“Of what are you thinking, little fool?” asked the Marquise peevishly,
her fat face puckered into a hundred wrinkles of ill-humour.
“Of nothing in particular, Madame,” the girl answered patiently.
The Marquise sniffed contemptuously, and glanced through the window of
the coach upon the dreary, rain sodden landscape.
“Do you call the sometime secretary Citizen-cutthroat La Boulaye,
nothing in particular?” she asked. “Ma foi! I wonder that you do not die
of self-contempt after what passed between you at Boisvert.”
“Madame, I was not thinking of him,” said Suzanne.
“More shame to you, then,” was the sour retort, for the Marquise was
bent upon disagreeing with her. “Have you a conscience, Suzanne, that
you could have played such a Delilah part and never give a thought to
the man you have tricked?”
“You will make me regret that I told you of it,” said the girl quietly.
“You are ready enough to regret anything but the act itself. Perhaps
you'll be regretting that you did not take a berline at Soignies, as you
promised the citizen-scoundrel that you would, and set out to join him?”
“It is hardly generous to taunt me so, Madame, I do very bitterly regret
what has taken place. But you might do me the justice to remember that
what I did I did as much for others as for myself. As much, indeed, for
you as for myself.”
“For me?” echoed the Marquise shrilly. “Tiens, that is droll now! For
me? Was it for me that you made love to the citizen-blackguard? Are you
so dead to shame that you dare remind me of it?”
Mademoiselle sighed, and seemed to shrink back into the shadows of the
carriage. Her face was very pale, and her eyes looked sorely troubled.
“It is something that to my dying day I shall regret,” she murmured. “It
was vile, it was unworthy! Yet if I had not used the only weapon to my
hand--” She ceased, the Marquise caught the sound of a sob.
“What are you weeping for, little fool?” she cried.
“As much as anything for what he must think of me when he realises how
shamefully I have used him.”
“And does it matter what the canaille thinks? Shall it matter what the
citizen-assassin thinks?”
“A little, Madame,” she sighed. “He will despise me as I deserve. I
almost wish that I could undo it, and go back to that little room at
Boisvert the prisoner of that fearful man, Tardivet, or else that--”
Again she paused, and the Marquise turned towards her with a gasp.
“Or else that what?” she demanded. “Ma foi, it only remains that you
should wish you had kept your promise to this scum.”
“I almost wish it, Madame. I pledged my word to him.”
“You talk as if you were a man,” said her mother; “as if your word was a
thing that bound you. It is a woman's prerogative to change her mind. As
for this Republican scum--”
“You shall not call him that,” was the rejoinder, sharply delivered;
for Suzanne was roused at last. “He is twenty times more noble and brave
than any gentleman, that I have ever met. We owe our liberty to him at
this moment, and sufficiently have I wronged him by my actions--”
“Fool, what are you saying?” cried the enraged Marquise. “He, more noble
and brave than any gentleman that you ever met? He--this kennel-bred
citizen-ruffian of a revolutionist? Are you mad, girl, or--” The
Marquise paused a moment and took a deep breath that was as a gasp of
sudden understanding. “Is it that you are in love with this wretch!”
“Madame!” The exclamation was laden with blended wonder, dignity, and
horror.
“Well?” demanded Madame de Bellecour severely. “Answer me, Suzanne. Are
you in love with this La Boulaye?”
“Is there the need to answer?” quoth the girl scornfully. “Surely you
forget that I am Mademoiselle de Bellecour, daughter of the Marquise
de Bellecour, and that this man is of the canaille, else you had never
asked the question.”
With an expression of satisfaction the Marquise was sinking back in the
carriage, when of a sudden she sat bolt upright.
“Someone is riding very desperately,” she cried, a note of alarm ringing
in her voice.
Above the thud of the coach-horses' hoofs and the rumble of their
vehicle sounded now the clatter of someone galloping madly in their
wake. Mademoiselle looked from the window into the gathering dusk.
“It will be some courier, Madame,” she answered calmly. “None other
would ride at such a pace.”
“I shall know no rest until we are safely in a Christian country again,”
the Marquise complained.
The hoof-beats grew nearer, and the dark figure of a horseman dashed
suddenly past the window. Simultaneously, a loud, harsh command to halt
rang out upon the evening air.
The Marquise clutched at her daughter's arm with one hand, whilst with
the other she crossed herself, as though their assailant were some
emissary of the powers of evil.
“Mother in Heaven, deliver us!” she gasped, turning suddenly devout.
“Mon Dieu!” cried Mademoiselle, who had recognised the voice that was
now haranguing the men on the box--their driver and the ostler of the
'Eagle Inn.' “It is La Boulaye himself.”
“La Boulaye?” echoed the Marquise. Then, in a frenzy of terror: “There
are the pistols there, Suzanne,” she cried. “You can shoot. Kill him!
Kill him!”
The girl's lips came tightly together until her mouth seemed no more
than a straight line. Her cheeks grew white as death, but her eyes were
brave and resolute. She put forth her hand and seized one of the pistols
as the carriage with a final jolt came to a standstill.
An instant later the door was dragged open, and La Boulaye stood bowing
in the rain with mock ceremoniousness and a very contemptuous smile on
his stern mouth. He had dismounted, and flung the reins of his horse
over the bough of a tree by the roadside. The Marquise shuddered at
sight of him, and sought to shrink farther back into the cushions of the
carriage.
“Citoyenne,” he was saying, very bitterly, “when I made my compact with
you yesternight, I did not reckon upon being compelled to ride after you
in this fashion. I have some knowledge of the ways of your people, of
their full words and empty deeds; but you I was fool enough to trust. By
experience we learn. I must ask you to alight, Citoyenne.”
“To what purpose, Monsieur?” she asked, in a voice which she strove to
render cold and steady.
“To the purpose that your part of the bargain be carried out. Your
mother and your treasure were to find their way into Prussia upon
condition that you return with me to France.”
“It was a bargain of coercion, Monsieur,” she answered attempting to
brazen it out. “I was a woman in a desperate situation.”
“Surely your memory is at fault, Citoyenne,” he answered, with a
politeness that was in itself a mockery.
“Your situation was so little desperate that I had offered to effect the
rescue both of your mother and yourself without asking any guerdon.
Your miserable treasure alone it was that had to be sacrificed. You will
recall that the bargain was of your own proposing.”
There was a pause, during which he stood waiting for her reply. Her blue
eyes made an attempt to meet his steady gaze, but failed. Her bosom rose
and fell in the intensity of her agitation.
“I was a woman distraught, Monsieur. Surely you will not hold me to
words uttered in an hour of madness. It was a bargain I had no right to
make, for I am no longer free to dispose of myself. I am betrothed to
the Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval. The contract has already been signed,
and the Vicomte will be meeting us at Treves.”
It was as if she had struck him, and amazement left him silent a
moment. In a dim, subconscious way he seemed to notice that the name
she mentioned was that of the man he was bidden to arrest. Then, with an
oath:
“I care naught for that,” he cried. “As God lives, you shall fulfil your
word to me.”
“Monsieur, I refuse,” she answered, with finality. “Let me request you
to close the door and suffer us to proceed.”
“Your mother and your treasure may proceed--it was thus we bargained.
But you shall come with me. I will be no girl's dupe, no woman's fool,
Citoyenne.”
When he said that he uttered the full truth. There was no love in his
voice or in his heart at that moment. Than desire of her nothing was
further from his mind. It was his pride that was up in arms, his wounded
dignity that cried out to him to avenge himself upon her, and to punish
her for having no miserably duped him. That she was unwilling to go with
him only served to increase his purpose of taking her, since the more
unwilling she was the more would she be punished.
“Citoyenne, I am waiting for you to alight,” he said peremptorily.
“Monsieur, I am very well as I am,” she answered him, and leaning
slightly from the coach--“Drive on, Blaise,” she commanded.
But La Boulaye cocked a pistol.
“Drive so much as a yard,” he threatened “and I'll drive you to the
devil.” Then, turning once more to Suzanne: “Never in my life, Citoyenne
have I employed force to a woman,” he said. “I trust that you will not
put me to the pain of commencing now.”
“Stand back, Monsieur,” was her imperious answer. But heedless he
advanced, and thrusting his head under the lintel of the carriage
door he leaned forward, to seize her. Then, before he could so much
as conjecture what she was about, her hand went up grasping a heavy
horse-pistol by the barrel, and she brought the butt of it down with a
deadly precision between his brows.
He reeled backwards, threw up his arms, and measured his length in the
thick grey mud of the road.
Her eyes had followed him with a look of horror, and until she saw him
lying still on his back did she seem to realise what she had done.
“My dear, brave girl,” murmured her mother's voice but she never heard
it. With a sob she relaxed her grasp of the pistol and let it fall from
the carriage.
“Shall I drive on, Mademoiselle?” inquired Blaise from the box.
But without answering him she had stepped down into the mud, and was
standing bare-headed in the rain beside the body of Caron.
Silently, she stooped and groped for his heart. It was beating
vigorously enough, she thought. She stooped lower and taking him under
the arms, she half bore, half dragged him to the side of the road, as
if the thin, bare hedge were capable of affording him shelter. There
she stood a moment looking down at him. Then with a sob she suddenly
stooped, and careless of the eyes observing her, she kissed him full
upon the mouth.
A second later she fled like a frightened thing back to the carriage,
and, closing the door, she called in a strangled voice too drive on.
She paid little heed to the praise that was being bestowed upon her by
her mother--who had seen nothing of the kiss. But she lay back in her
corner of the coach, and now her lashes were wet at the thought of Caron
lying out there in the road. Now her cheeks grew red with shame at the
thought that she, the nobly-born Mademoiselle de Bellecour, should have
allowed even pity to have so far overcome her as to have caused her to
touch with her lips the lips of a low-bred revolutionist.