“M. L'Abbe!...” said Marguerite gravely.
“Yes, mon enfant.”
The old man looked up from his breviary, and saw Marguerite's great
earnest eyes fixed with obvious calm and trust upon him. She had
finished her toilet as well as she could, had shaken up and tidied the
paillasse, and was now sitting on the edge of it, her hands clasped
between her knees. There was something which still puzzled her, and
impatient and impulsive as she was, she had watched the abbe as he
calmly went on reading the Latin prayers for the last five minutes, and
now she could contain her questionings no longer.
“You said just now that they set you to watch over me...”
“So they did, my child, so they did...” he replied with a sigh, as he
quietly closed his book and slipped it back into his pocket. “Ah! they
are very cunning... and we must remember that they have the power. No
doubt,” added the old man, with his own, quaint philosophy, “no doubt le
bon Dieu meant them to have the power, or they would not have it, would
they?”
“By 'they' you mean the Terrorists and Anarchists of France,
M. L'Abbe.... The Committee of Public Safety who pillage and murder,
outrage women, and desecrate religion.... Is that not so?”
“Alas! my child!” he sighed.
“And it is 'they' who have set you to watch over me?... I confess I
don't understand...”
She laughed, quite involuntarily indeed, for in spite of the reassurance
in her heart her brain was still in a whirl of passionate anxiety.
“You don't look at all like one of 'them,' M. l'Abbe,” she said.
“The good God forbid!” ejaculated the old man, raising protesting hands
up toward the very distant, quite invisible sky. “How could I, a humble
priest of the Lord, range myself with those who would flout and defy
Him.”
“Yet I am a prisoner of the Republic and you are my jailer, M. l'Abbe.”
“Ah, yes!” he sighed. “But I am very helpless. This was my cell. I had
been here with Francois and Felicite, my sister's children, you know.
Innocent lambs, whom those fiends would lead to slaughter. Last night,”
he continued, speaking volubly, “the soldiers came in and dragged
Francois and Felicite out of this room, where, in spite of the danger
before us, in spite of what we suffered, we had contrived to be quite
happy together. I could read the Mass, and the dear children would say
their prayers night and morning at my knee.”
He paused awhile. The unshed tears in his mild blue eyes struggled
for freedom now, and one or two flowed slowly down his wrinkled cheek.
Marguerite, though heartsore and full of agonizing sorrow herself, felt
her whole noble soul go out to this kind old man, so pathetic, so high
and simple-minded in his grief.
She said nothing, however, and the Abbe continued after a few seconds'
silence.
“When the children had gone, they brought you in here, mon enfant, and
laid you on the paillasse where Felicite used to sleep. You looked
very white, and stricken down, like one of God's lambs attacked by
the ravening wolf. Your eyes were closed and you were blissfully
unconscious. I was taken before the governor of the prison, and he told
me that you would share the cell with me for a time, and that I was to
watch you night and day, because...”
The old man paused again. Evidently what he had to say was very
difficult to put into words. He groped in his pockets and brought out
a large bandana handkerchief, red and yellow and green, with which
he began to mop his moist forehead. The quaver in his voice and the
trembling of his hands became more apparent and pronounced.
“Yes, M. l'Abbe? Because?...” queried Marguerite gently.
“They said that if I guarded you well, Felicite and Francois would
be set free,” replied the old man after a while, during which he made
vigorous efforts to overcome his nervousness, “and that if you escaped
the children and I would be guillotined the very next day.”
There was silence in the little room now. The Abbe was sitting quite
still, clasping his trembling fingers, and Marguerite neither moved nor
spoke. What the old man had just said was very slowly finding its way to
the innermost cells of her brain. Until her mind had thoroughly grasped
the meaning of it all, she could not trust herself to make a single
comment.
It was some seconds before she fully understood it all, before she
realized what it meant not only to her, but indirectly to her husband.
Until now she had not been fully conscious of the enormous wave of hope
which almost in spite of herself had risen triumphant above the dull,
grey sea of her former despair; only now when it had been shattered
against this deadly rock of almost superhuman devilry and cunning did
she understand what she had hoped, and what she must now completely
forswear.
No bolts and bars, no fortified towers or inaccessible fortresses could
prove so effectual a prison for Marguerite Blakeney as the dictum which
morally bound her to her cell.
“If you escape the children and I would be guillotined the very next
day.”
This meant that even if Percy knew, even if he could reach her, he
could never set her free, since her safety meant death to two innocent
children and to this simple hearted man.
It would require more than the ingenuity of the Scarlet Pimpernel
himself to untie this Gordian knot.
“I don't mind for myself, of course,” the old man went on with gentle
philosophy. “I have lived my life. What matters if I die to-morrow, or
if I linger on until my earthly span is legitimately run out? I am ready
to go home whenever my Father calls me. But it is the children, you
see. I have to think of them. Francois is his mother's only son, the
bread-winner of the household, a good lad and studious too, and Felicite
has always been very delicate. She is blind from birth and...”
“Oh! don't... for pity's sake, don't...” moaned Marguerite in an agony
of helplessness. “I understand... you need not fear for your children,
M. l'Abbe: no harm shall come to them through me.”
“It is as the good God wills!” replied the old man quietly.
Then, as Marguerite had once more relapsed into silence, he fumbled
for his beads, and his gentle voice began droning the Paters and Aves
wherein no doubt his child-like heart found peace and solace.
He understood that the poor woman would not wish to speak, he knew as
well as she did the overpowering strength of his helpless appeal. Thus
the minutes sped on, the jailer and the captive, tied to one another by
the strongest bonds that hand of man could forge, had nothing to say
to one another: he, the old priest, imbued with the traditions of his
calling, could pray and resign himself to the will of the Almighty, but
she was young and ardent and passionate, she loved and was beloved,
and an impassable barrier was built up between her and the man she
worshipped!
A barrier fashioned by the weak hands of children, one of whom was
delicate and blind. Outside was air and freedom, reunion with her
husband, an agony of happy remorse, a kiss from his dear lips, and
trembling held her back from it all, because of Francois who was the
bread-winner and of Felicite who was blind.
Mechanically now Marguerite rose again, and like an automaton--lifeless
and thoughtless--she began putting the dingy, squalid room to rights.
The Abbe helped her demolish the improvised screen; with the same gentle
delicacy of thought which had caused him to build it up, he refrained
from speaking to her now: he would not intrude himself on her grief and
her despair.
Later on, she forced herself to speak again, and asked the old man his
name.
“My name is Foucquet,” he replied, “Jean Baptiste Marie Foucquet,
late parish priest of the Church of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of
Boulogne.”
Foucquet! This was l'Abbe Foucquet! the faithful friend and servant of
the de Marny family.
Marguerite gazed at him with great, questioning eyes.
What a wealth of memories crowded in on her mind at sound of that name!
Her beautiful home at Richmond, her brilliant array of servants and
guests, His Royal Highness at her side! life in free, joyous happy
England--how infinitely remote it now seemed. Her ears were filled with
the sound of a voice, drawly and quaint and gentle, a voice and a laugh
half shy, wholly mirthful, and oh! so infinitely dear:
“I think a little sea voyage and English country air would suit the Abbe
Foucquet, m'dear, and I only mean to ask him to cross the Channel with
me...”
Oh! the joy and confidence expressed in those words! the daring, the
ambition! the pride! and the soft, languorous air of the old-world
garden round her then, the passion of his embrace! the heavy scent of
late roses and of heliotrope, which caused her to swoon in his arms!
And now a narrow prison cell, and that pathetic, tender little creature
there, with trembling hands and tear-dimmed eyes, the most powerful and
most relentless jailer which the ferocious cunning of her deadly enemies
could possibly have devised.
Then she talked to him of Juliette Marny.
The Abbe did not know that Mlle. de Marny had succeeded in reaching
England safely and was overjoyed to hear it.
He recounted to Marguerite the story of the Marny jewels: how he had put
them safely away in the crypt of his little church, until the Assembly
of the Convention had ordered the closing of the churches, and placed
before every minister of le bon Dieu the alternative of apostasy or
death.
“With me it has only been prison so far,” continued the old man simply,
“but prison has rendered me just as helpless as the guillotine would
have done, for the enemies of le bon Dieu have ransacked the Church of
Saint Joseph and stolen the jewels which I should have guarded with my
life.”
But it was obvious joy for the Abbe to talk of Juliette Marny's
happiness. Vaguely, in his remote little provincial cure, he had heard
of the prowess and daring of the Scarlet Pimpernel and liked to think
that Juliette owed her safety to him.
“The good God will reward him and those whom he cares for,” added Abbe
Foucquet with that earnest belief in divine interference which seemed so
strangely pathetic under these present circumstances.
Marguerite sighed, and for the first time in this terrible soul-stirring
crisis through which she was passing so bravely, she felt a beneficent
moisture in her eyes: the awful tension of her nerves relaxed. She went
up to the old man took his wrinkled hand in hers and falling on her
knees beside him she eased her overburdened heart in a flood of tears.