Anne Mie.
That night, when Blakeney, wrapped in his cloak, was walking down the
Rue Ecole de Médecine towards his own lodgings, he suddenly felt a timid
hand upon his sleeve.
Anne Mie stood beside him, her pale, melancholy face peeping up at the
tall Englishman, through the folds of a dark hood closely tied under her
chin.
"Monsieur," she said timidly, "do not think me very presumptuous. I--I
would wish to have five minutes' talk with you--may I?"
He looked down with great kindness at the quaint, wizened little figure,
and the strong face softened at the sight of the poor, deformed
shoulder, the hard, pinched look of the young mouth, the general look of
pathetic helplessness which appeals so strongly to the chivalrous.
"Indeed, mademoiselle," he said gently, "you make me very proud; and I
can serve you in any way, I pray you command me. But," he added, seeing
Anne Mie's somewhat scared look, "this street is scarce fit for private
conversation. Shall we try and find a better spot?"
Paris had not yet gone to bed. In these times it was really safest to be
out in the open streets. There, everybody was more busy, more on the
move, on the lookout for suspected houses, leaving the wanderer alone.
Blakeney led Anne Mie towards the Luxembourg Gardens, the great
devastated pleasure-ground of the ci-devant tyrants of the people. The
beautiful Anne of Austria, and the Medici before her, Louis XIII, and
his gallant musketeers--all have given place to the great cannon-forging
industry of this besieged Republic. France, attacked on every side, is
forcing her sons to defend her: persecuted, martyrised, done to death by
her, she is still their Mother: La Patrie, who needs their arms against
the foreign foe. England is threatening the north, Prussia and Austria
the east. Admiral Hood's flag is flying on Toulon Arsenal.
The siege of the Republic!
And the Republic is fighting for dear life. The Tuileries and Luxembourg
Gardens are transformed into a township of gigantic smithies; and Anne
Mie, with scared eyes, and clinging to Blakeney's arm, cast furtive,
terrified glances at the huge furnaces and the begrimed, darkly scowling
faces of the workers within.
"The people of France in arms against tyranny!" Great placards, bearing
these inspiriting words, are affixed to gallows-shaped posts, and
flutter in the evening breeze, rendered scorching by the heat of the
furnaces all around.
Farther on, a group of older men, squatting on the ground, are busy
making tents, and some women--the same Megaeras who daily shriek round
the guillotine--are plying their needles and scissors for the purpose of
making clothes for the soldiers.
The soldiers are the entire able-bodied male population of France.
"The people of France in arms against tyranny!"
That is their sign, their trade-mark; one of these placards, fitfully
illumined by a torch of resin, towers above a group of children busy
tearing up scraps of old linen--their mothers', their sisters' linen
--in order to make lint for the wounded.
Loud curses and suppressed mutterings fill the smoke-laden air.
The people of France, in arms against tyranny, is bending its broad back
before the most cruel, the most absolute and brutish slave-driving ever
exercised over mankind.
Not even mediaeval Christianity has ever dared such wholesale
enforcements of its doctrines, as this constitution of Liberty and
Fraternity.
Merlin's "Law of the Suspect" has just been formulated. From now onward
each and every citizen of France must watch his words, his looks, his
gestures, lest they be suspect. Of what--of treason to the Republic, to
the people? Nay, worse! lest they be suspect of being suspect to the
great era of Liberty.
Therefore in the smithies and among the groups of tent-makers a moment's
negligence, a careless attention to the work, might lead to a brief
trial on the morrow and the inevitable guillotine. Negligence is treason
to the higher interests of the Republic.
Blakeney dragged Anne Mie away from the sight. These roaring furnaces
frightened her; he took her down the Place St Michel, towards the river.
It was quieter here.
"What dreadful people they have become," she said, shuddering; "even I
can remember how different they used to be."
The houses on the banks of the river were mostly converted into
hospitals, preparatory for the great siege. Some hundred mètres lower
down, the new children's hospital, endowed by Citizen-Deputy Déroulède,
loomed, white, clean, and comfortable-looking, amidst its more squalid
fellows.
"I think it would be best not to sit down," suggested Blakeney, "and
wiser for you to throw your hood away from your face."
He seemed to have no fears for himself; many had said that he bore a
charmed life; and yet ever since Admiral Hood had planted his flag on
Toulon Arsenal, the English were more feared than ever, and The Scarlet
Pimpernel more hated than most.
"You wished to speak to me about Paul Déroulède," he said kindly, seeing
that the young girl was making desperate efforts to say what lay on her
mind. "He is my friend, you know."
"Yes; that is why I wished to ask you a question," she replied.
"What is it?"
"Who is Juliette de Marny, and why did she seek an entrance into Paul's
house?"
"Did she seek it, then?"
"Yes; I saw the scene from the balcony. At the time it did not strike me
as a farce. I merely thought that she had been stupid and foolhardy. But
since then I have reflected. She provoked the mob of the street,
wilfully, just at the very moment when she reached M. Déroulède's door.
She meant to appeal to his chivalry, and called for help, well knowing
that he would respond."
She spoke rapidly and excitedly now, throwing off all shyness and
reserve. Blakeney was forced to check her vehemence, which might have
been thought "suspicious" by some idle citizen unpleasantly inclined.
"Well? And now?" he asked, for the young girl had paused, as if ashamed
of her excitement.
"And now she stays in the house, on and on, day after day," continued
Anne Mie, speaking more quietly, though with no less intensity. "Why
does she not go? She is not safe in France. She belongs to the most
hated of all the classes--the idle, rich aristocrats of the old régime.
Paul has several times suggested plans for her emigration to England.
Madame Déroulède, who is an angel, loves her, and would not like to part
from her, but it would be obviously wiser for her to go, and yet she
stays. Why?"
"Presumably because ..."
"Because she is in love with Paul?" interrupted Anne Mie vehemently.
"No, no; she does not love him--at least--Oh! sometimes I don't know.
Her eyes light up when he comes, and she is listless when he goes. She
always spends a longer time over her toilet, when we expect him home to
dinner," she added, with a touch of naïve femininity. "But--if it be
love, then that love is strange and unwomanly; it is a love that will
not be for his good ..."
"Why should you think that?"
"I don't know," said the girl simply. "Isn't it an instinct?"
"Not a very unerring one in this case, I fear."
"Why?"
"Because your own love for Paul Déroulède has blinded you--- Ah! you
must pardon me, mademoiselle; you sought this conversation and not I,
and I fear me I have wounded you. Yet I would wish you to know how deep
is my sympathy with you, and how great my desire to render you a service
if I could."
"I was about to ask a service of you, monsieur."
"Then command me, I beg of you."
"You are Paul's friend--persuade him that that woman in his house is a
standing danger to his life and liberty."
"He would not listen to me."
"Oh! a man always listens to another."
"Except on one subject--the woman he loves."
He had said the last words very gently but very firmly. He was deeply,
tenderly sorry for the poor, deformed, fragile girl, doomed to be a
witness of that most heartrending of human tragedies, the passing away
of her own scarce-hoped-for happiness. But he felt that at this moment
the kindest act would be one of complete truth. He knew that Paul
Déroulède's heart was completely given to Juliette de Marny; he too,
like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted the beautiful girl and her
strange, silent ways, but, unlike the poor hunchback, he knew that no
sin which Juliette might commit would henceforth tear her from out the
heart of his friend; that if, indeed, she turned out to be false, or
even treacherous, she would, nevertheless, still hold a place in
Déroulède's very soul, which no one else would ever fill.
"You think he loves her?" asked Anne Mie at last.
"I am sure of it."
"And she?"
"Ah! I do not know. I would trust your instinct--a woman's--sooner than
my own."
"She is false, I tell you, and is hatching treason against Paul."
"Then all we can do is to wait."
"Wait?"
"And watch carefully, earnestly, all the time. There! shall I pledge you
my word that Déroulède shall come to no harm?"
"Pledge me your word that you'll part him from that woman."
"Nay; that is beyond my power. A man like Paul Déroulède only loves once
in life, but when he does, it is for always."
Once more she was silent, pressing her lips closely together, as if
afraid of what she might say.
He saw that she was bitterly disappointed, and sought for a means of
tempering the cruelty of the blow.
"It will be your task to watch over Paul," he said; "with your
friendship to guard and protect him, we need have no fear for his
safety, I think."
"I will watch," she replied quietly.
Gradually he had led her steps back towards the Rue Ecole de Médecine.
A great melancholy had fallen over his bold, adventurous spirit. How
full of tragedies was this great city, in the last throes of its insane
and cruel struggle for an unattainable goal. And yet, despite its
guillotine and mock trials, its tyrannical laws and overfilled prisons,
its very sorrows paled before the dead, dull misery of this deformed
girl's heart.
A wild exaltation, a fever of enthusiasm lent glamour to the scenes
which were daily enacted on the Place de la Revolution, turning the
final acts of the tragedies into glaring, lurid melodrama, almost unreal
in its poignant appeal to the sensibilities.
But here there was only this dead, dull misery, an aching heart, a poor,
fragile creature in the throes of an agonised struggle for a
fast-disappearing happiness.
Anne Mie hardly knew now what she had hoped, when she sought this
interview with Sir Percy Blakeney. Drowning in a sea of hopelessness,
she had clutched at what might prove a chance of safety. Her reason told
her that Paul's friend was right. Déroulède was a man who would love but
once in his life. He had never loved--for he had too much pitied--poor,
pathetic little Anne Mie.
Nay; why should we say that love and pity are akin?
Love, the great, the strong, the conquering god--Love that subdues a
world, and rides roughshod over principle, virtue, tradition, over home,
kindred, and religion--what cares he for the easy conquest of the
pathetic being, who appeals to his sympathy?
Love means equality--the same height of heroism or of sin. When Love
stoops to pity, he has ceased to soar in the boundless space, that
rarefied atmosphere wherein man feels himself made at last truly in the
image of God.