SEPARATION
Rosalie Leboeuf sat behind her counter knitting. Even on this cold
January day the exertion seemed to heat her. She paused at intervals,
and waved the huge, half-completed stocking before her face, to produce
a current of air. Swinging her legs from the counter, and munching an
apple noisily, was a handsome, heavy-browed young woman, whose fine high
colour and bold black eyes were sufficiently well known and admired
amongst a certain set. An atmosphere of vigour and perfect health
appeared to surround her, and she had that pose and air which come from
superb vitality and complete self-satisfaction. If the strait-laced
drew their skirts aside and stuck virtuous noses in the air when Therese
Marcel was mentioned, it was very little that that young woman cared.
She and Rosalie were first cousins, and the respectable widow Leboeuf
winked at Therese's escapades, in consideration of the excellent and
spicy gossip which she could often retail.
Rosalie was nothing if not curious; and just now there was a very
savoury subject to hand, for Paris had seen her King strip to the
headsman, and his blood flow in the midst of his capital town.
"You should have been there, ma cousine," said Therese between two bites
of her apple.
"I?" said Rosalie in her thick, drawling way. "I am no longer young
enough, nor slim enough, to push and struggle for a place. But tell me
then, Therese, was he pale?"
Therese threw away the apple core, and showed all her splendid teeth in
a curious feline mixture of laugh and yawn.
"Well, so-so," she said lazily; "but he was calm enough. I have heard
it said that he was all of a sweat and a tremble on the tenth of August,
but he did n't show it yesterday. I was well in front,--Heaven be
praised, I have good friends,--and his face did not even twitch when he
saw the steel. He looked at it for a moment or two,--one would have
said he was curious,--and then he began to speak."
Rosalie gave a little shudder, but her face was full of enjoyment.
"Ah," she breathed, leaning forward a little.
"He declared that he died innocent, and wishing France--nobody knows
what; for Santerre ordered the drums to be beaten, and we could not hear
the rest. I owe him a grudge, that Santerre, for cutting the spectacle
short. What, I ask you, does he imagine one goes to the play in order
to miss the finest part, and I with a front place, too! But they say he
was afraid there would be a rescue. I could have told him better. We
are not fools!"
"And then----?"
"Well, thanks to the drums, you couldn't hear; but there was a
whispering with the Abbe, and Sanson hesitating and shivering like a cat
with a wet paw and the gutter to cross. Everything was ready, but it
seems he had qualms--that Sanson. The National Guards were muttering,
and the good Mere Garnet next to me began to shout, 'Death to the
Tyrant,' only no one heard her because of Santerre's drums, when
suddenly he bellowed, 'Executioner, do your duty!' and Citizen Sanson
seemed to wake up. It was all over in a flash then; the Abbe whispered
once, called out loudly, and pchtt! down came the knife, and off came
the head. Rose Lacour fainted just at my elbow, the silly baggage; but
for me, I found it exciting--more exciting than the theatre. I should
have liked to clap and call 'Encore!'"
Rosalie leaned back, fanning, her broad face a shade paler, whilst the
girl went on:
"His eyes were still open when Sanson held up the head, and the blood
went drip, drip, drip. We were all so quiet then that you could hear
it. I tell you that gave one a sensation, my cousin!"
"Blood--ouf!" said Rosalie; "I do not like to see blood. I cannot
digest my food after it."
"For me, I am a better patriot than you," laughed Therese; "and if it is
a tyrant's blood that I see, it warms my heart and does it good."
A shudder ran through Rosalie's fat mass. She lifted her bulky knitting
and fanned assiduously with it.
Her companion burst into a loud laugh.
"Eh, ma cousine, if you could see yourself!" she cried.
"It is true," said Rosalie, with composure, "I grow stouter; but at your
age, Therese, I was slighter than you. It is the same with us all--at
twenty we are thin, at thirty we are plump, and at forty--" She waved a
fat hand over her expansive form and shrugged an explanatory shoulder,
whilst her small eyes dwelt with a malicious expression on Therese's
frowning face.
The girl lifted the handsomest shoulders in Paris. "I am not a stick,"
she observed, with that ready flush of hers; "it is these thin girls,
whom one cannot see if one looks at them sideways, who grow so stout
later on. I shall stay as I am, or maybe get scraggy--quel
horreur!"--and she shuddered a little--"but it will not be yet awhile."
Rosalie nodded.
"You are not thirty yet," she said comfortably, "and you are a fine
figure of a woman. 'T is a pity Citizen Dangeau cannot be made to see
it!"
Up went Therese's head in a trice, and her bold colour mounted.
"He!"--she snorted contemptuously--"is he the world? Others are not so
blind."
There was a pause. Rosalie knitted, smiling broadly, whilst Therese
caught a second apple from a piled basket, and began to play with it.
"He is going away," said Rosalie abruptly, and Therese dropped the
apple, which rolled away into a corner.
"Tctt, tctt," clicked Rosalie, "you have an open hand with other folk's
goods, my girl! Yes, certainly Citizen Dangeau is going away, and why
not? There is nothing to keep him here that I know of."
"For how long?" asked Therese, staring out of the window.
"One month, two, three--how do I know, my cabbage? It is business of the
State, and in such matters, you should know more than I."
"When does he go?"
"To-morrow," said Rosalie cheerfully, for to torment Therese was a most
exhilarating employment, and one that she much enjoyed. It vindicated
her own virtue, and at the same time indulged her taste for gossip.
Therese sprang up, and paced the small shop with something wild in her
gait.
"Why does he go?" she asked excitedly. "He used to smile at me, to look
when he passed, and now he goes another way; he turns his head, he
elbows me aside. Does he think I am one of those tame milk-and-water
misses, who can be taken up one minute and dropped the next? If he
thinks that, he is very much mistaken. Who has taken him from me? I
insist on knowing; I insist that you tell me!"
"Chut," said Rosalie, with placid pleasure, "he never was yours to take,
and that you know as well as I."
"He looked at me," and Therese's coarse contralto thrilled tragically
over the words.
"Half Paris does that." Rosalie paused and counted her stitches. "One,
two, three, four, knit two together. Why not? you are good to look at.
No one has denied it that I know of."
"He smiled." Her eyes glared under the close-drawn brows, but Rosalie
laughed.
"Not if you looked at him like that, I 'll warrant; but as to
smiling--he smiles at me too, dear cousin."
Therese flung herself into a chair, with a sharp-caught breath.
"And at whom else? Tell me that, tell me that, for there is some
one--some one. He thinks of her, he dreams of her, and pushes past
other people as if they were posts. If I knew, if I only knew who it
was----"
"Well?" said Rosalie curiously.
"I 'd twist her neck for her, or get Mme Guillotine to save me the
trouble," said Therese viciously.
As she spoke, the door swung open, and Mlle de Rochambeau came in. She
had been out to make some trifling purchase, and, nervous of the
streets, she had hurried a good deal. Haste and the cold air had
brought a bright colour to her cheeks, her eyes shone, and her breath
came more quickly than usual.
Therese started rudely, and seeing her pass through the shop with the
air of one at home, she started up, and with a quick spring placed
herself between Mademoiselle and the inner door.
For a moment Aline hesitated, and then, with a murmured "Pardon,"
advanced a step.
"Who are you?" demanded Therese, in her roughest voice.
Rosalie looked up with an expression of annoyance. Really Therese and
her scenes were past bearing, though they were amusing, for a little.
"I am Marie Roche," said Mademoiselle quietly. "I lodge here, and work
for my living. Is there anything else you would like to ask me?"
Therese's eyes flashed, and she gave a loud, angry laugh.
"Eh--listen to her," she cried, "only listen. Yes, there is a good deal
I should like to ask--amongst other things, where you got that face, and
those hands, if your name is Marie Roche. Aristocrat, that is what you
are--aristocrat!" and she pushed her flushed face close to
Mademoiselle's rapidly paling one.
"Chut, Therese!" commanded Rosalie angrily.
"I say she is an aristocrat," shouted Therese, swinging round upon her
cousin.
"Fiddlesticks," said Rosalie; "the girl's harmless, and her name's her
own, right enough."
"With that face, those hands? Am I an imbecile?"
"Do I know, I?" and Rosalie shrugged her mountainous shoulders. "Bah,
Therese, what a fuss about nothing. Is it the girl's fault if her mother
was pretty enough to take the seigneur's fancy?"
The scarlet colour leapt into Mademoiselle's face. The rough tones, the
coarse laugh with which Rosalie ended, and which Therese echoed,
offended her immeasurably, and she was far from feeling grateful for the
former's interference. She pushed past her opponent, and ran up the
stairs without pausing to take breath.
Meanwhile Therese turned violently upon her cousin.
"Aristocrat or not, she has taken Dangeau from me," she screamed, with
the sudden passion which makes her type so dangerous. "Why did you not
tell me you had a girl in the house?--though what he can see in such a
pinched, mincing creature passes me. Why did you not tell me, I say?
Why? Why?"
"Eh, ma foi! because you fatigue me, you and your tempers," said Rosalie
crossly. "Is this your house, par exemple, that I must ask you before I
take any one to live in it? If the man likes you, take him, and
welcome. I am not preventing you. And if he does n't like you, what
can I do, I? Am I to say to him, 'Pray, Citizen Dangeau, be careful you
do not speak to any girl, except my cousin Therese?' It is your own
fault, not mine. Why did n't you marry like a respectable girl, instead
of taking Heaven knows how many lovers? Is it a secret? Bah! all Paris
knows it; and do you think Dangeau is ignorant? There was Bonnet, and
Hebert, and young Clery, and who knows how many since. Ciel! you tire
me," and Rosalie bent over her knitting, muttering to herself, and
picking fiercely at dropped stitches.
Therese picked up an apple and swung it from one hand to another, her
brows level, the eyes beneath them dangerously veiled. Some day she
would give herself the pleasure of paying her cousin Rosalie out for
that little speech. Some day, but not to-day, she would tear those fat,
creased cheeks with her nails, wrench out a few of the sleek black
braids above, sink strangling fingers into the soft, fleshy rolls below.
She gritted her teeth, and slipped the apple deftly to and fro.
Presently she spoke in a tolerably natural voice:
"It is not every one who is so blind, voyez-vous, ma cousine."
As she spoke, Dangeau came through the shop door. He was in a
hurry--these were days of hurry--and he hardly noticed that Rosalie was
not alone, until he found Therese in his path. She was all bold smiles,
and a glitter of black eyes, in a moment.
"The Citizen forgets an old friend."
"But no," he returned, smiling.
"It is so long since we met, that I thought the Citizen might have
forgotten me."
"Is it so long?" asked Dangeau innocently; "surely I saw you somewhere
lately. Ah, I have it--at the trial?"
"Ah, then you remember," cried Therese, clapping her hands.
Dangeau nodded, rather puzzled by her manner, and Rosalie permitted
herself an audible chuckle. Therese turned on her with a flash, and as
she did so Dangeau bowed, murmured an excuse, and passed on. This time
Rosalie laughed outright, and the sound was like a spark in a
powder-magazine. Red rage, violent, uncontrollable, flared in Therese's
brain, and, all considerations of prudence forgotten, she launched
herself with a tigress's bound straight at her cousin's ponderous form.
She had reckoned without her host.
Inside those fat arms reposed muscles of steel, behind those small pig's
eyes lay a very cool, ruthless, and determined brain, and Therese felt
herself caught, held, propelled across the floor, and launched into the
street, all before she could send a second rending shriek after her
first scream of fury.
Rosalie closed and latched the door, and sank panting, perspiring, but
triumphant, into her seat again.
"Be calm," she observed, between her gasps; "be wise, and go home. For
me, I bear no malice, but for you, my poor Therese, you will certainly
die in an apoplexy some fine day if you excite yourself so much.
Ouf--how out of breath I am!"
Therese stood rigid, her face convulsed with fury, her heart a black
whirlpool of all the passions; but when Rosalie looked up again, after a
vigorous bout of fanning, she was gone, and, with a sigh of relief, the
widow Leboeuf settled once more to her placid morning's work.
The past fortnight had gone heavily for Mlle de Rochambeau. Since the
days of the votings she had not seen Dangeau, for he had only returned
late at night to snatch a few hours' sleep before the earliest daylight
called him to his work again. She heard his step upon the stair, and
turned from it, with something like a shudder. What times! what times!
For the inconceivable was happening--the impossible had come to pass.
What, was the King to die, and no one lift a hand to help? In open day,
in his own capital? Surely there would be a sign, a wonder, and God
would save the King. But now--God had not saved him--he was dead. All
the previous day she had knelt, fasting, praying, and weeping, one of
many hundreds who did likewise; but the knife had fallen, the blood
royal was no longer inviolate--it flowed like common water, and was
swallowed by the common earth. A sort of numb terror possessed Aline's
very soul, and the little encounter with Therese gave it a personal
edge.
As she sat, late into the evening, making good her yesterday's stint of
embroidery, there came a footstep and a knocking at her door, and she
rose to open it, trembling a little, and yet not knowing why she
trembled since the step was a familiar one.
Dangeau stood without, his face worn and tired, but an eager light in
his eyes.
"Will you spare me a moment?" he asked, motioning to his open door.
"Is it about the copying?" she said, hesitating.
"The copying, and another matter," he replied, and stood aside, holding
the door for her to pass. She folded her work neatly, laid it down, and
came silently into his room, where she remained standing, and close to
the door.
Dangeau crossed to his table, asked her a trifling question or two about
the numbering of the thickly written pages before him, and then paused
for so long a space that the constraint which lay on Mademoiselle
extended itself to him also, and rested heavily upon them both.
"I am going away to-morrow," he said at last.
"Yes, Citizen." It was her first word to him for many days, and he was
struck by the altered quality of the soft tones.
They seemed to set him infinitely far away from her and her concerns,
and it was surprising how much that hurt him.
Nevertheless he stumbled on:
"I am obliged to go; you believe that, do you not?"
"But, yes, Citizen." More distant still the voice that had rung
friendly once, but behind the distance a weariness that spurred him.
"You are very friendless," he said abruptly. "You said that I might be
your friend, and the first thing that I do is to desert you. If I had
been given a choice--but one has obligations--it is a trust I cannot
shirk."
"Monsieur is very good to trouble himself about me," said Mademoiselle
softly. "I shall be safe. I am not afraid. See then, Citizen, who
would hurt me? I live quietly, I earn my bread, I harm no one. What
has any one so insignificant and poor as I to be afraid of? Would any
one trouble to harm me?"
"God forbid!" said Dangeau earnestly. "Indeed, I think you are safe, or
I would not go. In a month or six weeks, I shall hope to be back again.
I do not know why I should be uneasy." He hesitated. "If there were a
woman you could turn to, but there--my mother died ten years ago, and I
know of no one else. But if a man's help would be of any use to you, you
could rely on Edmond Clery--see, I will give you his direction. He is
young, but very much my friend, and you could trust him. Show him
this"--he held out a small, folded note--"and I know he will do what he
can."
Mademoiselle's colour was a little tremulous. His manner had taken
suddenly so intimate, so possessive, a shade. Only half-conscious that
she had grown to depend on him for companionship and safety, she was
alarmed at discovering that his talk of her being alone, and friendless,
could bring a lump into her throat, and set her heart beating.
"Indeed, Monsieur, there is no need," she protested, answering her own
misgivings as much as his words. "I shall be safe. There is no one to
harm me."
He put the note into her hand, and returned to the table, where he
paused, looking strangely at her.
"So young, so friendless," beat his heart, "so alone, so unprotected.
If I spoke now, should I lose all? Is she old enough to have learned
their accursed lesson of the gulf between man and man--between loving
man and the woman beloved? Surely she is too lonely not to yearn
towards shelter." He made a half step towards her, and then checked
himself, turning his head aside.
"Mademoiselle," he said earnestly, "you are very much alone in the
world. Your order is doomed--it passes unregretted, for it was an evil
thing. I do not say that every noble was bad, but every noble was
nourished in a system that set hatred between class and class, and the
outcome of that antagonism has been hundreds of years' oppression, lust,
starvation, a peasantry crushed into bestiality by iniquitous taxes, and
an aristocracy, relieved of responsibility, grown callous to suffering,
sunk in effeteness and vice. There is a future now for the peasant,
since the weight is off his back, and his children can walk erect, but
what future is there for the aristocrat? I can see none. Those who
would survive, must out from their camp, and set themselves to other
ways of thought, and other modes of life." He paused, and glanced at
her with a dawning hope in his eyes.
Mademoiselle de Rochambeau raised her head a little, proudly.
"Monsieur, I am of this order of which you speak," she said, and her
voice was cold and still.
"You were of them, but now, where are they? The links that held you to
them have been wrenched away. All is changed and you are free--the
daughter of the new day of Liberty."
"Monsieur, one cannot change one's blood, one's race. I am of them."
"But one can change one's heart, one's faith," he cried hotly; and at
that Mademoiselle's hand went to her bosom, as if the pressure of it
could check the quick fluttering within.
"Not if one is Rochambeau," she said very low.
There was an instant's pause, whilst she drew a long breath, and then
words came to her.
"Do you know, Monsieur, that for seven hundred years my people have kept
their faith, and served the King and their order? In all those years
there have been many men whom you would call bad men--I do not defend
them--there have been cruel deeds done, and I shudder at them, but the
worst man of them all would have died in torments before he would have
accepted life at the price of honour, or come out from his order because
it was doomed. That I think is what you ask me to do. I am a
Rochambeau, Monsieur."
Her voice was icy with pride, and behind its soft curves, and the
delicate colour excitement painted there, her face was inexorably set.
The individuality of it became as it were a transparent veil, through
which stared the inevitable attributes of the race, the hoarded instinct
of centuries.
Dangeau's heart beat heavily. For a moment passion flared hot within
him, only to fall again before her defenceless youth. But the breath of
it beat upon her soul, and troubled it to the depths. She stood
waiting, not knowing how to break the spell that held her motionless.
Something warned her that a touch, a movement, might unchain some force
unknown, but dreadful. It was as if she watched a rising sea--the long,
long heaving stretch, as yet unflecked with foam, where wave after wave
towered up as if about to break, yet fell again unbroken. The room was
gone in a mist--there was neither past nor future. Only an eternal
moment, and that steadily rising sea.
Suddenly broke the seventh wave, the wave of Fate.
In the mist Dangeau made an abrupt movement.
"Aline!" he said, lifting his eyes to her white face. "Aline!"
Mademoiselle de Rochambeau felt a tremor pass over her; she was
conscious of a mastering, overwhelming fear. Like something outside
herself, it caught her heart, and wrung it.
"No, no," said her trembling lips; "no, no."
With that he was beside her, catching her unresisting hand. Cold as ice
it lay in his, and he felt it quiver.
"Oh, mon Dieu, are you afraid of me--of me?" he cried, in a hoarse
whisper.
She tried to speak, but could not; something choked the sound, and she
only stood there, mechanically focussing all her energies in an effort
to stop the shivering, which threatened to become unbearable.
"Aline," he said again, "Aline, look at me."
He bent above her, nearer, till his face was on a level with her own,
and his eyes drew hers to meet them. And his were full of all sweet and
poignant things--love and home, and trust, and protection--they were
warm and kind, and she so cold, and so afraid. It seemed as if her soul
must go out to him, or be torn in two. Suddenly her fear of him had
changed into fear of her own self. Did a Rochambeau mate thus? She saw
the red steel, wet with the King's life, the steel weighted by the word
of this man, and his fellows. She saw the blood gush out and flow
between them in a river of separation. To pass it she must stain her
feet--must stain her soul, with an uncleansable rust. It could not
be--Noblesse oblige.
She caught her hand from his and put it quickly over her eyes.
"No, no, no--oh no, Monsieur," she cried, in a trembling whisper.
He recoiled at once, the light in his face dying out.
"It is no, for always?" he asked slowly.
She bent her head.
"For always, and always, and always?" he said again. "All the years, all
the ways wanting you--never reaching you? Think again, Aline."
She rested her hand against the door and took a step away. It was more
than she could bear, and a blind instinct of escape was upon her, but he
was beside her before she could pass out.
"Is it because I am what I am, Jacques Dangeau, and not of your order?"
he asked, in a sharp voice.
The change helped her, and she looked up steadily.
"Monsieur, one has obligations--you said it just now."
"Obligations?"
"And loyalties--to one's order, to one's King."
"Louis Capet is dead," he said heavily.
"And you voted for his death," she flashed at him, voice and eye like a
rapier thrust.
He raised his head with pride.
"Yes, Mademoiselle, I voted for his death."
"That is a chasm no human power can bridge," she said, in a level voice.
"It lies between us--the King's death, the King's blood. You cannot
pass to come to me--I may not pass to come to you."
There was an infinite troubled loneliness behind the pride in her eyes,
and it smote him through his anger.
"Adieu, Mademoiselle," he said in a low, constrained voice. He neither
touched her hand, nor kissed it, but he bowed with as much proud
courtesy as if he had been her equal in pride of race. "Adieu,
Mademoiselle."
"Adieu, Monsieur."
She passed out, and heard the door close harshly behind her. It shut
away--ah, what? The Might-have-been--the Forbidden--Eden perhaps? She
could not tell. Bewildered, and exhausted, she fell on her knees in the
dark by her narrow bed, and sobbed out all the wild confusion of her
heart.