DISTRESSING NEWS
Dangeau entered Paris next morning. His mission had dragged itself out
to an interminable length. Even now he returned alone, his colleague,
Bonnet, having been ordered to remain at Lyons for the present, whilst
Dangeau made report at headquarters. The cities of the South smouldered
ominously, and were ready at a breath to break into roaring flame. Even
as Dangeau rode the first tongues of fire ran up, and a general
conflagration threatened. Of this he rode to give earnest warning, and
his face was troubled and anxious, though the outdoor life had given it
a brown vigour which had been lacking before.
He put up his horse at an inn and walked to his old quarters with a warm
glow rising in his breast; a glow before which all misgivings and
preoccupations grew faint.
He had not been able to forget the pale, proud aristocrat, who had
claimed his love so much against his will and hers; but in his days of
absence he had set her image as far apart as might be, involving himself
in the press of public business, to the exclusion of his thoughts of
her. But now--now that he was about to see her again, the curtain at
the back of his mind lifted, and showed her standing--an image in a
shrine--unapproachably radiant, unforgettably enchanting, unalterably
dear, and all the love in him fell on its knees and adored with hidden
face.
He passed up the Rue des Lanternes and beheld its familiar features
transfigured. Here she had walked all the months of his absence, and
here perhaps she had thought of him; there in the little room had
mingled his name with her sweet prayers. He remembered hotly the night
he had asked her if she prayed for him, and her low, exquisitely
tremulous, "Yes, Citizen."
He drew a long, deep breath and entered the small shop.
It was dark coming in from the glare, but he made out Rosalie in her
accustomed seat, only it seemed to him that she was huddled forward in
an unusual manner.
"Why, Citoyenne!" he cried cheerfully, "I am back, you see."
Rosalie raised her head and stared at him, and she seemed to be coming
back with difficulty from a great distance. As his eyes grew used to
the change from the outer day he looked curiously at her face. There
was something strange, it seemed to him, about the sunken eyes; they had
lost the old shrewd look, and were dull and wavering. For a moment it
occurred to him that she had been drinking; then the heavy glance
changed, brightening into recognition.
"You, Citizen?" she said, with a sort of dull surprise.
"Myself, and very glad to be back."
"You are well, Citizen?"
"And you, I fear, suffering?"
Rosalie pulled herself together.
"No, no," she protested, "I am well too, quite well. It is only that the
days are dull when there is no spectacle, and I sit there and think, and
count the heads, and wonder if it hurt them much; and then it makes my
own head ache, and I become stupid."
Dangeau shuddered lightly. A gruesome welcome this.
"I would not go and see such things," he said.
"Sometimes I wish--" began Rosalie, and then paused; a red patch came on
either sallow cheek. "It is too ennuyant when there is nothing to
excite one, voyez-vous? Yesterday there were five, and one of them
struggled. Ah, that gave me a palpitation! They say it was n't an
aristocrat. _They_ all die alike, with a little stretched smile and
steady eyes--no crying out--I find that tiresome at the last."
"Why, Rosalie," said Dangeau, "you should stay at home as you used to.
Since when have you become a gadabout? You will finish by having bad
dreams and losing your appetite."
Rosalie looked up with a sort of horrid animation.
"Ah, j'y suis deja," she said quickly. "Already I see them in the
night. A week ago I wake, cold, wet--and there stands the Citizen Clery
with his head under his arm like any St. Denis. Could I eat next
day?--Ma foi, no! And why should he come to me, that Clery? Was it I
who had a hand in his death? These revenants have not common-sense. It
is my cousin Therese whose nights should be disturbed, not mine."
Dangeau looked at her steadily.
"Come, come, Rosalie," he said, "enough of this--Edmond Clery's head is
safe enough."
"Yes, yes," nodded Rosalie, "safe enough in the great trench. Safe
enough till Judgment day, and then it is Therese who must answer, and
not I. It was none of my doing."
"But, Rosalie--mon Dieu! what are you saying--Edmond----?"
"Why, did you not know?"
"Woman!--what?"
"Ask Therese," said Rosalie with a sullen look, and fell to plaiting the
border of her coarse apron.
"Rosalie!"
His voice startled her, and her mood shifted.
"Yes, to be sure, he was a friend of yours, and it is bad news. Ah, he
's dead, there 's no doubt of that. I saw it with my own eyes. He had
been ill, and could hardly mount the steps; but in the end he smiled and
waved his hand, and went off as bravely as the best of them. It is a
pity, but he offended Therese, and she is a devil. I told her so; I
said to her, 'Therese, I think you are a devil,' and she only laughed."
Dangeau could see that laugh,--red, red lips, and white, even teeth, and
all the while lips that had kissed hers livid, dabbled with blood. Oh,
horrible! Poor Clery, poor Edmond!
He gave a great shudder and forced his thoughts away from the vision
they had evoked, but he sought voice twice before he could say:
"All else are well?"
She looked sullen again, and shrugged her shoulders.
"Ma foi, Citizen, Paris does not stand still."
He bit his lip.
"But here, in this house?"
"I am well, I have said so before."
He turned as if to go.
"And the Citoyenne Roche?" He had his voice in hand now, and the
question had a careless ring.
"Gone," said Rosalie curtly.
In a flash that veil of carelessness had dropped. His hand fell heavily
upon her shoulder.
"Gone--where?" he asked tensely.
"Where every one goes these days, these fine days. To prison, to the
guillotine. They all go there."
For a moment Dangeau's heart stood still, then laboured so that his
voice was beyond control. It came in husky gasps. "Dead--she is dead.
Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"
Rosalie was rocking to and fro, counting on her fingers. His emotion
seemed to please her, for she gave a foolish smile.
"She has a little white neck, very smooth and soft," she muttered.
A terrible sound broke from Dangeau's ghastly lips; a sound that
steadied for a moment the woman's tottering mind. She looked up
curiously, as if recalling something, smoothed the hair from her
forehead, and touched the rigid hand which lay upon her shoulder.
"Tiens, Citizen," she said in a different tone, "she is not dead yet";
and the immense relief gave Dangeau's anger rein.
"Woman!" he said violently, "what has happened? Where is she? At
once----"
Rosalie twitched away her shoulder, shrinking back against the wall.
This blaze of anger kept her sane for the moment.
"She is in prison, at the Abbaye," she said. Under the excitement her
brain cleared, and she was thinking now, debating how much she should
tell him.
"Since when?"
"A month--six weeks--what do I know?"
"How came she to be arrested?"
"How should I know, Citizen?"
"Did you betray her? You knew who she was. Take care and do not lie to
me."
"I lie, I--Citizen! But I was her best friend, and when that beast
Hebert came hanging round----"
"Hebert?"
"She took his fancy, Heaven knows why, and you know her proud ways. Any
other girl would have played with him a little, given a smile or two,
and kept him off; but she, with her nose in the air, and her eyes
looking past him, as if he was n't fit for her to see,--why, she made
him feel as if he were the mud under her feet, and what could any one
expect? He got her clapped into the Abbaye, to repent at leisure."
Dangeau was a man of clean lips, but now he called down damnation upon
Hebert's black soul with an earnestness that frightened Rosalie.
"What more do you know? Tell me at once!"
She turned uneasily from the look in his eyes.
"She will be tried to-day."
"You are sure?"
"Therese told me, and she and Hebert are thick as thieves again."
"What hour? Dieu! what hour? It is ten o'clock now."
"Before noon, I think she said, but I can't be sure of that."
"You are lying?"
"No, no, Citizen--I do not know--indeed I do not."
He saw that she was speaking the truth, and turned from her with a
despairing gesture. As he stumbled out of the shop he knocked over a
great basket of potatoes, and Rosalie, with a sort of groan of relief,
went down on her knees and began to gather them up. As the excitement
of the scene she had been through subsided her eyes took that dull glaze
again. Her movements became slower, and she stared oddly at the brown
potatoes as she handled them.
"One--two--three," she counted in a monotonous voice, dropping them into
the basket. At each little thud she started slightly, then went on
counting.
"Four--five--six--seven--eight--" Suddenly she stared at them heavily.
"There's no blood," she muttered, "no blood."
Half an hour later Therese found her with a phlegmatic smile upon her
face and idle hands folded over something that lay beneath her coarse
apron.
"Come along then, Rosalie," she called out impatiently. "Have you
forgotten the trial?--we've not too much time."
"Ah!" said Rosalie, nodding slowly; "ah, the trial."
Therese tapped impatiently with her foot.
"Come then, for Heaven's sake! or we shall not get places."
"Places," said Rosalie suddenly; "what for?"
"Ma foi, if you are not stupid to-day. The trial, I tell you, that
Rochambeau girl's trial--white-faced little fool. Ciel! if I could not
play my cards better than that," and she laughed.
Rosalie's hands were hidden by her apron. One of them clutched
something. The fingers lifted one by one, and in her mind she counted,
"One--two--three--four--five"--and then back
again--"One--two--three--four--five--" Therese was staring at her.
"What's the matter with you to-day?" she said. "Are you coming or no?
It will be amusing, Hebert says; but if you prefer to sit here and sulk,
do so by all means. For me, I go."
She turned to do so, but Rosalie was already getting out of her chair.
"Wait then, Therese," she grumbled. "Is no one to have any amusement
but you? There, give me your arm, come close. Now tell me what's going
to happen?"
"Oh, just the trial, but I thought you wanted to see it. For me, I
always think it makes the execution more interesting if one has seen the
trial also."
"Dangeau is back," said Rosalie irrelevantly.
Therese laughed loud.
"He has a fine welcome home," she said. "Well, are you coming, for I
've no mind to wait?"
"It is only the trial," said Rosalie vaguely. "Just a trial--and what
is that? I do not care for a trial, there is no blood."
She laughed a little and rocked, cuddling what lay beneath her apron.
"Just a trial," she muttered; "but whose trial did you say?"
Therese lost patience. She stamped on the floor.
"What, again? What the devil is the matter with you to-day? Are you
drunk?"
Rosalie turned her big head and looked at her cousin. They were standing
close together, and her left hand, with its strong, stumpy fingers,
closed like a vice upon the girl's arm.
"No, I 'm not drunk, not drunk, Therese," she said in a thick voice.
Therese tried to shake her off.
"Well, you sound like it, and behave like it, you old fool," she said
furiously. "Drunk or crazy, it's all one. Let go of me, I shall be
late."
"Yes," said Rosalie, nodding her head--"yes, you will be late, Therese."
"Va, imbecile!" cried the girl in a passion.
As she spoke she hit the nodding face sharply, twitching violently to
one side in the effort to free her arm.
The ponderous hand closed tighter, and Therese, turning again with a
curse, saw that upon Rosalie's heavily flushed face that stopped the
words half-way, and changed them to a shriek.
"Oh, Mary Virgin!" she screamed, and saw the hidden right hand come
swinging into sight, holding a long, sharp knife such as butchers use at
their work. Her eyes were all black, dilated pupil, and she choked on
the breath she tried to draw in order to scream again. Oh, the hand! the
knife!
It flashed and fell, wrenched free and fell again, and Therese went
down, horribly mute, her hands grasping in the air, and catching at the
basket across which she fell.
She would scream no more now. The knife clattered to the floor from
Rosalie's suddenly opened hand, and, as if the sound were a signal,
Therese gave one convulsive shudder, which passed with a gush of
crimson.
Rosalie went down on her knees, and gathered a handful of the brown
tubers from the piled basket. She had to push the corpse aside to get
at them, and she did it without a glance.
Then she threw the potatoes back into the basket one by one. She wore a
complacent smile. Her eyes were intent.
"Now, there is blood," she said, nodding as if satisfied. "Now, there
is blood."