“Yesterday you were unkind and ungallant. How could I smile when you
seemed so stern?”
“Yesterday I was not alone with you. How could I say what lay next my
heart, when indifferent ears could catch the words that were meant only
for you?”
“Ah, monsieur, do they teach you in England how to make pretty
speeches?”
“No, mademoiselle, that is an instinct that comes into birth by the fire
of a woman’s eyes.”
Mademoiselle Lange was sitting upon a small sofa of antique design, with
cushions covered in faded silks heaped round her pretty head. Armand
thought that she looked like that carved cameo which his sister
Marguerite possessed.
He himself sat on a low chair at some distance from her. He had brought
her a large bunch of early violets, for he knew that she was fond of
flowers, and these lay upon her lap, against the opalescent grey of her
gown.
She seemed a little nervous and agitated, his obvious admiration
bringing a ready blush to her cheeks.
The room itself appeared to Armand to be a perfect frame for the
charming picture which she presented. The furniture in it was small and
old; tiny tables of antique Vernis-Martin, softly faded tapestries, a
pale-toned Aubusson carpet. Everything mellow and in a measure pathetic.
Mademoiselle Lange, who was an orphan, lived alone under the duennaship
of a middle-aged relative, a penniless hanger-on of the successful young
actress, who acted as her chaperone, housekeeper, and maid, and kept
unseemly or over-bold gallants at bay.
She told Armand all about her early life, her childhood in the backshop
of Maitre Meziere, the jeweller, who was a relative of her mother’s; of
her desire for an artistic career, her struggles with the middle-class
prejudices of her relations, her bold defiance of them, and final
independence.
She made no secret of her humble origin, her want of education in those
days; on the contrary, she was proud of what she had accomplished for
herself. She was only twenty years of age, and already held a leading
place in the artistic world of Paris.
Armand listened to her chatter, interested in everything she said,
questioning her with sympathy and discretion. She asked him a good
deal about himself, and about his beautiful sister Marguerite, who,
of course, had been the most brilliant star in that most brilliant
constellation, the Comedie Francaise. She had never seen Marguerite St.
Just act, but, of course, Paris still rang with her praises, and all
art-lovers regretted that she should have married and left them to mourn
for her.
Thus the conversation drifted naturally back to England. Mademoiselle
professed a vast interest in the citizen’s country of adoption.
“I had always,” she said, “thought it an ugly country, with the noise
and bustle of industrial life going on everywhere, and smoke and fog to
cover the landscape and to stunt the trees.”
“Then, in future, mademoiselle,” he replied, “must you think of it as
one carpeted with verdure, where in the spring the orchard trees covered
with delicate blossom would speak to you of fairyland, where the dewy
grass stretches its velvety surface in the shadow of ancient monumental
oaks, and ivy-covered towers rear their stately crowns to the sky.”
“And the Scarlet Pimpernel? Tell me about him, monsieur.”
“Ah, mademoiselle, what can I tell you that you do not already know? The
Scarlet Pimpernel is a man who has devoted his entire existence to the
benefit of suffering mankind. He has but one thought, and that is for
those who need him; he hears but one sound the cry of the oppressed.”
“But they do say, monsieur, that philanthropy plays but a sorry part in
your hero’s schemes. They aver that he looks on his own efforts and the
adventures through which he goes only in the light of sport.”
“Like all Englishmen, mademoiselle, the Scarlet Pimpernel is a little
ashamed of sentiment. He would deny its very existence with his lips,
even whilst his noble heart brimmed over with it. Sport? Well! mayhap
the sporting instinct is as keen as that of charity--the race for lives,
the tussle for the rescue of human creatures, the throwing of a life on
the hazard of a die.”
“They fear him in France, monsieur. He has saved so many whose death had
been decreed by the Committee of Public Safety.”
“Please God, he will save many yet.”
“Ah, monsieur, the poor little boy in the Temple prison!”
“He has your sympathy, mademoiselle?”
“Of every right-minded woman in France, monsieur. Oh!” she added with a
pretty gesture of enthusiasm, clasping her hands together, and looking
at Armand with large eyes filled with tears, “if your noble Scarlet
Pimpernel will do aught to save that poor innocent lamb, I would indeed
bless him in my heart, and help him with all my humble might if I
could.”
“May God’s saints bless you for those words, mademoiselle,” he said,
whilst, carried away by her beauty, her charm, her perfect femininity,
he stooped towards her until his knee touched the carpet at her feet. “I
had begun to lose my belief in my poor misguided country, to think all
men in France vile, and all women base. I could thank you on my
knees for your sweet words of sympathy, for the expression of tender
motherliness that came into your eyes when you spoke of the poor
forsaken Dauphin in the Temple.”
She did not restrain her tears; with her they came very easily, just as
with a child, and as they gathered in her eyes and rolled down her fresh
cheeks they in no way marred the charm of her face. One hand lay in her
lap fingering a diminutive bit of cambric, which from time to time she
pressed to her eyes. The other she had almost unconsciously yielded to
Armand.
The scent of the violets filled the room. It seemed to emanate from her,
a fitting attribute of her young, wholly unsophisticated girlhood. The
citizen was goodly to look at; he was kneeling at her feet, and his lips
were pressed against her hand.
Armand was young and he was an idealist. I do not for a moment imagine
that just at this moment he was deeply in love. The stronger feeling had
not yet risen up in him; it came later when tragedy encompassed him
and brought passion to sudden maturity. Just now he was merely yielding
himself up to the intoxicating moment, with all the abandonment, all the
enthusiasm of the Latin race. There was no reason why he should not bend
the knee before this exquisite little cameo, that by its very presence
was giving him an hour of perfect pleasure and of aesthetic joy.
Outside the world continued its hideous, relentless way; men butchered
one another, fought and hated. Here in this small old-world salon, with
its faded satins and bits of ivory-tinted lace, the outer universe had
never really penetrated. It was a tiny world--quite apart from the rest
of mankind, perfectly peaceful and absolutely beautiful.
If Armand had been allowed to depart from here now, without having been
the cause as well as the chief actor in the events that followed, no
doubt that Mademoiselle Lange would always have remained a charming
memory with him, an exquisite bouquet of violets pressed reverently
between the leaves of a favourite book of poems, and the scent of spring
flowers would in after years have ever brought her dainty picture to his
mind.
He was murmuring pretty words of endearment; carried away by emotion,
his arm stole round her waist; he felt that if another tear came like a
dewdrop rolling down her cheek he must kiss it away at its very source.
Passion was not sweeping them off their feet--not yet, for they
were very young, and life had not as yet presented to them its most
unsolvable problem.
But they yielded to one another, to the springtime of their life,
calling for Love, which would come presently hand in hand with his grim
attendant, Sorrow.
Even as Armand’s glowing face was at last lifted up to hers asking with
mute lips for that first kiss which she already was prepared to give,
there came the loud noise of men’s heavy footsteps tramping up the
old oak stairs, then some shouting, a woman’s cry, and the next moment
Madame Belhomme, trembling, wide-eyed, and in obvious terror, came
rushing into the room.
“Jeanne! Jeanne! My child! It is awful! It is awful! Mon Dieu--mon Dieu!
What is to become of us?”
She was moaning and lamenting even as she ran in, and now she threw her
apron over her face and sank into a chair, continuing her moaning and
her lamentations.
Neither Mademoiselle nor Armand had stirred. They remained like graven
images, he on one knee, she with large eyes fixed upon his face. They
had neither of them looked on the old woman; they seemed even now
unconscious of her presence. But their ears had caught the sound of that
measured tramp of feet up the stairs of the old house, and the halt upon
the landing; they had heard the brief words of command:
“Open, in the name of the people!”
They knew quite well what it all meant; they had not wandered so far in
the realms of romance that reality--the grim, horrible reality of the
moment--had not the power to bring them back to earth.
That peremptory call to open in the name of the people was the prologue
these days to a drama which had but two concluding acts: arrest, which
was a certainty; the guillotine, which was more than probable. Jeanne
and Armand, these two young people who but a moment ago had tentatively
lifted the veil of life, looked straight into each other’s eyes and saw
the hand of death interposed between them: they looked straight into
each other’s eyes and knew that nothing but the hand of death would part
them now. Love had come with its attendant, Sorrow; but he had come with
no uncertain footsteps. Jeanne looked on the man before her, and he bent
his head to imprint a glowing kiss upon her hand.
“Aunt Marie!”
It was Jeanne Lange who spoke, but her voice was no longer that of an
irresponsible child; it was firm, steady and hard. Though she spoke to
the old woman, she did not look at her; her luminous brown eyes rested
on the bowed head of Armand St. Just.
“Aunt Marie!” she repeated more peremptorily, for the old woman, with
her apron over her head, was still moaning, and unconscious of all save
an overmastering fear.
“Open, in the name of the people!” came in a loud harsh voice once more
from the other side of the front door.
“Aunt Marie, as you value your life and mine, pull yourself together,”
said Jeanne firmly.
“What shall we do? Oh! what shall we do?” moaned Madame Belhomme. But
she had dragged the apron away from her face, and was looking with some
puzzlement at meek, gentle little Jeanne, who had suddenly become so
strange, so dictatorial, all unlike her habitual somewhat diffident
self.
“You need not have the slightest fear, Aunt Marie, if you will only do
as I tell you,” resumed Jeanne quietly; “if you give way to fear, we
are all of us undone. As you value your life and mine,” she now repeated
authoritatively, “pull yourself together, and do as I tell you.”
The girl’s firmness, her perfect quietude had the desired effect. Madame
Belhomme, though still shaken up with sobs of terror, made a great
effort to master herself; she stood up, smoothed down her apron, passed
her hand over her ruffled hair, and said in a quaking voice:
“What do you think we had better do?”
“Go quietly to the door and open it.”
“But--the soldiers--”
“If you do not open quietly they will force the door open within the
next two minutes,” interposed Jeanne calmly. “Go quietly and open the
door. Try and hide your fears, grumble in an audible voice at being
interrupted in your cooking, and tell the soldiers at once that they
will find mademoiselle in the boudoir. Go, for God’s sake!” she added,
whilst suppressed emotion suddenly made her young voice vibrate; “go,
before they break open that door!”
Madame Belhomme, impressed and cowed, obeyed like an automaton. She
turned and marched fairly straight out of the room. It was not a minute
too soon. From outside had already come the third and final summons:
“Open, in the name of the people!”
After that a crowbar would break open the door.
Madame Belhomme’s heavy footsteps were heard crossing the ante-chamber.
Armand still knelt at Jeanne’s feet, holding her trembling little hand
in his.
“A love-scene,” she whispered rapidly, “a love-scene--quick--do you know
one?”
And even as he had tried to rise she held him back, down on his knees.
He thought that fear was making her distracted.
“Mademoiselle--” he murmured, trying to soothe her.
“Try and understand,” she said with wonderful calm, “and do as I tell
you. Aunt Marie has obeyed. Will you do likewise?”
“To the death!” he whispered eagerly.
“Then a love-scene,” she entreated. “Surely you know one. Rodrigue and
Chimene! Surely--surely,” she urged, even as tears of anguish rose into
her eyes, “you must--you must, or, if not that, something else. Quick!
The very seconds are precious!”
They were indeed! Madame Belhomme, obedient as a frightened dog, had
gone to the door and opened it; even her well-feigned grumblings could
now be heard and the rough interrogations from the soldiery.
“Citizeness Lange!” said a gruff voice.
“In her boudoir, quoi!”
Madame Belhomme, braced up apparently by fear, was playing her part
remarkably well.
“Bothering good citizens! On baking day, too!” she went on grumbling and
muttering.
“Oh, think--think!” murmured Jeanne now in an agonised whisper, her hot
little hand grasping his so tightly that her nails were driven into his
flesh. “You must know something that will do--anything--for dear life’s
sake.... Armand!”
His name--in the tense excitement of this terrible moment--had escaped
her lips.
All in a flash of sudden intuition he understood what she wanted, and
even as the door of the boudoir was thrown violently open Armand--still
on his knees, but with one hand pressed to his heart, the other
stretched upwards to the ceiling in the most approved dramatic style,
was loudly declaiming:
“Pour venger son honneur il perdit son amour,
Pour venger sa maitresse il a quitte le jour!”
Whereupon Mademoiselle Lange feigned the most perfect impatience.
“No, no, my good cousin,” she said with a pretty moue of disdain, “that
will never do! You must not thus emphasise the end of every line; the
verses should flow more evenly, as thus....”
Heron had paused at the door. It was he who had thrown it open--he who,
followed by a couple of his sleuth-hounds, had thought to find here
the man denounced by de Batz as being one of the followers of that
irrepressible Scarlet Pimpernel. The obviously Parisian intonation of
the man kneeling in front of citizeness Lange in an attitude no ways
suggestive of personal admiration, and coolly reciting verses out of a
play, had somewhat taken him aback.
“What does this mean?” he asked gruffly, striding forward into the room
and glaring first at mademoiselle, then at Armand.
Mademoiselle gave a little cry of surprise.
“Why, if it isn’t citizen Heron!” she cried, jumping up with a dainty
movement of coquetry and embarrassment. “Why did not Aunt Marie announce
you?... It is indeed remiss of her, but she is so ill-tempered on baking
days I dare not even rebuke her. Won’t you sit down, citizen Heron?
And you, cousin,” she added, looking down airily on Armand, “I pray you
maintain no longer that foolish attitude.”
The febrileness of her manner, the glow in her cheeks were easily
attributable to natural shyness in face of this unexpected visit. Heron,
completely bewildered by this little scene, which was so unlike what he
expected, and so unlike those to which he was accustomed in the exercise
of his horrible duties, was practically speechless before the little
lady who continued to prattle along in a simple, unaffected manner.
“Cousin,” she said to Armand, who in the meanwhile had risen to his
knees, “this is citizen Heron, of whom you have heard me speak. My
cousin Belhomme,” she continued, once more turning to Heron, “is fresh
from the country, citizen. He hails from Orleans, where he has played
leading parts in the tragedies of the late citizen Corneille. But, ah
me! I fear that he will find Paris audiences vastly more critical
than the good Orleanese. Did you hear him, citizen, declaiming those
beautiful verses just now? He was murdering them, say I--yes, murdering
them--the gaby!”
Then only did it seem as if she realised that there was something amiss,
that citizen Heron had come to visit her, not as an admirer of her
talent who would wish to pay his respects to a successful actress, but
as a person to be looked on with dread.
She gave a quaint, nervous little laugh, and murmured in the tones of a
frightened child:
“La, citizen, how glum you look! I thought you had come to compliment
me on my latest success. I saw you at the theatre last night, though
you did not afterwards come to see me in the green-room. Why! I had a
regular ovation! Look at my flowers!” she added more gaily, pointing to
several bouquets in vases about the room. “Citizen Danton brought me
the violets himself, and citizen Santerre the narcissi, and that laurel
wreath--is it not charming?--that was a tribute from citizen Robespierre
himself.”
She was so artless, so simple, and so natural that Heron was completely
taken off his usual mental balance. He had expected to find the usual
setting to the dramatic episodes which he was wont to conduct--screaming
women, a man either at bay, sword in hand, or hiding in a linen cupboard
or up a chimney.
Now everything puzzled him. De Batz--he was quite sure--had spoken of an
Englishman, a follower of the Scarlet Pimpernel; every thinking French
patriot knew that all the followers of the Scarlet Pimpernel were
Englishmen with red hair and prominent teeth, whereas this man....
Armand--who deadly danger had primed in his improvised role--was
striding up and down the room declaiming with ever-varying intonations:
“Joignez tous vos efforts contre un espoir si doux
Pour en venir a bout, c’est trop peu que de vous.”
“No! no!” said mademoiselle impatiently; “you must not make that ugly
pause midway in the last line: ‘pour en venir a bout, c’est trop peu que
de vous!’”
She mimicked Armand’s diction so quaintly, imitating his stride, his
awkward gesture, and his faulty phraseology with such funny exaggeration
that Heron laughed in spite of himself.
“So that is a cousin from Orleans, is it?” he asked, throwing his lanky
body into an armchair, which creaked dismally under his weight.
“Yes! a regular gaby--what?” she said archly. “Now, citizen Heron, you
must stay and take coffee with me. Aunt Marie will be bringing it in
directly. Hector,” she added, turning to Armand, “come down from the
clouds and ask Aunt Marie to be quick.”
This certainly was the first time in the whole of his experience that
Heron had been asked to stay and drink coffee with the quarry he was
hunting down. Mademoiselle’s innocent little ways, her desire for
the prolongation of his visit, further addled his brain. De Batz had
undoubtedly spoken of an Englishman, and the cousin from Orleans was
certainly a Frenchman every inch of him.
Perhaps had the denunciation come from any one else but de Batz, Heron
might have acted and thought more circumspectly; but, of course, the
chief agent of the Committee of General Security was more suspicious of
the man from whom he took a heavy bribe than of any one else in France.
The thought had suddenly crossed his mind that mayhap de Batz had sent
him on a fool’s errand in order to get him safely out of the way of the
Temple prison at a given hour of the day.
The thought took shape, crystallised, caused him to see a rapid vision
of de Batz sneaking into his lodgings and stealing his keys, the guard
being slack, careless, inattentive, allowing the adventurer to pass
barriers that should have been closed against all comers.
Now Heron was sure of it; it was all a conspiracy invented by de Batz.
He had forgotten all about his theories that a man under arrest is
always safer than a man that is free. Had his brain been quite normal,
and not obsessed, as it always was now by thoughts of the Dauphin’s
escape from prison, no doubt he would have been more suspicious of
Armand, but all his worst suspicions were directed against de Batz.
Armand seemed to him just a fool, an actor quoi? and so obviously not an
Englishman.
He jumped to his feet, curtly declining mademoiselle’s offers of
hospitality. He wanted to get away at once. Actors and actresses were
always, by tacit consent of the authorities, more immune than the rest
of the community. They provided the only amusement in the intervals
of the horrible scenes around the scaffolds; they were irresponsible,
harmless creatures who did not meddle in politics.
Jeanne the while was gaily prattling on, her luminous eyes fixed upon
the all-powerful enemy, striving to read his thoughts, to understand
what went on behind those cruel, prominent eyes, the chances that Armand
had of safety and of life.
She knew, of course, that the visit was directed against Armand--some
one had betrayed him, that odious de Batz mayhap--and she was fighting
for Armand’s safety, for his life. Her armoury consisted of her presence
of mind, her cool courage, her self-control; she used all these weapons
for his sake, though at times she felt as if the strain on her nerves
would snap the thread of life in her. The effort seemed more than she
could bear.
But she kept up her part, rallying Heron for the shortness of his
visit, begging him to tarry for another five minutes at least, throwing
out--with subtle feminine intuition--just those very hints anent little
Capet’s safety that were most calculated to send him flying back towards
the Temple.
“I felt so honoured last night, citizen,” she said coquettishly, “that
you even forgot little Capet in order to come and watch my debut as
Celimene.”
“Forget him!” retorted Heron, smothering a curse, “I never forget the
vermin. I must go back to him; there are too many cats nosing round my
mouse. Good day to you, citizeness. I ought to have brought flowers, I
know; but I am a busy man--a harassed man.”
“Je te crois,” she said with a grave nod of the head; “but do come to
the theatre to-night. I am playing Camille--such a fine part! one of my
greatest successes.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll come--mayhap, mayhap--but I’ll go now--glad to have seen
you, citizeness. Where does your cousin lodge?” he asked abruptly.
“Here,” she replied boldly, on the spur of the moment.
“Good. Let him report himself to-morrow morning at the Conciergerie, and
get his certificate of safety. It is a new decree, and you should have
one, too.”
“Very well, then. Hector and I will come together, and perhaps Aunt
Marie will come too. Don’t send us to maman guillotine yet awhile,
citizen,” she said lightly; “you will never get such another Camille,
nor yet so good a Celimene.”
She was gay, artless to the last. She accompanied Heron to the door
herself, chaffing him about his escort.
“You are an aristo, citizen,” she said, gazing with well-feigned
admiration on the two sleuth-hounds who stood in wait in the anteroom;
“it makes me proud to see so many citizens at my door. Come and see me
play Camille--come to-night, and don’t forget the green-room door--it
will always be kept invitingly open for you.”
She bobbed him a curtsey, and he walked out, closely followed by his two
men; then at last she closed the door behind them. She stood there for
a while, her ear glued against the massive panels, listening for their
measured tread down the oak staircase. At last it rang more sharply
against the flagstones of the courtyard below; then she was satisfied
that they had gone, and went slowly back to the boudoir.