The night that Armand St. Just spent tossing about on a hard, narrow bed
was the most miserable, agonising one he had ever passed in his life.
A kind of fever ran through him, causing his teeth to chatter and the
veins in his temples to throb until he thought that they must burst.
Physically he certainly was ill; the mental strain caused by two great
conflicting passions had attacked his bodily strength, and whilst his
brain and heart fought their battles together, his aching limbs found no
repose.
His love for Jeanne! His loyalty to the man to whom he owed his life,
and to whom he had sworn allegiance and implicit obedience!
These superacute feelings seemed to be tearing at his very heartstrings,
until he felt that he could no longer lie on the miserable palliasse
which in these squalid lodgings did duty for a bed.
He rose long before daybreak, with tired back and burning eyes, but
unconscious of any pain save that which tore at his heart.
The weather, fortunately, was not quite so cold--a sudden and very rapid
thaw had set in; and when after a hurried toilet Armand, carrying a
bundle under his arm, emerged into the street, the mild south wind
struck pleasantly on his face.
It was then pitch dark. The street lamps had been extinguished long ago,
and the feeble January sun had not yet tinged with pale colour the heavy
clouds that hung over the sky.
The streets of the great city were absolutely deserted at this hour. It
lay, peaceful and still, wrapped in its mantle of gloom. A thin rain
was falling, and Armand’s feet, as he began to descend the heights of
Montmartre, sank ankle deep in the mud of the road. There was but scanty
attempt at pavements in this outlying quarter of the town, and Armand
had much ado to keep his footing on the uneven and intermittent stones
that did duty for roads in these parts. But this discomfort did not
trouble him just now. One thought--and one alone--was clear in his mind:
he must see Jeanne before he left Paris.
He did not pause to think how he could accomplish that at this hour of
the day. All he knew was that he must obey his chief, and that he must
see Jeanne. He would see her, explain to her that he must leave Paris
immediately, and beg her to make her preparations quickly, so that she
might meet him as soon as maybe, and accompany him to England straight
away.
He did not feel that he was being disloyal by trying to see Jeanne.
He had thrown prudence to the winds, not realising that his imprudence
would and did jeopardise, not only the success of his chief’s plans,
but also his life and that of his friends. He had before parting from
Hastings last night arranged to meet him in the neighbourhood of the
Neuilly Gate at seven o’clock; it was only six now. There was plenty of
time for him to rouse the concierge at the house of the Square du Roule,
to see Jeanne for a few moments, to slip into Madame Belhomme’s kitchen,
and there into the labourer’s clothes which he was carrying in the
bundle under his arm, and to be at the gate at the appointed hour.
The Square du Roule is shut off from the Rue St. Honore, on which it
abuts, by tall iron gates, which a few years ago, when the secluded
little square was a fashionable quarter of the city, used to be kept
closed at night, with a watchman in uniform to intercept midnight
prowlers. Now these gates had been rudely torn away from their sockets,
the iron had been sold for the benefit of the ever-empty Treasury,
and no one cared if the homeless, the starving, or the evil-doer found
shelter under the porticoes of the houses, from whence wealthy or
aristocratic owners had long since thought it wise to flee.
No one challenged Armand when he turned into the square, and though
the darkness was intense, he made his way fairly straight for the house
where lodged Mademoiselle Lange.
So far he had been wonderfully lucky. The foolhardiness with which he
had exposed his life and that of his friends by wandering about the
streets of Paris at this hour without any attempt at disguise, though
carrying one under his arm, had not met with the untoward fate which it
undoubtedly deserved. The darkness of the night and the thin sheet of
rain as it fell had effectually wrapped his progress through the lonely
streets in their beneficent mantle of gloom; the soft mud below had
drowned the echo of his footsteps. If spies were on his track, as
Jeanne had feared and Blakeney prophesied, he had certainly succeeded in
evading them.
He pulled the concierge’s bell, and the latch of the outer door,
manipulated from within, duly sprang open in response. He entered, and
from the lodge the concierge’s voice emerging, muffled from the depths
of pillows and blankets, challenged him with an oath directed at the
unseemliness of the hour.
“Mademoiselle Lange,” said Armand boldly, as without hesitation he
walked quickly past the lodge making straight for the stairs.
It seemed to him that from the concierge’s room loud vituperations
followed him, but he took no notice of these; only a short flight of
stairs and one more door separated him from Jeanne.
He did not pause to think that she would in all probability be still in
bed, that he might have some difficulty in rousing Madame Belhomme, that
the latter might not even care to admit him; nor did he reflect on the
glaring imprudence of his actions. He wanted to see Jeanne, and she was
the other side of that wall.
“He, citizen! Hola! Here! Curse you! Where are you?” came in a gruff
voice to him from below.
He had mounted the stairs, and was now on the landing just outside
Jeanne’s door. He pulled the bell-handle, and heard the pleasing echo of
the bell that would presently wake Madame Belhomme and bring her to the
door.
“Citizen! Hola! Curse you for an aristo! What are you doing there?”
The concierge, a stout, elderly man, wrapped in a blanket, his feet
thrust in slippers, and carrying a guttering tallow candle, had appeared
upon the landing.
He held the candle up so that its feeble flickering rays fell on
Armand’s pale face, and on the damp cloak which fell away from his
shoulders.
“What are you doing there?” reiterated the concierge with another oath
from his prolific vocabulary.
“As you see, citizen,” replied Armand politely, “I am ringing
Mademoiselle Lange’s front door bell.”
“At this hour of the morning?” queried the man with a sneer.
“I desire to see her.”
“Then you have come to the wrong house, citizen,” said the concierge
with a rude laugh.
“The wrong house? What do you mean?” stammered Armand, a little
bewildered.
“She is not here--quoi!” retorted the concierge, who now turned
deliberately on his heel. “Go and look for her, citizen; it’ll take you
some time to find her.”
He shuffled off in the direction of the stairs. Armand was vainly trying
to shake himself free from a sudden, an awful sense of horror.
He gave another vigorous pull at the bell, then with one bound he
overtook the concierge, who was preparing to descend the stairs, and
gripped him peremptorily by the arm.
“Where is Mademoiselle Lange?” he asked.
His voice sounded quite strange in his own ear; his throat felt parched,
and he had to moisten his lips with his tongue before he was able to
speak.
“Arrested,” replied the man.
“Arrested? When? Where? How?”
“When--late yesterday evening. Where?--here in her room. How?--by the
agents of the Committee of General Security. She and the old woman!
Basta! that’s all I know. Now I am going back to bed, and you clear out
of the house. You are making a disturbance, and I shall be reprimanded.
I ask you, is this a decent time for rousing honest patriots out of
their morning sleep?”
He shook his arm free from Armand’s grasp and once more began to
descend.
Armand stood on the landing like a man who has been stunned by a blow
on the head. His limbs were paralysed. He could not for the moment have
moved or spoken if his life had depended on a sign or on a word. His
brain was reeling, and he had to steady himself with his hand against
the wall or he would have fallen headlong on the floor. He had lived in
a whirl of excitement for the past twenty-four hours; his nerves during
that time had been kept at straining point. Passion, joy, happiness,
deadly danger, and moral fights had worn his mental endurance
threadbare; want of proper food and a sleepless night had almost thrown
his physical balance out of gear. This blow came at a moment when he was
least able to bear it.
Jeanne had been arrested! Jeanne was in the hands of those brutes, whom
he, Armand, had regarded yesterday with insurmountable loathing! Jeanne
was in prison--she was arrested--she would be tried, condemned, and all
because of him!
The thought was so awful that it brought him to the verge of mania. He
watched as in a dream the form of the concierge shuffling his way down
the oak staircase; his portly figure assumed Gargantuan proportions, the
candle which he carried looked like the dancing flames of hell, through
which grinning faces, hideous and contortioned, mocked at him and
leered.
Then suddenly everything was dark. The light had disappeared round the
bend of the stairs; grinning faces and ghoulish visions vanished; he
only saw Jeanne, his dainty, exquisite Jeanne, in the hands of those
brutes. He saw her as he had seen a year and a half ago the victims of
those bloodthirsty wretches being dragged before a tribunal that was
but a mockery of justice; he heard the quick interrogatory, and the
responses from her perfect lips, that exquisite voice of hers veiled by
tones of anguish. He heard the condemnation, the rattle of the tumbril
on the ill-paved streets--saw her there with hands clasped together, her
eyes--
Great God! he was really going mad!
Like a wild creature driven forth he started to run down the stairs,
past the concierge, who was just entering his lodge, and who now turned
in surly anger to watch this man running away like a lunatic or a fool,
out by the front door and into the street. In a moment he was out of
the little square; then like a hunted hare he still ran down the Rue St.
Honore, along its narrow, interminable length. His hat had fallen from
his head, his hair was wild all round his face, the rain weighted the
cloak upon his shoulders; but still he ran.
His feet made no noise on the muddy pavement. He ran on and on, his
elbows pressed to his sides, panting, quivering, intent but upon one
thing--the goal which he had set himself to reach.
Jeanne was arrested. He did not know where to look for her, but he did
know whither he wanted to go now as swiftly as his legs would carry him.
It was still dark, but Armand St. Just was a born Parisian, and he knew
every inch of this quarter, where he and Marguerite had years ago lived.
Down the Rue St. Honore, he had reached the bottom of the interminably
long street at last. He had kept just a sufficiency of reason--or was it
merely blind instinct?--to avoid the places where the night patrols
of the National Guard might be on the watch. He avoided the Place du
Carrousel, also the quay, and struck sharply to his right until he
reached the facade of St. Germain l’Auxerrois.
Another effort; round the corner, and there was the house at last.
He was like the hunted creature now that has run to earth. Up the two
flights of stone stairs, and then the pull at the bell; a moment of
tense anxiety, whilst panting, gasping, almost choked with the sustained
effort and the strain of the past half-hour, he leaned against the wall,
striving not to fall.
Then the well-known firm step across the rooms beyond, the open door,
the hand upon his shoulder.
After that he remembered nothing more.