, quite certain that the paper was not there five

minutes ago when he went out. Oh! it may have fluttered in from the

courtyard beyond, or from anywhere, driven by the draught. But, even so,

with that mechanical action peculiar to most people under like

circumstances, he stooped and picked up the paper, turned it over

between his fingers, and saw that a few words were scribbled on it in

pencil. The light was too dim to read by, so Kennard, still quite

mechanically, kept the paper in his hand and went up to his room. There,

by the light of the lamp, he read the few words scribbled in pencil:

"Wait in the street outside."

Nothing more. The message was obviously not intended for him, and yet....

A strange excitement possessed him. If it should be! If...! He had

heard--everyone had--of the mysterious agencies that were at work, under

cover of darkness, to aid the unfortunate, the innocent, the helpless.

He had heard of that legendary English gentleman who had before now

defied the closest vigilance of the Committees, and snatched their

intended victims out of their murderous clutches, at times under their

very eyes.

If this should be...! He scarce dared put his hope into words. He could

not bring himself really to believe. But he went. He ran downstairs and

out into the street, took his stand under a projecting doorway nearly

opposite the house which held the woman he loved, and leaning against

the wall, he waited.

After many hours--it was then past three o'clock in the morning, and the

sky of an inky blackness--he felt so numb that despite his will a kind

of trance-like drowsiness overcame him. He could no longer stand on his

feet; his knees were shaking; his head felt so heavy that he could not

keep it up. It rolled round from shoulder to shoulder, as if his will no

longer controlled it. And it ached furiously. Everything around him was

very still. Even "Paris-by-Night," that grim and lurid giant, was for

the moment at rest. A warm summer rain was falling; its gentle,

pattering murmur into the gutter helped to lull Kennard's senses into

somnolence. He was on the point of dropping off to sleep when something

suddenly roused him. A noise of men shouting and laughing--familiar

sounds enough in these squalid Paris streets.

But Kennard was wide awake now; numbness had given place to intense

quivering of all his muscles, and super-keenness of his every sense. He

peered into the darkness and strained his ears to hear. The sound

certainly appeared to come from the house opposite, and there, too, it

seemed as if something or things were moving. Men! More than one or two,

surely! Kennard thought that he could distinguish at least three

distinct voices; and there was that weird, racking cough which

proclaimed the presence of Rateau.

Now the men were quite close to where he--Kennard--still stood cowering.

A minute or two later they had passed down the street. Their hoarse

voices soon died away in the distance. Kennard crept cautiously out of

his hiding-place. Message or mere coincidence, he now blessed that

mysterious scrap of paper. Had he remained in his room, he might really

have dropped off to sleep and not heard these men going away. There were

three of them at least--Kennard thought four. But, anyway, the number of

watch-dogs outside the door of his beloved had considerably diminished.

He felt that he had the strength to grapple with them, even if there

were still three of them left. He, an athlete, English, and master of

the art of self-defence; and they, a mere pack of drink-sodden brutes!

Yes! He was quite sure he could do it. Quite sure that he could force

his way into Esther's rooms and carry her off in his arms--whither? God

alone knew. And God alone would provide.

Just for a moment he wondered if, while he was in that state of

somnolence, other bandits had come to take the place of those that were

going. But this thought he quickly dismissed. In any case, he felt a

giant's strength in himself, and could not rest now till he had tried

once more to see her. He crept very cautiously along; was satisfied that

the street was deserted.

Already he had reached the house opposite, had pushed open the porte

cochere, which was on the latch--when, without the slightest warning, he

was suddenly attacked from behind, his arms seized and held behind his

back with a vice-like grip, whilst a vigorous kick against the calves of

his legs caused him to lose his footing and suddenly brought him down,

sprawling and helpless, in the gutter, while in his ear there rang the

hideous sound of the consumptive ruffian's racking cough.

"What shall we do with the cub now?" a raucous voice came out of the

darkness.

"Let him lie there," was the quick response. "It'll teach him to

interfere with the work of honest patriots."

Kennard, lying somewhat bruised and stunned, heard this decree with

thankfulness. The bandits obviously thought him more hurt than he was,

and if only they would leave him lying here, he would soon pick himself

up and renew his attempt to go to Esther. He did not move, feigning

unconsciousness, even though he felt rather than saw that hideous Rateau

stooping over him, heard his stertorous breathing, the wheezing in his

throat.

"Run and fetch a bit of cord, citizen Desmonts," the wretch said

presently. "A trussed cub is safer than a loose one."

This dashed Kennard's hopes to a great extent. He felt that he must act

quickly, before those brigands returned and rendered him completely

helpless. He made a movement to rise--a movement so swift and sudden as

only a trained athlete can make. But, quick as he was, that odious,

wheezing creature was quicker still, and now, when Kennard had turned on

his back, Rateau promptly sat on his chest, a dead weight, with long

legs stretched out before him, coughing and spluttering, yet wholly at

his ease.

Oh! the humiliating position for an amateur middle-weight champion to

find himself in, with that drink-sodden--Kennard was sure that he was

drink-sodden--consumptive sprawling on the top of him!

"Don't trouble, citizen Desmonts," the wretch cried out after his

retreating companions. "I have what I want by me."

Very leisurely he pulled a coil of rope out of the capacious pocket of

his tattered coat. Kennard could not see what he was doing, but felt it

with supersensitive instinct all the time. He lay quite still beneath

the weight of that miscreant, feigning unconsciousness, yet hardly able

to breathe. That tuberculous caitiff was such a towering weight. But he

tried to keep his faculties on the alert, ready for that surprise spring

which would turn the tables, at the slightest false move on the part of

Rateau.

But, as luck would have it, Rateau did not make a single false move. It

was amazing with what dexterity he kept Kennard down, even while he

contrived to pinion him with cords. An old sailor, probably, he seemed

so dexterous with knots.

My God! the humiliation of it all. And Esther a helpless prisoner,

inside that house not five paces away! Kennard's heavy, wearied eyes

could perceive the light in her window, five stories above where he lay,

in the gutter, a helpless log. Even now he gave a last desperate shriek:

"Esther!"

But in a second the abominable brigand's hand came down heavily upon his

mouth, whilst a raucous voice spluttered rather than said, right through

an awful fit of coughing:

"Another sound, and I'll gag as well as bind you, you young fool!"

After which, Kennard remained quite still.