IN GREAT-AUNT HORTENSE’S HOUSE
“Was it while the bakery man was saying that he would make you cry that
you heard the noise first, or just before?”
“Lisle said it was while the man was speaking that he heard the noise
first. You’re so excited, Marie Josephine, you don’t listen to
anything.” As she spoke, Rosanne took a sip of the tea which Humphrey
had just brewed for them. “It’s so bitter, Humphrey,” she said to him
over her shoulder.
The two girls sat on each side of Lisle on the chest. It was the next
day after they had come to the cellar, and to Rosanne it was most
bewildering to be there in the dusk of the old place with her dear Marie
Josephine by her side.
Humphrey came up to them with a steaming jug.
“Never tha mind if it’s bitter, lass, take th’ tea and let it warm tha
well.” As he spoke Humphrey peered at Rosanne anxiously, his round face
full of concern. He had rescued her himself and had had her in his care
all these long weeks. Her face seemed very white in the grey shadows of
the hidden cellar. Marie Josephine and Lisle held out their horn
drinking cups for more tea, and then Humphrey filled a cup for himself.
He was a little worried about his homespun traveling bag which he had
brought with him to Paris, and which Dian was to bring when he came back
from a visit to the alley.
“Sit here, Humphrey Trail; there’s room.” Lisle shoved along the wide
chest as he spoke and the farmer sat down beside him. He had never heard
so much talk going on at one time before in his life. It had seemed,
since he had arrived the night before, that everyone wanted to speak at
the same time, and that each one said the same things and asked the same
questions over and over. Marie Josephine was saying for the third time,
“I’m going to see maman at Great-aunt Hortense’s to-day!” Well, that was
a task that had been left for Dian, telling Marie Josephine that her
mother was a prisoner and that her aunt had died. Part of the telling
Lisle did at once.
“Great-aunt Hortense died some weeks ago, Marie Josephine,” he said.
She looked at him, her black eyes wide with astonishment. He was growing
more used to her wild, unkempt appearance, but he still grinned every
time he looked at her.
“Poor Great-aunt Hortense! How she must miss everything! She did so love
to be in it all, never wanted to be left out of anything, even our
children’s parties! Great-aunt Hortense gone—why—it makes everything
seem different!”
“Everything is different.” As he spoke, Lisle stood up and went over to
Humphrey, who had put the cover on his precious little tin of tea. “I
must talk with you, Humphrey Trail.” he said, and drew the farmer along
to the far end of the room. “It’s no use,” he went on, speaking in low
tones, a precaution entirely unnecessary, for the two girls were deep in
the account of their various adventures. “I simply must get into a
disguise and go out on to the streets. I can’t stay here any longer,
when my mother is a prisoner!”
Humphrey answered him: “Tha went out once almost to tha death. Th’art a
brave lad but tha needs caution. Ha’ patience now until th’ shepherd can
best find a way for us all to help. He found tha when I was fair
distracted.”
Lisle put a hand on each of Humphrey’s shoulders and smiled across at
him.
“Humphrey Trail, Humphrey Trail!” he exclaimed. “I am glad I have you
for a friend. What can we ever do for you, after all you have done for
us!”
Humphrey’s answer surprised him beyond measure.
“Be grateful for tha life and make thaself content soon with the simple
ways of the farm in Yorkshire!”
Lisle still stood with his hands on Humphrey’s shoulders, and as the
farmer spoke he realized suddenly their immediate peril. They were to
leave not only Paris but France, too, and Humphrey Trail was offering
them all he had to give in the way of hospitality in England!
Lisle looked across at the girls, and then back at Humphrey.
“You mean we are to go to England. There is so much to think about and
to plan. I wish we three, you, Dian, and I, could be alone so that we
could plan what’s best to do,” he said.
It was just at that moment that the shepherd appeared, coming down the
secret stairs backward. Marie Josephine and Rosanne jumped off the chest
and ran up to him. He stood in their midst with his hands at his sides,
looking about at all of them, and for the first time since they had
known him, all of them felt that he, for the moment, was fighting
something that was trying to overpower him, and that this something was
fear! It was gone almost as it came, his face cleared, and he smiled,
putting his hand on Marie Josephine’s shoulder.
“There is work for you, Little Mademoiselle,” he said.
Lisle had come up to them.
“Let there be work for me, too, Dian,” he said.
Dian nodded. “Yes, work for each one of us so that we may go safely out
of this mad city, and that you who are in danger may find refuge in
England.” As he spoke he took Marie Josephine’s hand and went on
speaking, this time addressing himself directly to Humphrey:
“The servant Henri was genuine in his repentance. He has offered
practical help in one direction. I will return with the Little
Mademoiselle later in the day.”
Lisle broke in impatiently: “What can Marie Josephine do that I cannot
do if I’m disguised properly? Why should she take the risk while I am
here?” he protested.
Dian answered him quietly: “The Little Mademoiselle will be safe. You
came between me and a gunshot last night. Help me once again by staying
here until I am ready.”
He lifted Marie Josephine on to the first rung of the tall ladder stairs
and then started up after her. The others watched them from below.
When they had closed the secret panel, Dian stood looking down at Marie
Josephine, a world of compassion in his eyes.
“Little Mademoiselle, you are like your grandfather. Remember him
to-day, for there is much for you to do. Your mother is a prisoner in
the house of your Great-aunt Hortense who died some weeks ago. She is in
peril, but you can save her!”
Dian had spoken the hard words quietly. It was better to say them all at
once, and not wait until the time came to act. Her eyes met his bravely
and her answer was characteristic.
“Lisle wants to be the one, poor Lisle!” she said.
“He cannot help at the moment. Now I will tell you how you can aid in
saving your mother. We have all told you, indeed you know, that you came
so easily through the city gates because you are, in your disguise, very
much like the little Vivi, who is Mademoiselle de Soigné’s friend. Vivi
goes about the city everywhere. She is known by soldiers, doormen,
street people, and their children. She sells licorice water, as did her
father, and she is popular among the crowds. One of the men on guard at
the west gate is her especial friend, and Little Mademoiselle, when you
and Jean came through the gates he thought you were Vivi and one of her
chums. If you will go to the house of the Marquise du Ganne with Vivi’s
licorice water tray, and sell your wares among the crowds who daily
throng the lower halls, you can help to save your mother!”
Dian sat down on an overturned barrel, and Marie Josephine placed
herself on the lowest step of the cellar stairs.
“Maman,” she murmured faintly. “I want to see maman.” Tears brimmed in
her eyes and fell silently on to her shabby jacket. She brushed them
away with the back of her hand, and in spite of his pity and love for
her, Dian smiled. It was so like her unconsciously to act her part. He
waited with his usual patience until she was quiet, then he said:
“Have we not always felt that things would come right if we did not let
in fear. All is going well for us, and we can look beyond to-day as we
did the time we watched the storm from the terrace and you were the
first to see a gleam of gold through the black clouds! Do not fear for
your mother, only have faith. Now listen well. Henri is not bad, only
weak, and he wants to make amends. He is now a soldier of the army of
the revolution, and he leaves with his regiment at three o’clock to-day.
He has been on guard all the morning in the hall of your great-aunt’s
house. Food is always brought to your mother at noon. Henri says that
she is then left entirely to herself until night. He has been on guard
during the week, and, as he has served in your great-aunt’s house, he
knows every corner of it.” Dian paused a moment and then went on slowly:
“He knows of a small door on the first floor which leads into the
garden, and he has given me the key to this door. People are not
supposed to go to the upper floor where your mother is imprisoned, but
little Vivi has been there several times. You know the house, and the
way to go down the back stairs. You are Vivi from now on. She is safe at
home, gladly staying inside in order to help her friends. I will tell
you more as we walk along. Are you ready and willing to go?”
“Yes, as quickly as ever we can.” She jumped to her feet and followed
him up the cellar stairs. It all seemed too unreal and strange to be
true, as they walked through the silent house and out of the door into
the garden, just as she and Rosanne had walked with Gonfleur that long
ago—oh, so very long ago it seemed—the night of the bal masqué!
She and Dian mingled with the crowds going up the Champs Élysées,
turning off on the street that led to the house of the Marquise du
Ganne. They walked slowly. No one noticed them, and, except for an
occasional greeting, no one spoke to them. Dian had often walked about
with Vivi, and he was known to be a peasant from Brittany, which was his
original home.
They could see the dark blur of the Bois against the soft spring sky,
and Dian welcomed the thought that came to him. He had something to say
to Marie Josephine that was going to be difficult, and he felt that it
would be easier for her to hear it in the sweet spring woods than on the
crowded street, so he suggested that they go on to the Bois and rest,
before they went to Great-aunt Hortense’s house.
“There is more that I have to tell you, Little Mademoiselle,” he said.
They sat down under a great elm, the tender green tracery of leaves
above them, the peace of sunshine and warm earth all about them. Dian
turned toward Marie Josephine, his face alight with earnestness.
“Little Mademoiselle, you are ready to do brave things, but I am asking
you now to do one that will be bravest of all. Champar, the coach
driver, who is my friend, is risking much to save you all.” Dian looked
off at the still, dim vistas of the wood as he spoke. The noise of the
city, the harsh yelling and the rumble of carts, came to them clearly
from the near-by street. Dian put it so, saying that Champar was doing
all this for them out of the kindness of his heart. He did not say that
he had done the coach driver a service once which was so great that it
had meant life itself to him.
“Tell me what it is, Dian. I don’t know if I am brave. I’m not sure. But
for maman I could do it. Shall we not go soon to Great-aunt Hortense’s
house so that I can see maman?” said Marie Josephine. She could think of
nothing else but that she was to see her mother and aid in saving her.
She tried to realize that her great-aunt’s house was really her mother’s
prison, but it only seemed like a bad dream. She could not believe that
the dim, stately house, where they had so often gone for chocolate on
winter afternoons, could now be a place from which to flee, an enemy’s
stronghold.
She looked confidently at Dian, and the trust that had always come to
her when with him, steadied her now.
“Tell me, Dian, what is it I shall do?”
“A week from to-day, if all goes well, you and the others will be with
your mother in, or rather near, Calais. Your sister, the governess, the
Du Monde and Proté are there now. I saw Champar this morning and he told
me where to find them. I hope that a fishing schooner will take you all
to England. I spoke to your mother through the door for a moment this
morning. She has been told that her children are to join her in Calais,
and she thinks that you are already on your way. Henri has given her
that impression. He has given her, for a disguise, the clothes of his
sister who was to have gone to a cousin in the country, and for whom he
has procured a passport. She is not able to leave, and your mother will
go in her stead. Her passport is in order. When she leaves you at the
garden gate she is to go at once to the Place de la Bastille and has
orders what else to do. Little Mademoiselle, this is hard—she must not
know that it is her own Marie Josephine who is saving her! Safety for
you all lies in her not knowing this, for she would not leave the city
if she thought that one of you were here!”
Marie Josephine thought of all that Dian had said, a little later, as
she sat on a secluded bench in the great entrance hall of Great-aunt
Hortense’s house. All about her were emblems of the revolution. She
would have laughed out loud at the thought of Great-aunt Hortense’s
horror if she had not been too excited and tremulous to laugh at
anything. A tri-color banner was draped over the entrance to the grand
salon. At the carved oak table in the center of the hall sat three men
wearing red caps, and all down the dusky corridors other red caps bobbed
up and down as citizens walked to and fro debating and wrangling. From
an anteroom, a cold, gilded apartment, came a jangle of voices. A
meeting of one of the sections was taking place there. All through the
city were clubs or sections, each composed of men with different ideas
from the others, no two ever agreeing on anything except to advocate
bloodshed and to show no mercy.
Marie had put her tray with its jug of licorice water and its jangling
cups on the floor beside her. Vivi had left it for her at the stand of a
nut seller near the Marquise du Ganne’s house. All sorts of booths and
stands had sprung up overnight in the once fashionable parts of Paris.
Dian would be waiting for Madame Saint Frère, in her disguise as Henri’s
sister, in the Place de la Bastille. Henri had already been gone some
hours with his regiment. Marie Josephine was to seize her opportunity to
slide through the shadowy halls, up the back stairs to the room at the
end of the hall. Her heart beat so fast that it seemed as though some
one must hear it. She saw that it was not going to be an easy thing to
slip away, and she made up her mind that she must not, under any
circumstance, let any chance go by. Some men came up to her and demanded
a drink. She stooped over for her tray and stood up.
She did not feel as though it were herself at all who poured the
sickish-looking, grey mixture into the tin cups and received in exchange
coins which she put in the pocket of her torn skirt. She was careful not
to speak any more than she could help, for fear that her voice would
betray her. She could look like Vivi, and instinct seemed to tell her
how to be like her, but she was afraid of her voice.
As she walked about among the crowd, through the old familiar halls,
selling her wares, she remembered what Dian had said: “Have no fear.
Fear is nothing and it cannot talk to you or keep you from doing what is
right. It has no power!” She remembered something else that he had said:
“You are so changed. It will be easy, indeed, for your mother not to
think of you at all, except as a part of her rescue. Shake your hair
well over your face and do not look directly at her more than you can
help. Remember she thinks that you are near Calais!”
Dian had given her the two keys. She could feel them jingling together
in her inner pocket. She wanted to put her tray down somewhere so that
she could slip away more easily at the right moment. She waited until
there was a lull in the demand for licorice water, then quietly slipped
over to a corner and ducked her head from under the leather strap which
held the tray about her neck. As she put the tray down on the floor and
turned away some one called to her. It was Georges Fardou, the man who
had let Vivi through the gates to “Pick a flower.” He looked like a big,
shadowy giant as he stood there in the dark hall.
“Come, give us a dance like the one at the West Barricade. The 'Ça Ira,’
or anything that’s full of go!” he called with a laugh.
The “Ça Ira.” She had heard it sung in the streets that very morning as
she had come through the rue Royale with Dian. She had seen it danced,
too, a wild, strange weaving in and out of dreadful people. She had shut
her eyes at Dian’s bidding and held tight to his hand, and he had talked
to her in his quiet way of Pigeon Valley, as they walked through the
city.
“I’ll do another one to-day,” she heard herself saying, and it seemed as
though she spoke harshly without trying, her mouth was so dry.
She began to dance, holding her tattered skirts about her, swaying back
and forth in the dim, close air. She had danced this way so many times
before at Les Vignes, up and down the veranda and through the tall rows
of white lilies along the south terrace. She tried to think of these
happy times as she danced in and out of the arched doorways and about
the big table in the center of the hall. Applause greeted her as she
stopped, and also a harsh voice from the anteroom door.
“Have the brat clear out, and keep some sort of quiet about here while
the section’s in session,” said the voice from the doorway, and then its
owner disappeared.
For a moment her heart stood still, but after a laugh or two, the small
crowd that had stood watching her disappeared, Vivi’s friend among them.
At the first moment that she felt that she was unobserved, she crept
through the back of the entrance hall into a corridor beyond it, paused,
listened, then crept stealthily up the narrow winding stairs.
She knew the room. One time when they had been staying with her
great-aunt for several weeks, she had spent an afternoon there with
Proté, dear Proté!
She stood in the shadow close against the wall, looking down the
corridor. All was quiet. She put the key in the lock and tried it. It
gave easily and she stepped inside, then shrank back against the door,
putting her hand over her mouth to smother the little cry of surprise
that had almost escaped her. She had thought to find maman, and in her
place there was a thin, wispy-haired woman in a snuff-colored cape and
close-fitting drab bonnet, with a greasy face and half-shut eyes. It was
maman! As she stood there by the door Marie Josephine remembered
something Great-aunt Hortense had said: “There never was any one like
your mother, Marie, for play-acting. Ah, you children can’t believe it,
but it’s true. The queen has begged her to join them at Versailles! She
could do her beloved Molière characters best of all.”
“Come, you’re sure you were not watched, little girl?” maman was saying.
Marie Josephine nodded.
“Then come at once—the back stairs—you know the garden door? I’ve
never been that way myself. Quick, child!”
The voice was the same!
“You’d best talk like a woman of the people, citizeness, otherwise you
are splendid in your disguise!” Marie Josephine clasped her hands
together suddenly, looking up for a second into maman’s eyes.
“Yes, yes, I know. I will remember, but be quick, child.” Maman put her
hand on the door, and Marie Josephine stepped back into the hall,
keeping close to the wall. There was only silence, except for the voices
from the halls below.
Marie Josephine never forgot the breathless flight through the familiar
back halls of the great house. In spite of the tense excitement she
thought how funny it was that she knew the halls so well, and maman knew
them not at all! Roaming about houses had always been one of Marie
Josephine’s chief delights!
She tried to remember what Dian had told her: “Do not let fear keep you
from doing what is right. Fear has no power.” She said this over and
over under her breath as they went out the side door into the garden,
and found themselves facing the grey wall that surrounded it. There were
voices near by. She fumbled with the lock. It was rusty, and the garden
door was a little swollen from recent spring rains. It did not give.
“Hurry, child!” Maman’s voice sounded in her ears. She stood quietly
with the key in her hands for a moment, trying to still the agony of
fear that seemed to beat about her. “Fear has no power,” Dian had said.
She felt a sudden freedom. She was doing right. She put the key in the
lock again and turned it quickly. The door caught, moved a breath, then
caught again. At last it gave! They were outside in a deserted long,
grey street. Maman turned to her, and even in that moment of still great
danger, put her arm around her.
“You have done me good service, little one. I have children whom I shall
see very soon. They are safe out of Paris, a son and two daughters.
You—there is something about you a little like one of them. God bless
you.”
They had been given their directions. Maman was off, walking quickly in
the direction of the Place de la Bastille, not daring to run. Marie
Josephine watched her until she had almost disappeared.
“There is something about you a little like one of them!”
The words stayed with her as she ran on toward the rue Royale. When she
reached the crowded streets she slackened her steps. She was to go at
once to the Saint Frère house and to wait there with the others for
Dian.