as he himself felt on the subject of Armand, he would not add yet
another burden to this devoted woman’s heavy load of misery.
“It was Fate, Lady Blakeney,” he said after a while. “Fate! a damnable
fate which did it all. Great God! to think of Blakeney in the hands
of those brutes seems so horrible that at times I feel as if the whole
thing were a nightmare, and that the next moment we shall both wake
hearing his merry voice echoing through this room.”
He tried to cheer her with words of hope that he knew were but chimeras.
A heavy weight of despondency lay on his heart. The letter from his
chief was hidden against his breast; he would study it anon in the
privacy of his own apartment so as to commit every word to memory that
related to the measures for the ultimate safety of the child-King. After
that it would have to be destroyed, lest it fell into inimical hands.
Soon he bade Marguerite good-night. She was tired out, body and soul,
and he--her faithful friend--vaguely wondered how long she would be able
to withstand the strain of so much sorrow, such unspeakable misery.
When at last she was alone Marguerite made brave efforts to compose
her nerves so as to obtain a certain modicum of sleep this night. But,
strive how she might, sleep would not come. How could it, when before
her wearied brain there rose constantly that awful vision of Percy in
the long, narrow cell, with weary head bent over his arm, and those
friends shouting persistently in his ear:
“Wake up, citizen! Tell us, where is Capet?”
The fear obsessed her that his mind might give way; for the mental agony
of such intense weariness must be well-nigh impossible to bear. In the
dark, as she sat hour after hour at the open window, looking out in the
direction where through the veil of snow the grey walls of the Chatelet
prison towered silent and grim, she seemed to see his pale, drawn face
with almost appalling reality; she could see every line of it, and could
study it with the intensity born of a terrible fear.
How long would the ghostly glimmer of merriment still linger in the
eyes? When would the hoarse, mirthless laugh rise to the lips, that
awful laugh that proclaims madness? Oh! she could have screamed now with
the awfulness of this haunting terror. Ghouls seemed to be mocking
her out of the darkness, every flake of snow that fell silently on the
window-sill became a grinning face that taunted and derided; every cry
in the silence of the night, every footstep on the quay below turned to
hideous jeers hurled at her by tormenting fiends.
She closed the window quickly, for she feared that she would go mad.
For an hour after that she walked up and down the room making violent
efforts to control her nerves, to find a glimmer of that courage which
she promised Percy that she would have.
CHAPTER XXXII. SISTERS
The morning found her fagged out, but more calm. Later on she managed
to drink some coffee, and having washed and dressed, she prepared to go
out.
Sir Andrew appeared in time to ascertain her wishes.
“I promised Percy to go to the Rue de Charonne in the late afternoon,”
she said. “I have some hours to spare, and mean to employ them in trying
to find speech with Mademoiselle Lange.”
“Blakeney has told you where she lives?”
“Yes. In the Square du Roule. I know it well. I can be there in half an
hour.”
He, of course, begged to be allowed to accompany her, and anon they were
walking together quickly up toward the Faubourg St. Honore. The snow had
ceased falling, but it was still very cold, but neither Marguerite nor
Sir Andrew were conscious of the temperature or of any outward signs
around them. They walked on silently until they reached the torn-down
gates of the Square du Roule; there Sir Andrew parted from Marguerite
after having appointed to meet her an hour later at a small eating-house
he knew of where they could have some food together, before starting on
their long expedition to the Rue de Charonne.
Five minutes later Marguerite Blakeney was shown in by worthy Madame
Belhomme, into the quaint and pretty drawing-room with its soft-toned
hangings and old-world air of faded grace. Mademoiselle Lange was
sitting there, in a capacious armchair, which encircled her delicate
figure with its frame-work of dull old gold.
She was ostensibly reading when Marguerite was announced, for an open
book lay on a table beside her; but it seemed to the visitor that mayhap
the young girl’s thoughts had played truant from her work, for her pose
was listless and apathetic, and there was a look of grave trouble upon
the childlike face.
She rose when Marguerite entered, obviously puzzled at the unexpected
visit, and somewhat awed at the appearance of this beautiful woman with
the sad look in her eyes.
“I must crave your pardon, mademoiselle,” said Lady Blakeney as soon as
the door had once more closed on Madame Belhomme, and she found herself
alone with the young girl. “This visit at such an early hour must seem
to you an intrusion. But I am Marguerite St. Just, and--”
Her smile and outstretched hand completed the sentence.
“St. Just!” exclaimed Jeanne.
“Yes. Armand’s sister!”
A swift blush rushed to the girl’s pale cheeks; her brown eyes expressed
unadulterated joy. Marguerite, who was studying her closely, was
conscious that her poor aching heart went out to this exquisite child,
the far-off innocent cause of so much misery.
Jeanne, a little shy, a little confused and nervous in her movements,
was pulling a chair close to the fire, begging Marguerite to sit. Her
words came out all the while in short jerky sentences, and from time to
time she stole swift shy glances at Armand’s sister.
“You will forgive me, mademoiselle,” said Marguerite, whose simple and
calm manner quickly tended to soothe Jeanne Lange’s confusion; “but I
was so anxious about my brother--I do not know where to find him.”
“And so you came to me, madame?”
“Was I wrong?”
“Oh, no! But what made you think that--that I would know?”
“I guessed,” said Marguerite with a smile. “You had heard about me
then?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Through whom? Did Armand tell you about me?”
“No, alas! I have not seen him this past fortnight, since you,
mademoiselle, came into his life; but many of Armand’s friends are in
Paris just now; one of them knew, and he told me.”
The soft blush had now overspread the whole of the girl’s face, even
down to her graceful neck. She waited to see Marguerite comfortably
installed in an armchair, then she resumed shyly:
“And it was Armand who told me all about you. He loves you so dearly.”
“Armand and I were very young children when we lost our parents,” said
Marguerite softly, “and we were all in all to each other then. And until
I married he was the man I loved best in all the world.”
“He told me you were married--to an Englishman.”
“Yes?”
“He loves England too. At first he always talked of my going there with
him as his wife, and of the happiness we should find there together.”
“Why do you say ‘at first’?”
“He talks less about England now.”
“Perhaps he feels that now you know all about it, and that you
understand each other with regard to the future.”
“Perhaps.”
Jeanne sat opposite to Marguerite on a low stool by the fire. Her elbows
were resting on her knees, and her face just now was half-hidden by the
wealth of her brown curls. She looked exquisitely pretty sitting
like this, with just the suggestion of sadness in the listless pose.
Marguerite had come here to-day prepared to hate this young girl, who in
a few brief days had stolen not only Armand’s heart, but his allegiance
to his chief, and his trust in him. Since last night, when she had seen
her brother sneak silently past her like a thief in the night, she had
nurtured thoughts of ill-will and anger against Jeanne.
But hatred and anger had melted at the sight of this child. Marguerite,
with the perfect understanding born of love itself, had soon realised
the charm which a woman like Mademoiselle Lange must of necessity
exercise over a chivalrous, enthusiastic nature like Armand’s. The
sense of protection--the strongest perhaps that exists in a good man’s
heart--would draw him irresistibly to this beautiful child, with the
great, appealing eyes, and the look of pathos that pervaded the entire
face. Marguerite, looking in silence on the dainty picture before her,
found it in her heart to forgive Armand for disobeying his chief when
those eyes beckoned to him in a contrary direction.
How could he, how could any chivalrous man endure the thought of this
delicate, fresh flower lying crushed and drooping in the hands of
monsters who respected neither courage nor purity? And Armand had been
more than human, or mayhap less, if he had indeed consented to leave the
fate of the girl whom he had sworn to love and protect in other hands
than his own.
It seemed almost as if Jeanne was conscious of the fixity of
Marguerite’s gaze, for though she did not turn to look at her, the flush
gradually deepened in her cheeks.
“Mademoiselle Lange,” said Marguerite gently, “do you not feel that you
can trust me?”
She held out her two hands to the girl, and Jeanne slowly turned to her.
The next moment she was kneeling at Marguerite’s feet, and kissing
the beautiful kind hands that had been stretched out to her with such
sisterly love.
“Indeed, indeed, I do trust you,” she said, and looked with tear-dimmed
eyes in the pale face above her. “I have longed for some one in whom I
could confide. I have been so lonely lately, and Armand--”
With an impatient little gesture she brushed away the tears which had
gathered in her eyes.
“What has Armand been doing?” asked Marguerite with an encouraging
smile.
“Oh, nothing to grieve me!” replied the young girl eagerly, “for he
is kind and good, and chivalrous and noble. Oh, I love him with all my
heart! I loved him from the moment that I set eyes on him, and then
he came to see me--perhaps you know! And he talked so beautiful about
England, and so nobly about his leader the Scarlet Pimpernel--have you
heard of him?”
“Yes,” said Marguerite, smiling. “I have heard of him.”
“It was that day that citizen Heron came with his soldiers! Oh! you do
not know citizen Heron. He is the most cruel man in France. In Paris
he is hated by every one, and no one is safe from his spies. He came to
arrest Armand, but I was able to fool him and to save Armand. And after
that,” she added with charming naivete, “I felt as if, having saved
Armand’s life, he belonged to me--and his love for me had made me his.”
“Then I was arrested,” she continued after a slight pause, and at the
recollection of what she had endured then her fresh voice still trembled
with horror.
“They dragged me to prison, and I spent two days in a dark cell,
where--”
She hid her face in her hands, whilst a few sobs shook her whole frame;
then she resumed more calmly:
“I had seen nothing of Armand. I wondered where he was, and I knew
that he would be eating out his heart with anxiety for me. But God was
watching over me. At first I was transferred to the Temple prison, and
there a kind creature--a sort of man-of-all work in the prison took
compassion on me. I do not know how he contrived it, but one morning
very early he brought me some filthy old rags which he told me to put
on quickly, and when I had done that he bade me follow him. Oh! he was a
very dirty, wretched man himself, but he must have had a kind heart. He
took me by the hand and made me carry his broom and brushes. Nobody took
much notice of us, the dawn was only just breaking, and the passages
were very dark and deserted; only once some soldiers began to chaff him
about me: ‘C’est ma fille--quoi?’ he said roughly. I very nearly laughed
then, only I had the good sense to restrain myself, for I knew that my
freedom, and perhaps my life, depended on my not betraying myself. My
grimy, tattered guide took me with him right through the interminable
corridors of that awful building, whilst I prayed fervently to God for
him and for myself. We got out by one of the service stairs and exit,
and then he dragged me through some narrow streets until we came to a
corner where a covered cart stood waiting. My kind friend told me to get
into the cart, and then he bade the driver on the box take me straight
to a house in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois. Oh! I was infinitely
grateful to the poor creature who had helped me to get out of that awful
prison, and I would gladly have given him some money, for I am sure he
was very poor; but I had none by me. He told me that I should be quite
safe in the house in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and begged me to
wait there patiently for a few days until I heard from one who had my
welfare at heart, and who would further arrange for my safety.”
Marguerite had listened silently to this narrative so naively told by
this child, who obviously had no idea to whom she owed her freedom and
her life. While the girl talked, her mind could follow with unspeakable
pride and happiness every phase of that scene in the early dawn, when
that mysterious, ragged man-of-all-work, unbeknown even to the woman
whom he was saving, risked his own noble life for the sake of her whom
his friend and comrade loved.
“And did you never see again the kind man to whom you owe your life?”
she asked.
“No!” replied Jeanne. “I never saw him since; but when I arrived at
the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois I was told by the good people who took
charge of me that the ragged man-of-all-work had been none other than
the mysterious Englishman whom Armand reveres, he whom they call the
Scarlet Pimpernel.”
“But you did not stay very long in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois, did
you?”
“No. Only three days. The third day I received a communique from
the Committee of General Security, together with an unconditional
certificate of safety. It meant that I was free--quite free. Oh! I could
scarcely believe it. I laughed and I cried until the people in the house
thought that I had gone mad. The past few days had been such a horrible
nightmare.”
“And then you saw Armand again?”
“Yes. They told him that I was free. And he came here to see me. He
often comes; he will be here anon.”
“But are you not afraid on his account and your own? He is--he must be
still--‘suspect’; a well-known adherent of the Scarlet Pimpernel, he
would be safer out of Paris.”
“No! oh, no! Armand is in no danger. He, too, has an unconditional
certificate of safety.”
“An unconditional certificate of safety?” asked Marguerite, whilst a
deep frown of grave puzzlement appeared between her brows. “What does
that mean?”
“It means that he is free to come and go as he likes; that neither he
nor I have anything to fear from Heron and his awful spies. Oh! but for
that sad and careworn look on Armand’s face we could be so happy; but
he is so unlike himself. He is Armand and yet another; his look at times
quite frightens me.”
“Yet you know why he is so sad,” said Marguerite in a strange, toneless
voice which she seemed quite unable to control, for that tonelessness
came from a terrible sense of suffocation, of a feeling as if her
heart-strings were being gripped by huge, hard hands.
“Yes, I know,” said Jeanne half hesitatingly, as if knowing, she was
still unconvinced.
“His chief, his comrade, the friend of whom you speak, the Scarlet
Pimpernel, who risked his life in order to save yours, mademoiselle, is
a prisoner in the hands of those that hate him.”
Marguerite had spoken with sudden vehemence. There was almost an appeal
in her voice now, as if she were trying not to convince Jeanne only, but
also herself, of something that was quite simple, quite straightforward,
and yet which appeared to be receding from her, an intangible something,
a spirit that was gradually yielding to a force as yet unborn, to a
phantom that had not yet emerged from out chaos.
But Jeanne seemed unconscious of all this. Her mind was absorbed in
Armand, the man whom she loved in her simple, whole-hearted way, and who
had seemed so different of late.
“Oh, yes!” she said with a deep, sad sigh, whilst the ever-ready tears
once more gathered in her eyes, “Armand is very unhappy because of him.
The Scarlet Pimpernel was his friend; Armand loved and revered him.
Did you know,” added the girl, turning large, horror-filled eyes on
Marguerite, “that they want some information from him about the Dauphin,
and to force him to give it they--they--”
“Yes, I know,” said Marguerite.
“Can you wonder, then, that Armand is unhappy. Oh! last night, after he
went from me, I cried for hours, just because he had looked so sad. He
no longer talks of happy England, of the cottage we were to have, and of
the Kentish orchards in May. He has not ceased to love me, for at times
his love seems so great that I tremble with a delicious sense of fear.
But oh! his love for me no longer makes him happy.”
Her head had gradually sunk lower and lower on her breast, her voice
died down in a murmur broken by heartrending sighs. Every generous
impulse in Marguerite’s noble nature prompted her to take that sorrowing
child in her arms, to comfort her if she could, to reassure her if
she had the power. But a strange icy feeling had gradually invaded her
heart, even whilst she listened to the simple unsophisticated talk of
Jeanne Lange. Her hands felt numb and clammy, and instinctively she
withdrew away from the near vicinity of the girl. She felt as if the
room, the furniture in it, even the window before her were dancing
a wild and curious dance, and that from everywhere around strange
whistling sounds reached her ears, which caused her head to whirl and
her brain to reel.
Jeanne had buried her head in her hands. She was crying--softly, almost
humbly at first, as if half ashamed of her grief; then, suddenly it
seemed, as if she could not contain herself any longer, a heavy sob
escaped her throat and shook her whole delicate frame with its
violence. Sorrow no longer would be gainsaid, it insisted on physical
expression--that awful tearing of the heart-strings which leaves the
body numb and panting with pain.
In a moment Marguerite had forgotten; the dark and shapeless phantom
that had knocked at the gate of her soul was relegated back into
chaos. It ceased to be, it was made to shrivel and to burn in the great
seething cauldron of womanly sympathy. What part this child had played
in the vast cataclysm of misery which had dragged a noble-hearted
enthusiast into the dark torture-chamber, whence the only outlet led
to the guillotine, she--Marguerite Blakeney--did not know; what part
Armand, her brother, had played in it, that she would not dare to guess;
all that she knew was that here was a loving heart that was filled with
pain--a young, inexperienced soul that was having its first tussle with
the grim realities of life--and every motherly instinct in Marguerite
was aroused.
She rose and gently drew the young girl up from her knees, and then
closer to her; she pillowed the grief-stricken head against her
shoulder, and murmured gentle, comforting words into the tiny ear.
“I have news for Armand,” she whispered, “that will comfort him, a
message--a letter from his friend. You will see, dear, that when Armand
reads it he will become a changed man; you see, Armand acted a little
foolishly a few days ago. His chief had given him orders which he
disregarded--he was so anxious about you--he should have obeyed; and
now, mayhap, he feels that his disobedience may have been the--the
innocent cause of much misery to others; that is, no doubt, the reason
why he is so sad. The letter from his friend will cheer him, you will
see.”
“Do you really think so, madame?” murmured Jeanne, in whose tear-stained
eyes the indomitable hopefulness of youth was already striving to shine.
“I am sure of it,” assented Marguerite.
And for the moment she was absolutely sincere. The phantom had entirely
vanished. She would even, had he dared to re-appear, have mocked and
derided him for his futile attempt at turning the sorrow in her heart to
a veritable hell of bitterness.
CHAPTER XXXIII. LITTLE MOTHER
The two women, both so young still, but each of them with a mark of
sorrow already indelibly graven in her heart, were clinging to one
another, bound together by the strong bond of sympathy. And but for
the sadness of it all it were difficult to conjure up a more beautiful
picture than that which they presented as they stood side by side;
Marguerite, tall and stately as an exquisite lily, with the crown of
her ardent hair and the glory of her deep blue eyes, and Jeanne Lange,
dainty and delicate, with the brown curls and the child-like droop of
the soft, moist lips.
Thus Armand saw them when, a moment or two later, he entered unannounced.
He had pushed open the door and looked on the two women silently for a
second or two; on the girl whom he loved so dearly, for whose sake
he had committed the great, the unpardonable sin which would send him
forever henceforth, Cain-like, a wanderer on the face of the earth;
and the other, his sister, her whom a Judas act would condemn to lonely
sorrow and widowhood.
He could have cried out in an agony of remorse, and it was the groan
of acute soul anguish which escaped his lips that drew Marguerite’s
attention to his presence.
Even though many things that Jeanne Lange had said had prepared her for
a change in her brother, she was immeasurably shocked by his appearance.
He had always been slim and rather below the average in height, but
now his usually upright and trim figure seemed to have shrunken within
itself; his clothes hung baggy on his shoulders, his hands appeared
waxen and emaciated, but the greatest change was in his face, in the
wide circles round the eyes, that spoke of wakeful nights, in the hollow
cheeks, and the mouth that had wholly forgotten how to smile.
Percy after a week’s misery immured in a dark and miserable prison,
deprived of food and rest, did not look such a physical wreck as did
Armand St. Just, who was free.
Marguerite’s heart reproached her for what she felt had been neglect,
callousness on her part. Mutely, within herself, she craved his
forgiveness for the appearance of that phantom which should never have
come forth from out that chaotic hell which had engendered it.
“Armand!” she cried.
And the loving arms that had guided his baby footsteps long ago, the
tender hands that had wiped his boyish tears, were stretched out with
unalterable love toward him.
“I have a message for you, dear,” she said gently--“a letter from him.
Mademoiselle Jeanne allowed me to wait here for you until you came.”
Silently, like a little shy mouse, Jeanne had slipped out of the room.
Her pure love for Armand had ennobled every one of her thoughts, and her
innate kindliness and refinement had already suggested that brother
and sister would wish to be alone. At the door she had turned and met
Armand’s look. That look had satisfied her; she felt that in it she
had read the expression of his love, and to it she had responded with a
glance that spoke of hope for a future meeting.
As soon as the door had closed on Jeanne Lange, Armand, with an impulse
that refused to be checked, threw himself into his sister’s arms. The
present, with all its sorrows, its remorse and its shame, had sunk away;
only the past remained--the unforgettable past, when Marguerite
was “little mother”--the soother, the comforter, the healer, the
ever-willing receptacle wherein he had been wont to pour the burden of
his childish griefs, of his boyish escapades.
Conscious that she could not know everything--not yet, at any rate--he
gave himself over to the rapture of this pure embrace, the last
time, mayhap, that those fond arms would close round him in unmixed
tenderness, the last time that those fond lips would murmur words of
affection and of comfort.
To-morrow those same lips would, perhaps, curse the traitor, and the
small hand be raised in wrath, pointing an avenging finger on the Judas.
“Little mother,” he whispered, babbling like a child, “it is good to see
you again.”
“And I have brought you a message from Percy,” she said, “a letter which
he begged me to give you as soon as may be.”
“You have seen him?” he asked.
She nodded silently, unable to speak. Not now, not when her nerves were
strung to breaking pitch, would she trust herself to speak of that awful
yesterday. She groped in the folds of her gown and took the packet which
Percy had given her for Armand. It felt quite bulky in her hand.
“There is quite a good deal there for you to read, dear,” she said.
“Percy begged me to give you this, and then to let you read it when you
were alone.”
She pressed the packet into his hand. Armand’s face was ashen pale. He
clung to her with strange, nervous tenacity; the paper which he held in
one hand seemed to sear his fingers as with a branding-iron.
“I will slip away now,” she said, for strangely enough since Percy’s
message had been in Armand’s hands she was once again conscious of
that awful feeling of iciness round her heart, a sense of numbness that
paralysed her very thoughts.
“You will make my excuses to Mademoiselle Lange,” she said, trying to
smile. “When you have read, you will wish to see her alone.”
Gently she disengaged herself from Armand’s grasp and made for the door.
He appeared dazed, staring down at that paper which was scorching his
fingers. Only when her hand was on the latch did he seem to realise that
she was going.
“Little mother,” came involuntarily to his lips.
She came straight back to him and took both his wrists in her small
hands. She was taller than he, and his head was slightly bent forward.
Thus she towered over him, loving but strong, her great, earnest eyes
searching his soul.
“When shall I see you again, little mother?” he asked.
“Read your letter, dear,” she replied, “and when you have read it, if
you care to impart its contents to me, come to-night to my lodgings,
Quai de la Ferraille, above the saddler’s shop. But if there is aught
in it that you do not wish me to know, then do not come; I shall
understand. Good-bye, dear.”
She took his head between her two cold hands, and as it was still bowed
she placed a tender kiss, as of a long farewell, upon his hair.
Then she went out of the room.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE LETTER
Armand sat in the armchair in front of the fire. His head rested against
one hand; in the other he held the letter written by the friend whom he
had betrayed.
Twice he had read it now, and already was every word of that minute,
clear writing graven upon the innermost fibres of his body, upon the
most secret cells of his brain.
Armand, I know. I knew even before Chauvelin came to me, and stood there
hoping to gloat over the soul-agony a man who finds that he has been
betrayed by his dearest friend. But that d--d reprobate did not get
that satisfaction, for I was prepared. Not only do I know, Armand, but
I UNDERSTAND. I, who do not know what love is, have realised how small a
thing is honour, loyalty, or friendship when weighed in the balance of a
loved one’s need.
To save Jeanne you sold me to Heron and his crowd. We are men, Armand,
and the word forgiveness has only been spoken once these past two
thousand years, and then it was spoken by Divine lips. But Marguerite
loves you, and mayhap soon you will be all that is left her to love
on this earth. Because of this she must never know.... As for you,
Armand--well, God help you! But meseems that the hell which you are
enduring now is ten thousand times worse than mine. I have heard your
furtive footsteps in the corridor outside the grated window of this
cell, and would not then have exchanged my hell for yours. Therefore,
Armand, and because Marguerite loves you, I would wish to turn to you in
the hour that I need help. I am in a tight corner, but the hour may
come when a comrade’s hand might mean life to me. I have thought of you,
Armand partly because having taken more than my life, your own belongs
to me, and partly because the plan which I have in my mind will carry
with it grave risks for the man who stands by me.
I swore once that never would I risk a comrade’s life to save mine own;
but matters are so different now... we are both in hell, Armand, and I
in striving to get out of mine will be showing you a way out of yours.
Will you retake possession of your lodgings in the Rue de la Croix
Blanche? I should always know then where to find you in an emergency.
But if at any time you receive another letter from me, be its contents
what they may, act in accordance with the letter, and send a copy of
it at once to Ffoulkes or to Marguerite. Keep in close touch with them
both. Tell her I so far forgave your disobedience (there was nothing
more) that I may yet trust my life and mine honour in your hands.
I shall have no means of ascertaining definitely whether you will do all
that I ask; but somehow, Armand, I know that you will.
For the third time Armand read the letter through.
“But, Armand,” he repeated, murmuring the words softly under his
breath, “I know that you will.”
Prompted by some indefinable instinct, moved by a force that compelled,
he allowed himself to glide from the chair on to the floor, on to his
knees.
All the pent-up bitterness, the humiliation, the shame of the past few
days, surged up from his heart to his lips in one great cry of pain.
“My God!” he whispered, “give me the chance of giving my life for him.”
Alone and unwatched, he gave himself over for a few moments to the
almost voluptuous delight of giving free rein to his grief. The hot
Latin blood in him, tempestuous in all its passions, was firing his
heart and brain now with the glow of devotion and of self-sacrifice.
The calm, self-centred Anglo-Saxon temperament--the almost fatalistic
acceptance of failure without reproach yet without despair, which
Percy’s letter to him had evidenced in so marked a manner--was, mayhap,
somewhat beyond the comprehension of this young enthusiast, with pure
Gallic blood in his veins, who was ever wont to allow his most
elemental passions to sway his actions. But though he did not altogether
understand, Armand St. Just could fully appreciate. All that was noble
and loyal in him rose triumphant from beneath the devastating ashes of
his own shame.
Soon his mood calmed down, his look grew less wan and haggard. Hearing
Jeanne’s discreet and mouselike steps in the next room, he rose quickly
and hid the letter in the pocket of his coat.
She came in and inquired anxiously about Marguerite; a hurriedly
expressed excuse from him, however, satisfied her easily enough. She
wanted to be alone with Armand, happy to see that he held his head more
erect to-day, and that the look as of a hunted creature had entirely
gone from his eyes.
She ascribed this happy change to Marguerite, finding it in her heart to
be grateful to the sister for having accomplished what the fiancee had
failed to do.
For awhile they remained together, sitting side by side, speaking
at times, but mostly silent, seeming to savour the return of truant
happiness. Armand felt like a sick man who has obtained a sudden
surcease from pain. He looked round him with a kind of melancholy
delight on this room which he had entered for the first time less than a
fortnight ago, and which already was so full of memories.
Those first hours spent at the feet of Jeanne Lange, how exquisite they
had been, how fleeting in the perfection of their happiness! Now they
seemed to belong to a far distant past, evanescent like the perfume
of violets, swift in their flight like the winged steps of youth.
Blakeney’s letter had effectually taken the bitter sting from out
his remorse, but it had increased his already over-heavy load of
inconsolable sorrow.
Later in the day he turned his footsteps in the direction of the river,
to the house in the Quai de la Ferraille above the saddler’s shop.
Marguerite had returned alone from the expedition to the Rue de
Charonne. Whilst Sir Andrew took charge of the little party of fugitives
and escorted them out of Paris, she came back to her lodgings in order
to collect her belongings, preparatory to taking up her quarters in the
house of Lucas, the old-clothes dealer. She returned also because she
hoped to see Armand.
“If you care to impart the contents of the letter to me, come to my
lodgings to-night,” she had said.
All day a phantom had haunted her, the phantom of an agonising
suspicion.
But now the phantom had vanished never to return. Armand was sitting
close beside her, and he told her that the chief had selected him
amongst all the others to stand by him inside the walls of Paris until
the last.
“I shall mayhap,” thus closed that precious document, “have no means
of ascertaining definitely whether you will act in accordance with this
letter. But somehow, Armand, I know that you will.”
“I know that you will, Armand,” reiterated Marguerite fervently.
She had only been too eager to be convinced; the dread and dark
suspicion which had been like a hideous poisoned sting had only vaguely
touched her soul; it had not gone in very deeply. How could it, when in
its death-dealing passage it encountered the rampart of tender, almost
motherly love?
Armand, trying to read his sister’s thoughts in the depths of her blue
eyes, found the look in them limpid and clear. Percy’s message to Armand
had reassured her just as he had intended that it should do. Fate had
dealt over harshly with her as it was, and Blakeney’s remorse for the
sorrow which he had already caused her, was scarcely less keen than
Armand’s. He did not wish her to bear the intolerable burden of hatred
against her brother; and by binding St. Just close to him at the
supreme hour of danger he hoped to prove to the woman whom he loved so
passionately that Armand was worthy of trust.
PART III.
CHAPTER XXXV. THE LAST PHASE
“Well? How is it now?”
“The last phase, I think.”
“He will yield?”
“He must.”
“Bah! you have said it yourself often enough; those English are tough.”
“It takes time to hack them to pieces, perhaps. In this case even you,
citizen Chauvelin, said that it would take time. Well, it has taken just
seventeen days, and now the end is in sight.”
It was close on midnight in the guard-room which gave on the innermost
cell of the Conciergerie. Heron had just visited the prisoner as was
his wont at this hour of the night. He had watched the changing of the
guard, inspected the night-watch, questioned the sergeant in charge, and
finally he had been on the point of retiring to his own new quarters
in the house of Justice, in the near vicinity of the Conciergerie, when
citizen Chauvelin entered the guard-room unexpectedly and detained his
colleague with the peremptory question:
“How is it now?”
“If you are so near the end, citizen Heron,” he now said, sinking his
voice to a whisper, “why not make a final effort and end it to-night?”
“I wish I could; the anxiety is wearing me out more’n him,” he added with a
jerky movement of the head in direction of the inner cell.
“Shall I try?” rejoined Chauvelin grimly.
“Yes, an you wish.”
Citizen Heron’s long limbs were sprawling on a guard-room chair. In this
low narrow room he looked like some giant whose body had been carelessly
and loosely put together by a ‘prentice hand in the art of manufacture.
His broad shoulders were bent, probably under the weight of anxiety
to which he had referred, and his head, with the lank, shaggy hair
overshadowing the brow, was sunk deep down on his chest.
Chauvelin looked on his friend and associate with no small measure
of contempt. He would no doubt have preferred to conclude the present
difficult transaction entirely in his own way and alone; but equally
there was no doubt that the Committee of Public Safety did not trust
him quite so fully as it used to do before the fiasco at Calais and the
blunders of Boulogne. Heron, on the other hand, enjoyed to its outermost
the confidence of his colleagues; his ferocious cruelty and his
callousness were well known, whilst physically, owing to his great
height and bulky if loosely knit frame, he had a decided advantage over
his trim and slender friend.
As far as the bringing of prisoners to trial was concerned, the chief
agent of the Committee of General Security had been given a perfectly
free hand by the decree of the 27th Nivose. At first, therefore, he
had experienced no difficulty when he desired to keep the Englishman in
close confinement for a time without hurrying on that summary trial and
condemnation which the populace had loudly demanded, and to which they
felt that they were entitled to as a public holiday. The death of the
Scarlet Pimpernel on the guillotine had been a spectacle promised by
every demagogue who desired to purchase a few votes by holding out
visions of pleasant doings to come; and during the first few days the
mob of Paris was content to enjoy the delights of expectation.
But now seventeen days had gone by and still the Englishman was not
being brought to trial. The pleasure-loving public was waxing impatient,
and earlier this evening, when citizen Heron had shown himself in the
stalls of the national theatre, he was greeted by a crowded audience
with decided expressions of disapproval and open mutterings of:
“What of the Scarlet Pimpernel?”
It almost looked as if he would have to bring that accursed Englishman
to the guillotine without having wrested from him the secret which he
would have given a fortune to possess. Chauvelin, who had also been
present at the theatre, had heard the expressions of discontent; hence
his visit to his colleague at this late hour of the night.
“Shall I try?” he had queried with some impatience, and a deep sigh of
satisfaction escaped his thin lips when the chief agent, wearied and
discouraged, had reluctantly agreed.
“Let the men make as much noise as they like,” he added with an
enigmatical smile. “The Englishman and I will want an accompaniment to
our pleasant conversation.”
Heron growled a surly assent, and without another word Chauvelin turned
towards the inner cell. As he stepped in he allowed the iron bar to fall
into its socket behind him. Then he went farther into the room until the
distant recess was fully revealed to him. His tread had been furtive and
almost noiseless. Now he paused, for he had caught sight of the prisoner.
For a moment he stood quite still, with hands clasped behind his back in
his wonted attitude--still save for a strange, involuntary twitching
of his mouth, and the nervous clasping and interlocking of his fingers
behind his back. He was savouring to its utmost fulsomeness the
supremest joy which animal man can ever know--the joy of looking on a
fallen enemy.
Blakeney sat at the table with one arm resting on it, the emaciated
hand tightly clutched, the body leaning forward, the eyes looking into
nothingness.
For the moment he was unconscious of Chauvelin’s presence, and the
latter could gaze on him to the full content of his heart.
Indeed, to all outward appearances there sat a man whom privations of
every sort and kind, the want of fresh air, of proper food, above all,
of rest, had worn down physically to a shadow. There was not a particle
of colour in cheeks or lips, the skin was grey in hue, the eyes looked
like deep caverns, wherein the glow of fever was all that was left of
life.
Chauvelin looked on in silence, vaguely stirred by something that
he could not define, something that right through his triumphant
satisfaction, his hatred and final certainty of revenge, had roused in
him a sense almost of admiration.
He gazed on the noiseless figure of the man who had endured so much for
an ideal, and as he gazed it seemed to him as if the spirit no longer
dwelt in the body, but hovered round in the dank, stuffy air of the
narrow cell above the head of the lonely prisoner, crowning it with
glory that was no longer of this earth.
Of this the looker-on was conscious despite himself, of that and of the
fact that stare as he might, and with perception rendered doubly keen
by hate, he could not, in spite of all, find the least trace of mental
weakness in that far-seeing gaze which seemed to pierce the prison
walls, nor could he see that bodily weakness had tended to subdue the
ruling passions.
Sir Percy Blakeney--a prisoner since seventeen days in close, solitary
confinement, half-starved, deprived of rest, and of that mental and
physical activity which had been the very essence of life to him
hitherto--might be outwardly but a shadow of his former brilliant self,
but nevertheless he was still that same elegant English gentleman, that
prince of dandies whom Chauvelin had first met eighteen months ago at
the most courtly Court in Europe. His clothes, despite constant wear
and the want of attention from a scrupulous valet, still betrayed the
perfection of London tailoring; he had put them on with meticulous care,
they were free from the slightest particle of dust, and the filmy folds
of priceless Mechlin still half-veiled the delicate whiteness of his
shapely hands.
And in the pale, haggard face, in the whole pose of body and of arm,
there was still the expression of that indomitable strength of will,
that reckless daring, that almost insolent challenge to Fate; it was
there untamed, uncrushed. Chauvelin himself could not deny to himself
its presence or its force. He felt that behind that smooth brow, which
looked waxlike now, the mind was still alert, scheming, plotting,
striving for freedom, for conquest and for power, and rendered even
doubly keen and virile by the ardour of supreme self-sacrifice.
Chauvelin now made a slight movement and suddenly Blakeney became
conscious of his presence, and swift as a flash a smile lit up his wan
face.
“Why! if it is not my engaging friend Monsieur Chambertin,” he said
gaily.
He rose and stepped forward in the most approved fashion prescribed by
the elaborate etiquette of the time. But Chauvelin smiled grimly and a
look of almost animal lust gleamed in his pale eyes, for he had noted
that as he rose Sir Percy had to seek the support of the table, even
whilst a dull film appeared to gather over his eyes.
The gesture had been quick and cleverly disguised, but it had been there
nevertheless--that and the livid hue that overspread the face as if
consciousness was threatening to go. All of which was sufficient still
further to assure the looker-on that that mighty physical strength was
giving way at last, that strength which he had hated in his enemy almost
as much as he had hated the thinly veiled insolence of his manner.
“And what procures me, sir, the honour of your visit?” continued
Blakeney, who had--at any rate, outwardly soon recovered himself, and
whose voice, though distinctly hoarse and spent, rang quite cheerfully
across the dank narrow cell.
“My desire for your welfare, Sir Percy,” replied Chauvelin with equal
pleasantry.
“La, sir; but have you not gratified that desire already, to an extent
which leaves no room for further solicitude? But I pray you, will you
not sit down?” he continued, turning back toward the table. “I was about
to partake of the lavish supper which your friends have provided for me.
Will you not share it, sir? You are most royally welcome, and it will
mayhap remind you of that supper we shared together in Calais, eh? when
you, Monsieur Chambertin, were temporarily in holy orders.”
He laughed, offering his enemy a chair, and pointed with inviting
gesture to the hunk of brown bread and the mug of water which stood on
the table.
“Such as it is, sir,” he said with a pleasant smile, “it is yours to
command.”
Chauvelin sat down. He held his lower lip tightly between his teeth, so
tightly that a few drops of blood appeared upon its narrow surface. He
was making vigorous efforts to keep his temper under control, for he
would not give his enemy the satisfaction of seeing him resent his
insolence. He could afford to keep calm now that victory was at last
in sight, now that he knew that he had but to raise a finger, and those
smiling, impudent lips would be closed forever at last.
“Sir Percy,” he resumed quietly, “no doubt it affords you a certain
amount of pleasure to aim your sarcastic shafts at me. I will not
begrudge you that pleasure; in your present position, sir, your shafts
have little or no sting.”
“And I shall have but few chances left to aim them at your charming
self,” interposed Blakeney, who had drawn another chair close to the
table and was now sitting opposite his enemy, with the light of the lamp
falling full on his own face, as if he wished his enemy to know that he
had nothing to hide, no thought, no hope, no fear.
“Exactly,” said Chauvelin dryly. “That being the case, Sir Percy, what
say you to no longer wasting the few chances which are left to you for
safety? The time is getting on. You are not, I imagine, quite as hopeful
as you were even a week ago,... you have never been over-comfortable in
this cell, why not end this unpleasant state of affairs now--once and
for all? You’ll not have cause to regret it. My word on it.”
Sir Percy leaned back in his chair. He yawned loudly and ostentatiously.
“I pray you, sir, forgive me,” he said. “Never have I been so d--d
fatigued. I have not slept for more than a fortnight.”
“Exactly, Sir Percy. A night’s rest would do you a world of good.”
“A night, sir?” exclaimed Blakeney with what seemed like an echo of his
former inimitable laugh. “La! I should want a week.”
“I am afraid we could not arrange for that, but one night would greatly
refresh you.”
“You are right, sir, you are right; but those d--d fellows in the next
room make so much noise.”
“I would give strict orders that perfect quietude reigned in the
guard-room this night,” said Chauvelin, murmuring softly, and there
was a gentle purr in his voice, “and that you were left undisturbed for
several hours. I would give orders that a comforting supper be served to
you at once, and that everything be done to minister to your wants.”
“That sounds d--d alluring, sir. Why did you not suggest this before?”
“You were so--what shall I say--so obstinate, Sir Percy?”
“Call it pig-headed, my dear Monsieur Chambertin,” retorted Blakeney
gaily, “truly you would oblige me.”
“In any case you, sir, were acting in direct opposition to your own
interests.”
“Therefore you came,” concluded Blakeney airily, “like the good
Samaritan to take compassion on me and my troubles, and to lead me
straight away to comfort, a good supper and a downy bed.”
“Admirably put, Sir Percy,” said Chauvelin blandly; “that is exactly my
mission.”
“How will you set to work, Monsieur Chambertin?”
“Quite easily, if you, Sir Percy, will yield to the persuasion of my
friend citizen Heron.”
“Ah!”
“Why, yes! He is anxious to know where little Capet is. A reasonable
whim, you will own, considering that the disappearance of the child is
causing him grave anxiety.”
“And you, Monsieur Chambertin?” queried Sir Percy with that suspicion of
insolence in his manner which had the power to irritate his enemy even
now. “And yourself, sir; what are your wishes in the matter?”
“Mine, Sir Percy?” retorted Chauvelin. “Mine? Why, to tell you the
truth, the fate of little Capet interests me but little. Let him rot in
Austria or in our prisons, I care not which. He’ll never trouble France
overmuch, I imagine. The teachings of old Simon will not tend to make a
leader or a king out of the puny brat whom you chose to drag out of our
keeping. My wishes, sir, are the annihilation of your accursed League,
and the lasting disgrace, if not the death, of its chief.”
He had spoken more hotly than he had intended, but all the pent-up
rage of the past eighteen months, the recollections of Calais and of
Boulogne, had all surged up again in his mind, because despite the
closeness of these prison walls, despite the grim shadow of starvation
and of death that beckoned so close at hand, he still encountered a pair
of mocking eyes, fixed with relentless insolence upon him.
Whilst he spoke Blakeney had once more leaned forward, resting his
elbows upon the table. Now he drew nearer to him the wooden platter
on which reposed that very uninviting piece of dry bread. With solemn
intentness he proceeded to break the bread into pieces; then he offered
the platter to Chauvelin.
“I am sorry,” he said pleasantly, “that I cannot offer you more dainty fare,
sir, but this is all that your friends have supplied me with to-day.”
He crumbled some of the dry bread in his slender fingers, then started
munching the crumbs with apparent relish. He poured out some water into
the mug and drank it. Then he said with a light laugh:
“Even the vinegar which that ruffian Brogard served us at Calais was
preferable to this, do you not imagine so, my good Monsieur Chambertin?”
Chauvelin made no reply. Like a feline creature on the prowl, he was
watching the prey that had so nearly succumbed to his talons. Blakeney’s
face now was positively ghastly. The effort to speak, to laugh, to
appear unconcerned, was apparently beyond his strength. His cheeks and
lips were livid in hue, the skin clung like a thin layer of wax to the
bones of cheek and jaw, and the heavy lids that fell over the eyes had
purple patches on them like lead.
To a system in such an advanced state of exhaustion the stale water and
dusty bread must have been terribly nauseating, and Chauvelin himself
callous and thirsting for vengeance though he was, could hardly bear to
look calmly on the martyrdom of this man whom he and his colleagues were
torturing in order to gain their own ends.
An ashen hue, which seemed like the shadow of the hand of death, passed
over the prisoner’s face. Chauvelin felt compelled to avert his gaze. A
feeling that was almost akin to remorse had stirred a hidden chord in his
heart. The feeling did not last--the heart had been too long atrophied
by the constantly recurring spectacles of cruelties, massacres, and
wholesale hecatombs perpetrated in the past eighteen months in the name
of liberty and fraternity to be capable of a sustained effort in
the direction of gentleness or of pity. Any noble instinct in these
revolutionaries had long ago been drowned in a whirlpool of exploits
that would forever sully the records of humanity; and this keeping of
a fellow-creature on the rack in order to wring from him a Judas-like
betrayal was but a complement to a record of infamy that had ceased by
its very magnitude to weigh upon their souls.
Chauvelin was in no way different from his colleagues; the crimes in
which he had had no hand he had condoned by continuing to serve the
Government that had committed them, and his ferocity in the present case
was increased a thousandfold by his personal hatred for the man who had
so often fooled and baffled him.
When he looked round a second or two later that ephemeral fit of remorse
did its final vanishing; he had once more encountered the pleasant
smile, the laughing if ashen-pale face of his unconquered foe.
“Only a passing giddiness, my dear sir,” said Sir Percy lightly. “As you
were saying--”
At the airily-spoken words, at the smile that accompanied them,
Chauvelin had jumped to his feet. There was something almost
supernatural, weird, and impish about the present situation, about this
dying man who, like an impudent schoolboy, seemed to be mocking Death
with his tongue in his cheek, about his laugh that appeared to find its
echo in a widely yawning grave.
“In the name of God, Sir Percy,” he said roughly, as he brought
his clenched fist crashing down upon the table, “this situation is
intolerable. Bring it to an end to-night!”
“Why, sir?” retorted Blakeney, “methought you and your kind did not
believe in God.”
“No. But you English do.”
“We do. But we do not care to hear His name on your lips.”
“Then in the name of the wife whom you love--”
But even before the words had died upon his lips, Sir Percy, too, had
risen to his feet.
“Have done, man--have done,” he broke in hoarsely, and despite weakness,
despite exhaustion and weariness, there was such a dangerous look in
his hollow eyes as he leaned across the table that Chauvelin drew back a
step or two, and--vaguely fearful--looked furtively towards the opening
into the guard-room. “Have done,” he reiterated for the third time; “do
not name her, or by the living God whom you dared to invoke I’ll find
strength yet to smite you in the face.”
But Chauvelin, after that first moment of almost superstitious fear, had
quickly recovered his sang-froid.
“Little Capet, Sir Percy,” he said, meeting the other’s threatening
glance with an imperturbable smile, “tell me where to find him, and
you may yet live to savour the caresses of the most beautiful woman in
England.”
He had meant it as a taunt, the final turn of the thumb-screw applied to
a dying man, and he had in that watchful, keen mind of his well weighed
the full consequences of the taunt.
The next moment he had paid to the full the anticipated price. Sir Percy
had picked up the pewter mug from the table--it was half-filled with
brackish water--and with a hand that trembled but slightly he hurled it
straight at his opponent’s face.
The heavy mug did not hit citizen Chauvelin; it went crashing against
the stone wall opposite. But the water was trickling from the top of his
head all down his eyes and cheeks. He shrugged his shoulders with a look
of benign indulgence directed at his enemy, who had fallen back into his
chair exhausted with the effort.
Then he took out his handkerchief and calmly wiped the water from his
face.
“Not quite so straight a shot as you used to be, Sir Percy,” he said
mockingly.
“No, sir--apparently--not.”
The words came out in gasps. He was like a man only partly conscious.
The lips were parted, the eyes closed, the head leaning against the high
back of the chair. For the space of one second Chauvelin feared that his
zeal had outrun his prudence, that he had dealt a death-blow to a man
in the last stage of exhaustion, where he had only wished to fan the
flickering flame of life. Hastily--for the seconds seemed precious--he
ran to the opening that led into the guard-room.
“Brandy--quick!” he cried.
Heron looked up, roused from the semi-somnolence in which he had lain
for the past half-hour. He disentangled his long limbs from out the
guard-room chair.
“Eh?” he queried. “What is it?”
“Brandy,” reiterated Chauvelin impatiently; “the prisoner has fainted.”
“Bah!” retorted the other with a callous shrug of the shoulders, “you
are not going to revive him with brandy, I imagine.”
“No. But you will, citizen Heron,” rejoined the other dryly, “for if you
do not he’ll be dead in an hour!”
“Devils in hell!” exclaimed Heron, “you have not killed him? You--you
d--d fool!”
He was wide awake enough now; wide awake and shaking with fury. Almost
foaming at the mouth and uttering volleys of the choicest oaths, he
elbowed his way roughly through the groups of soldiers who were crowding
round the centre table of the guard-room, smoking and throwing dice or
playing cards. They made way for him as hurriedly as they could, for it
was not safe to thwart the citizen agent when he was in a rage.
Heron walked across to the opening and lifted the iron bar. With scant
ceremony he pushed his colleague aside and strode into the cell, whilst
Chauvelin, seemingly not resenting the other’s ruffianly manners and
violent language, followed close upon his heel.
In the centre of the room both men paused, and Heron turned with a surly
growl to his friend.
“You vowed he would be dead in an hour,” he said reproachfully.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
“It does not look like it now certainly,” he said dryly.
Blakeney was sitting--as was his wont--close to the table, with one arm
leaning on it, the other, tightly clenched, resting upon his knee. A
ghost of a smile hovered round his lips.
“Not in an hour, citizen Heron,” he said, and his voice flow was scarce
above a whisper, “nor yet in two.”
“You are a fool, man,” said Heron roughly. “You have had seventeen days
of this. Are you not sick of it?”
“Heartily, my dear friend,” replied Blakeney a little more firmly.
“Seventeen days,” reiterated the other, nodding his shaggy head; “you
came here on the 2nd of Pluviose, today is the 19th.”
“The 19th Pluviose?” interposed Sir Percy, and a strange gleam suddenly
flashed in his eyes. “Demn it, sir, and in Christian parlance what may
that day be?”
“The 7th of February at your service, Sir Percy,” replied Chauvelin
quietly.
“I thank you, sir. In this d--d hole I had lost count of time.”
Chauvelin, unlike his rough and blundering colleague, had been watching
the prisoner very closely for the last moment or two, conscious of a
subtle, undefinable change that had come over the man during those
few seconds while he, Chauvelin, had thought him dying. The pose was
certainly the old familiar one, the head erect, the hand clenched, the
eyes looking through and beyond the stone walls; but there was an air
of listlessness in the stoop of the shoulders, and--except for that one
brief gleam just now--a look of more complete weariness round the hollow
eyes! To the keen watcher it appeared as if that sense of living power,
of unconquered will and defiant mind was no longer there, and as if he
himself need no longer fear that almost supersensual thrill which had a
while ago kindled in him a vague sense of admiration--almost of remorse.
Even as he gazed, Blakeney slowly turned his eyes full upon him.
Chauvelin’s heart gave a triumphant bound.
With a mocking smile he met the wearied look, the pitiable appeal. His
turn had come at last--his turn to mock and to exult. He knew that what
he was watching now was no longer the last phase of a long and noble
martyrdom; it was the end--the inevitable end--that for which he had
schemed and striven, for which he had schooled his heart to ferocity
and callousness that were devilish in their intensity. It was the end
indeed, the slow descent of a soul from the giddy heights of attempted
self-sacrifice, where it had striven to soar for a time, until the body
and the will both succumbed together and dragged it down with them into
the abyss of submission and of irreparable shame.
CHAPTER XXXVI. SUBMISSION
Silence reigned in the narrow cell for a few moments, whilst two human
jackals stood motionless over their captured prey.
A savage triumph gleamed in Chauvelin’s eyes, and even Heron, dull and
brutal though he was, had become vaguely conscious of the great change
that had come over the prisoner.
Blakeney, with a gesture and a sigh of hopeless exhaustion had once
more rested both his elbows on the table; his head fell heavy and almost
lifeless downward in his arms.
“Curse you, man!” cried Heron almost involuntarily. “Why in the name of
hell did you wait so long?”
Then, as the prisoner made no reply, but only raised his head slightly,
and looked on the other two men with dulled, wearied eyes, Chauvelin
interposed calmly:
“More than a fortnight has been wasted in useless obstinacy, Sir Percy.
Fortunately it is not too late.”
“Capet?” said Heron hoarsely, “tell us, where is Capet?”
He leaned across the table, his eyes were bloodshot with the keenness
of his excitement, his voice shook with the passionate desire for the
crowning triumph.
“If you’ll only not worry me,” murmured the prisoner; and the whisper
came so laboriously and so low that both men were forced to bend their
ears close to the scarcely moving lips; “if you will let me sleep and
rest, and leave me in peace--”
“The peace of the grave, man,” retorted Chauvelin roughly; “if you will
only speak. Where is Capet?”
“I cannot tell you; the way is long, the road--intricate.”
“Bah!”
“I’ll lead you to him, if you will give me rest.”
“We don’t want you to lead us anywhere,” growled Heron with a smothered
curse; “tell us where Capet is; we’ll find him right enough.”
“I cannot explain; the way is intricate; the place off the beaten track,
unknown except to me and my friends.”
Once more that shadow, which was so like the passing of the hand of
Death, overspread the prisoner’s face; his head rolled back against the
chair.
“He’ll die before he can speak,” muttered Chauvelin under his breath.
“You usually are well provided with brandy, citizen Heron.”
The latter no longer demurred. He saw the danger as clearly as did his
colleague. It had been hell’s own luck if the prisoner were to die now
when he seemed ready to give in. He produced a flask from the pocket of
his coat, and this he held to Blakeney’s lips.
“Beastly stuff,” murmured the latter feebly. “I think I’d sooner
faint--than drink.”
“Capet? where is Capet?” reiterated Heron impatiently.
“One--two--three hundred leagues from here. I must let one of my friends
know; he’ll communicate with the others; they must be prepared,” replied
the prisoner slowly.
Heron uttered a blasphemous oath.
“Where is Capet? Tell us where Capet is, or--”
He was like a raging tiger that had thought to hold its prey and
suddenly realised that it was being snatched from him. He raised his
fist, and without doubt the next moment he would have silenced forever
the lips that held the precious secret, but Chauvelin fortunately was
quick enough to seize his wrist.
“Have a care, citizen,” he said peremptorily; “have a care! You called
me a fool just now when you thought I had killed the prisoner. It is his
secret we want first; his death can follow afterwards.”
“Yes, but not in this d--d hole,” murmured Blakeney.
“On the guillotine if you’ll speak,” cried Heron, whose exasperation was
getting the better of his self-interest, “but if you’ll not speak then
it shall be starvation in this hole--yes, starvation,” he growled,
showing a row of large and uneven teeth like those of some mongrel cur,
“for I’ll have that door walled in to-night, and not another living soul
shall cross this threshold again until your flesh has rotted on your
bones and the rats have had their fill of you.”
The prisoner raised his head slowly, a shiver shook him as if caused by
ague, and his eyes, that appeared almost sightless, now looked with a
strange glance of horror on his enemy.
“I’ll die in the open,” he whispered, “not in this d--d hole.”
“Then tell us where Capet is.”
“I cannot; I wish to God I could. But I’ll take you to him, I swear I
will. I’ll make my friends give him up to you. Do you think that I would
not tell you now, if I could.”
Heron, whose every instinct of tyranny revolted against this thwarting
of his will, would have continued to heckle the prisoner even now, had
not Chauvelin suddenly interposed with an authoritative gesture.
“You’ll gain nothing this way, citizen,” he said quietly; “the man’s
mind is wandering; he is probably quite unable to give you clear
directions at this moment.”
“What am I to do, then?” muttered the other roughly.
“He cannot live another twenty-four hours now, and would only grow more
and more helpless as time went on.”
“Unless you relax your strict regime with him.”
“And if I do we’ll only prolong this situation indefinitely; and in the
meanwhile how do we know that the brat is not being spirited away out of
the country?”
The prisoner, with his head once more buried in his arms, had fallen
into a kind of torpor, the only kind of sleep that the exhausted system
would allow. With a brutal gesture Heron shook him by the shoulder.
“He,” he shouted, “none of that, you know. We have not settled the
matter of young Capet yet.”
Then, as the prisoner made no movement, and the chief agent indulged
in one of his favourite volleys of oaths, Chauvelin placed a peremptory
hand on his colleague’s shoulder.
“I tell you, citizen, that this is no use,” he said firmly. “Unless you
are prepared to give up all thoughts of finding Capet, you must try and
curb your temper, and try diplomacy where force is sure to fail.”
“Diplomacy?” retorted the other with a sneer. “Bah! it served you well
at Boulogne last autumn, did it not, citizen Chauvelin?”
“It has served me better now,” rejoined the other imperturbably. “You
will own, citizen, that it is my diplomacy which has placed within your
reach the ultimate hope of finding Capet.”
“H’m!” muttered the other, “you advised us to starve the prisoner. Are
we any nearer to knowing his secret?”
“Yes. By a fortnight of weariness, of exhaustion and of starvation, you
are nearer to it by the weakness of the man whom in his full strength
you could never hope to conquer.”
“But if the cursed Englishman won’t speak, and in the meanwhile dies on
my hands--”
“He won’t do that if you will accede to his wish. Give him some good
food now, and let him sleep till dawn.”
“And at dawn he’ll defy me again. I believe now that he has some scheme
in his mind, and means to play us a trick.”
“That, I imagine, is more than likely,” retorted Chauvelin dryly;
“though,” he added with a contemptuous nod of the head directed at the
huddled-up figure of his once brilliant enemy, “neither mind nor body
seem to me to be in a sufficiently active state just now for hatching
plot or intrigue; but even if--vaguely floating through his clouded
mind--there has sprung some little scheme for evasion, I give you my
word, citizen Heron, that you can thwart him completely, and gain all
that you desire, if you will only follow my advice.”
There had always been a great amount of persuasive power in citizen
Chauvelin, ex-envoy of the revolutionary Government of France at the
Court of St. James, and that same persuasive eloquence did not fail now
in its effect on the chief agent of the Committee of General Security.
The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague.
Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its
movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy
footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Heron was
more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, irresponsible
fashion, rushes at an obstacle without gauging its resisting powers,
and allows its victim to slip from beneath its weight through the very
clumsiness and brutality of its assault.
Still Chauvelin had two heavy black marks against him--those of his
failures at Calais and Boulogne. Heron, rendered cautious both by the
deadly danger in which he stood and the sense of his own incompetence to
deal with the present situation, tried to resist the other’s authority
as well as his persuasion.
“Your advice was not of great use to citizen Collot last autumn at
Boulogne,” he said, and spat on the ground by way of expressing both his
independence and his contempt.
“Still, citizen Heron,” retorted Chauvelin with unruffled patience, “it
is the best advice that you are likely to get in the present emergency.
You have eyes to see, have you not? Look on your prisoner at this
moment. Unless something is done, and at once, too, he will be past
negotiating with in the next twenty-four hours; then what will follow?”
He put his thin hand once more on his colleague’s grubby coat-sleeve,
he drew him closer to himself away from the vicinity of that huddled
figure, that captive lion, wrapped in a torpid somnolence that looked
already so like the last long sleep.
“What will follow, citizen Heron?” he reiterated, sinking his voice to
a whisper; “sooner or later some meddlesome busybody who sits in the
Assembly of the Convention will get wind that little Capet is no longer
in the Temple prison, that a pauper child was substituted for him, and
that you, citizen Heron, together with the commissaries in charge,
have thus been fooling the nation and its representatives for over a
fortnight. What will follow then, think you?”
And he made an expressive gesture with his outstretched fingers across
his throat.
Heron found no other answer but blasphemy.
“I’ll make that cursed Englishman speak yet,” he said with a fierce
oath.
“You cannot,” retorted Chauvelin decisively. “In his present state he is
incapable of it, even if he would, which also is doubtful.”
“Ah! then you do think that he still means to cheat us?”
“Yes, I do. But I also know that he is no longer in a physical state
to do it. No doubt he thinks that he is. A man of that type is sure to
overvalue his own strength; but look at him, citizen Heron. Surely you
must see that we have nothing to fear from him now.”
Heron now was like a voracious creature that has two victims lying ready
for his gluttonous jaws. He was loath to let either of them go. He hated
the very thought of seeing the Englishman being led out of this narrow
cell, where he had kept a watchful eye over him night and day for a
fortnight, satisfied that with every day, every hour, the chances of
escape became more improbable and more rare; at the same time there was
the possibility of the recapture of little Capet, a possibility which
made Heron’s brain reel with the delightful vista of it, and which might
never come about if the prisoner remained silent to the end.
“I wish I were quite sure,” he said sullenly, “that you were body and
soul in accord with me.”
“I am in accord with you, citizen Heron,” rejoined the other
earnestly--“body and soul in accord with you. Do you not believe that
I hate this man--aye! hate him with a hatred ten thousand times more
strong than yours? I want his death--Heaven or hell alone know how I
long for that--but what I long for most is his lasting disgrace. For
that I have worked, citizen Heron--for that I advised and helped you.
When first you captured this man you wanted summarily to try him, to
send him to the guillotine amidst the joy of the populace of Paris,
and crowned with a splendid halo of martyrdom. That man, citizen Heron,
would have baffled you, mocked you, and fooled you even on the steps of
the scaffold. In the zenith of his strength and of insurmountable good
luck you and all your myrmidons and all the assembled guard of Paris
would have had no power over him. The day that you led him out of this
cell in order to take him to trial or to the guillotine would have been
that of your hopeless discomfiture. Having once walked out of this cell
hale, hearty and alert, be the escort round him ever so strong, he never
would have re-entered it again. Of that I am as convinced as that I am
alive. I know the man; you don’t. Mine are not the only fingers through
which he has slipped. Ask citizen Collot d’Herbois, ask Sergeant Bibot
at the barrier of Menilmontant, ask General Santerre and his guards.
They all have a tale to tell. Did I believe in God or the devil, I
should also believe that this man has supernatural powers and a host of
demons at his beck and call.”
“Yet you talk now of letting him walk out of this cell to-morrow?”
“He is a different man now, citizen Heron. On my advice you placed
him on a regime that has counteracted the supernatural power by simple
physical exhaustion, and driven to the four winds the host of demons who
no doubt fled in the face of starvation.”
“If only I thought that the recapture of Capet was as vital to you as it
is to me,” said Heron, still unconvinced.
“The capture of Capet is just as vital to me as it is to you,” rejoined
Chauvelin earnestly, “if it is brought about through the instrumentality
of the Englishman.”
He paused, looking intently on his colleague, whose shifty eyes
encountered his own. Thus eye to eye the two men at last understood one
another.
“Ah!” said Heron with a snort, “I think I understand.”
“I am sure that you do,” responded Chauvelin dryly. “The disgrace of
this cursed Scarlet Pimpernel and his League is as vital to me, and
more, as the capture of Capet is to you. That is why I showed you the
way how to bring that meddlesome adventurer to his knees; that is why I
will help you now both to find Capet and with his aid and to wreak what
reprisals you like on him in the end.”
Heron before he spoke again cast one more look on the prisoner. The
latter had not stirred; his face was hidden, but the hands, emaciated,
nerveless and waxen, like those of the dead, told a more eloquent tale,
mayhap, then than the eyes could do. The chief agent of the Committee of
General Security walked deliberately round the table until he stood once
more close beside the man from whom he longed with passionate ardour
to wrest an all-important secret. With brutal, grimy hand he raised the
head that lay, sunken and inert, against the table; with callous eyes he
gazed attentively on the face that was then revealed to him, he looked
on the waxen flesh, the hollow eyes, the bloodless lips; then he
shrugged his wide shoulders, and with a laugh that surely must have
caused joy in hell, he allowed the wearied head to fall back against the
outstretched arms, and turned once again to his colleague.
“I think you are right, citizen Chauvelin,” he said; “there is not much
supernatural power here. Let me hear your advice.”
CHAPTER XXXVII. CHAUVELIN’S ADVICE
Citizen Chauvelin had drawn his colleague with him to the end of the
cell that was farthest away from the recess, and the table at which the
prisoner was sitting.
Here the noise and hubbub that went on constantly in the guard room
would effectually drown a whispered conversation. Chauvelin called to
the sergeant to hand him a couple of chairs over the barrier. These he
placed against the wall opposite the opening, and beckoning Heron to sit
down, he did likewise, placing himself close to his colleague.
From where the two men now sat they could see both into the guard-room
opposite them and into the recess at the furthermost end of the cell.
“First of all,” began Chauvelin after a while, and sinking his voice to
a whisper, “let me understand you thoroughly, citizen Heron. Do you want
the death of the Englishman, either to-day or to-morrow, either in this
prison or on the guillotine? For that now is easy of accomplishment; or
do you want, above all, to get hold of little Capet?”
“It is Capet I want,” growled Heron savagely under his breath. “Capet!
Capet! My own neck is dependent on my finding Capet. Curse you, have I
not told you that clearly enough?”
“You have told it me very clearly, citizen Heron; but I wished to make
assurance doubly sure, and also make you understand that I, too, want
the Englishman to betray little Capet into your hands. I want that more
even than I do his death.”
“Then in the name of hell, citizen, give me your advice.”
“My advice to you, citizen Heron, is this: Give your prisoner now just
a sufficiency of food to revive him--he will have had a few moments’
sleep--and when he has eaten, and, mayhap, drunk a glass of wine, he
will, no doubt, feel a recrudescence of strength, then give him pen and
ink and paper. He must, as he says, write to one of his followers, who,
in his turn, I suppose, will communicate with the others, bidding them
to be prepared to deliver up little Capet to us; the letter must make
it clear to that crowd of English gentlemen that their beloved chief
is giving up the uncrowned King of France to us in exchange for his own
safety. But I think you will agree with me, citizen Heron, that it would
not be over-prudent on our part to allow that same gallant crowd to be
forewarned too soon of the proposed doings of their chief. Therefore,
I think, we’ll explain to the prisoner that his follower, whom he will
first apprise of his intentions, shall start with us to-morrow on our
expedition, and accompany us until its last stage, when, if it is found
necessary, he may be sent on ahead, strongly escorted of course, and
with personal messages from the gallant Scarlet Pimpernel to the members
of his League.”
“What will be the good of that?” broke in Heron viciously. “Do you want
one of his accursed followers to be ready to give him a helping hand on
the way if he tries to slip through our fingers?”
“Patience, patience, my good Heron!” rejoined Chauvelin with a placid
smile. “Hear me out to the end. Time is precious. You shall offer what
criticism you will when I have finished, but not before.”
“Go on, then. I listen.”
“I am not only proposing that one member of the Scarlet Pimpernel League
shall accompany us to-morrow,” continued Chauvelin, “but I would also
force the prisoner’s wife--Marguerite Blakeney--to follow in our train.”
“A woman? Bah! What for?”
“I will tell you the reason of this presently. In her case I should not
let the prisoner know beforehand that she too will form a part of our
expedition. Let this come as a pleasing surprise for him. She could join
us on our way out of Paris.”
“How will you get hold of her?”
“Easily enough. I know where to find her. I traced her myself a few days
ago to a house in the Rue de Charonne, and she is not likely to have
gone away from Paris while her husband was at the Conciergerie. But this
is a digression, let me proceed more consecutively. The letter, as
I have said, being written to-night by the prisoner to one of his
followers, I will myself see that it is delivered into the right hands.
You, citizen Heron, will in the meanwhile make all arrangements for
the journey. We ought to start at dawn, and we ought to be prepared,
especially during the first fifty leagues of the way, against organised
attack in case the Englishman leads us into an ambush.”
“Yes. He might even do that, curse him!” muttered Heron.
“He might, but it is unlikely. Still it is best to be prepared. Take
a strong escort, citizen, say twenty or thirty men, picked and trained
soldiers who would make short work of civilians, however well-armed they
might be. There are twenty members--including the chief--in that Scarlet
Pimpernel League, and I do not quite see how from this cell the prisoner
could organise an ambuscade against us at a given time. Anyhow, that is
a matter for you to decide. I have still to place before you a scheme
which is a measure of safety for ourselves and our men against ambush as
well as against trickery, and which I feel sure you will pronounce quite
adequate.”
“Let me hear it, then!”
“The prisoner will have to travel by coach, of course. You can travel
with him, if you like, and put him in irons, and thus avert all chances
of his escaping on the road. But”--and here Chauvelin made a long pause,
which had the effect of holding his colleague’s attention still more
closely--“remember that we shall have his wife and one of his friends
with us. Before we finally leave Paris tomorrow we will explain to
the prisoner that at the first attempt to escape on his part, at the
slightest suspicion that he has tricked us for his own ends or is
leading us into an ambush--at the slightest suspicion, I say--you,
citizen Heron, will order his friend first, and then Marguerite Blakeney
herself, to be summarily shot before his eyes.”
Heron gave a long, low whistle. Instinctively he threw a furtive,
backward glance at the prisoner, then he raised his shifty eyes to his
colleague.
There was unbounded admiration expressed in them. One blackguard had met
another--a greater one than himself--and was proud to acknowledge him as
his master.
“By Lucifer, citizen Chauvelin,” he said at last, “I should never have
thought of such a thing myself.”
Chauvelin put up his hand with a gesture of self-deprecation.
“I certainly think that measure ought to be adequate,” he said with a
gentle air of assumed modesty, “unless you would prefer to arrest the
woman and lodge her here, keeping her here as an hostage.”
“No, no!” said Heron with a gruff laugh; “that idea does not appeal
to me nearly so much as the other. I should not feel so secure on the
way.... I should always be thinking that that cursed woman had been
allowed to escape.... No! no! I would rather keep her under my own
eye--just as you suggest, citizen Chauvelin... and under the prisoner’s,
too,” he added with a coarse jest. “If he did not actually see her,
he might be more ready to try and save himself at her expense. But, of
course, he could not see her shot before his eyes. It is a perfect plan,
citizen, and does you infinite credit; and if the Englishman tricked
us,” he concluded with a fierce and savage oath, “and we did not find
Capet at the end of the journey, I would gladly strangle his wife and
his friend with my own hands.”
“A satisfaction which I would not begrudge you, citizen,” said Chauvelin
dryly. “Perhaps you are right... the woman had best be kept under your
own eye... the prisoner will never risk her safety on that, I would
stake my life. We’ll deliver our final ‘either--or’ the moment that
she has joined our party, and before we start further on our way. Now,
citizen Heron, you have heard my advice; are you prepared to follow it?”
“To the last letter,” replied the other.
And their two hands met in a grasp of mutual understanding--two hands
already indelibly stained with much innocent blood, more deeply stained
now with seventeen past days of inhumanity and miserable treachery to
come.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. CAPITULATION
What occurred within the inner cell of the Conciergerie prison within
the next half-hour of that 16th day of Pluviose in the year II of the
Republic is, perhaps, too well known to history to need or bear overfull
repetition.
Chroniclers intimate with the inner history of those infamous days have
told us how the chief agent of the Committee of General Security gave
orders one hour after midnight that hot soup, white bread and wine be
served to the prisoner, who for close on fourteen days previously had
been kept on short rations of black bread and water; the sergeant in
charge of the guard-room watch for the night also received strict orders
that that same prisoner was on no account to be disturbed until the hour
of six in the morning, when he was to be served with anything in the way
of breakfast that he might fancy.
All this we know, and also that citizen Heron, having given all
necessary orders for the morning’s expedition, returned to the
Conciergerie, and found his colleague Chauvelin waiting for him in the
guard-room.
“Well?” he asked with febrile impatience--“the prisoner?”
“He seems better and stronger,” replied Chauvelin.
“Not too well, I hope?”
“No, no, only just well enough.”
“You have seen him--since his supper?”
“Only from the doorway. It seems he ate and drank hardly at all, and the
sergeant had some difficulty in keeping him awake until you came.”
“Well, now for the letter,” concluded Heron with the same marked
feverishness of manner which sat so curiously on his uncouth
personality. “Pen, ink and paper, sergeant!” he commanded.
“On the table, in the prisoner’s cell, citizen,” replied the sergeant.
He preceded the two citizens across the guard-room to the doorway, and
raised for them the iron bar, lowering it back after them.
The next moment Heron and Chauvelin were once more face to face with
their prisoner.
Whether by accident or design the lamp had been so placed that as the
two men approached its light fell full upon their faces, while that of
the prisoner remained in shadow. He was leaning forward with both
elbows on the table, his thin, tapering fingers toying with the pen and
ink-horn which had been placed close to his hand.
“I trust that everything has been arranged for your comfort, Sir Percy?”
Chauvelin asked with a sarcastic little smile.
“I thank you, sir,” replied Blakeney politely.
“You feel refreshed, I hope?”
“Greatly so, I assure you. But I am still demmed sleepy; and if you
would kindly be brief--”
“You have not changed your mind, sir?” queried Chauvelin, and a note of
anxiety, which he vainly tried to conceal, quivered in his voice.
“No, my good M. Chambertin,” replied Blakeney with the same urbane
courtesy, “I have not changed my mind.”
A sigh of relief escaped the lips of both the men. The prisoner
certainly had spoken in a clearer and firmer voice; but whatever renewed
strength wine and food had imparted to him he apparently did not mean to
employ in renewed obstinacy. Chauvelin, after a moment’s pause, resumed
more calmly:
“You are prepared to direct us to the place where little Capet lies
hidden?”
“I am prepared to do anything, sir, to get out of this d--d hole.”
“Very well. My colleague, citizen Heron, has arranged for an escort
of twenty men picked from the best regiment of the Garde de Paris to
accompany us--yourself, him and me--to wherever you will direct us. Is
that clear?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“You must not imagine for a moment that we, on the other hand, guarantee
to give you your life and freedom even if this expedition prove
unsuccessful.”
“I would not venture on suggesting such a wild proposition, sir,” said
Blakeney placidly.
Chauvelin looked keenly on him. There was something in the tone of that
voice that he did not altogether like--something that reminded him of an
evening at Calais, and yet again of a day at Boulogne. He could not read
the expression in the eyes, so with a quick gesture he pulled the lamp
forward so that its light now fell full on the face of the prisoner.
“Ah! that is certainly better, is it not, my dear M. Chambertin?” said
Sir Percy, beaming on his adversary with a pleasant smile.
His face, though still of the same ashen hue, looked serene if
hopelessly wearied; the eyes seemed to mock. But this Chauvelin decided
in himself must have been a trick of his own overwrought fancy. After a
brief moment’s pause he resumed dryly:
“If, however, the expedition turns out successful in every way--if
little Capet, without much trouble to our escort, falls safe and sound
into our hands--if certain contingencies which I am about to tell
you all fall out as we wish--then, Sir Percy, I see no reason why the
Government of this country should not exercise its prerogative of mercy
towards you after all.”
“An exercise, my dear M. Chambertin, which must have wearied through
frequent repetition,” retorted Blakeney with the same imperturbable
smile.
“The contingency at present is somewhat remote; when the time comes
we’ll talk this matter over.... I will make no promise... and, anyhow,
we can discuss it later.”
“At present we are but wasting our valuable time over so trifling a
matter.... If you’ll excuse me, sir... I am so demmed fatigued--”
“Then you will be glad to have everything settled quickly, I am sure.”
“Exactly, sir.”
Heron was taking no part in the present conversation. He knew that his
temper was not likely to remain within bounds, and though he had nothing
but contempt for his colleague’s courtly manners, yet vaguely in his
stupid, blundering way he grudgingly admitted that mayhap it was better
to allow citizen Chauvelin to deal with the Englishman. There was always
the danger that if his own violent temper got the better of him, he
might even at this eleventh hour order this insolent prisoner to summary
trial and the guillotine, and thus lose the final chance of the more
important capture.
He was sprawling on a chair in his usual slouching manner with his
big head sunk between his broad shoulders, his shifty, prominent eyes
wandering restlessly from the face of his colleague to that of the other
man.
But now he gave a grunt of impatience.
“We are wasting time, citizen Chauvelin,” he muttered. “I have still
a great deal to see to if we are to start at dawn. Get the d--d letter
written, and--”
The rest of the phrase was lost in an indistinct and surly murmur.
Chauvelin, after a shrug of the shoulders, paid no further heed to him;
he turned, bland and urbane, once more to the prisoner.
“I see with pleasure, Sir Percy,” he said, “that we thoroughly
understand one another. Having had a few hours’ rest you will, I know,
feel quite ready for the expedition. Will you kindly indicate to me the
direction in which we will have to travel?”
“Northwards all the way.”
“Towards the coast?”
“The place to which we must go is about seven leagues from the sea.”
“Our first objective then will be Beauvais, Amiens, Abbeville, Crecy,
and so on?”
“Precisely.”
“As far as the forest of Boulogne, shall we say?”
“Where we shall come off the beaten track, and you will have to trust to
my guidance.”
“We might go there now, Sir Percy, and leave you here.”
“You might. But you would not then find the child. Seven leagues is not
far from the coast. He might slip through your fingers.”
“And my colleague Heron, being disappointed, would inevitably send you
to the guillotine.”
“Quite so,” rejoined the prisoner placidly. “Methought, sir, that we
had decided that I should lead this little expedition? Surely,” he
added, “it is not so much the Dauphin whom you want as my share in this
betrayal.”
“You are right as usual, Sir Percy. Therefore let us take that as
settled. We go as far as Crecy, and thence place ourselves entirely in
your hands.”
“The journey should not take more than three days, sir.”
“During which you will travel in a coach in the company of my friend
Heron.”
“I could have chosen pleasanter company, sir; still, it will serve.”
“This being settled, Sir Percy. I understand that you desire to
communicate with one of your followers.”
“Some one must let the others know... those who have the Dauphin in
their charge.”
“Quite so. Therefore I pray you write to one of your friends that you
have decided to deliver the Dauphin into our hands in exchange for your
own safety.”
“You said just now that this you would not guarantee,” interposed
Blakeney quietly.
“If all turns out well,” retorted Chauvelin with a show of contempt,
“and if you will write the exact letter which I shall dictate, we might
even give you that guarantee.”
“The quality of your mercy, sir, passes belief.”
“Then I pray you write. Which of your followers will have the honour of
the communication?”
“My brother-in-law, Armand St. Just; he is still in Paris, I believe. He
can let the others know.”
Chauvelin made no immediate reply. He paused awhile, hesitating. Would
Sir Percy Blakeney be ready--if his own safety demanded it--to sacrifice
the man who had betrayed him? In the momentous “either--or” that was to
be put to him, by-and-by, would he choose his own life and leave
Armand St. Just to perish? It was not for Chauvelin--or any man of his
stamp--to judge of what Blakeney would do under such circumstances, and
had it been a question of St. Just alone, mayhap Chauvelin would have
hesitated still more at the present juncture.
But the friend as hostage was only destined to be a minor leverage for
the final breaking-up of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel through the
disgrace of its chief. There was the wife--Marguerite Blakeney--sister
of St. Just, joint and far more important hostage, whose very close
affection for her brother might prove an additional trump card in that
handful which Chauvelin already held.
Blakeney paid no heed seemingly to the other’s hesitation. He did not
even look up at him, but quietly drew pen and paper towards him, and
made ready to write.
“What do you wish me to say?” he asked simply.
“Will that young blackguard answer your purpose, citizen Chauvelin?”
queried Heron roughly.
Obviously the same doubt had crossed his mind. Chauvelin quickly
re-assured him.
“Better than any one else,” he said firmly. “Will you write at my
dictation, Sir Percy?
“I am waiting to do so, my dear sir.”
“Begin your letter as you wish, then; now continue.”
And he began to dictate slowly, watching every word as it left
Blakeney’s pen.
“‘I cannot stand my present position any longer. Citizen Heron, and also
M. Chauvelin--’ Yes, Sir Percy, Chauvelin, not Chambertin ... C, H,
A, U, V, E, L, I, N.... That is quite right-- ‘have made this prison a
perfect hell for me.’”
Sir Percy looked up from his writing, smiling.
“You wrong yourself, my dear M. Chambertin!” he said; “I have really
been most comfortable.”
“I wish to place the matter before your friends in as indulgent a manner
as I can,” retorted Chauvelin dryly.
“I thank you, sir. Pray proceed.”
“...‘a perfect hell for me,’” resumed the other. “Have you that? ...
‘and I have been forced to give way. To-morrow we start from here at
dawn; and I will guide citizen Heron to the place where he can find the
Dauphin. But the authorities demand that one of my followers, one who
has once been a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, shall
accompany me on this expedition. I therefore ask you’--or ‘desire you’
or ‘beg you’--whichever you prefer, Sir Percy...”
“‘Ask you’ will do quite nicely. This is really very interesting, you
know.”
“... ‘to be prepared to join the expedition. We start at dawn, and you
would be required to be at the main gate of the house of Justice at six
o’clock precisely. I have an assurance from the authorities that your
life should be in-violate, but if you refuse to accompany me, the
guillotine will await me on the morrow.’”
“‘The guillotine will await me on the morrow.’ That sounds quite
cheerful, does it not, M. Chambertin?” said the prisoner, who had not
evinced the slightest surprise at the wording of the letter whilst he
wrote at the other’s dictation. “Do you know, I quite enjoyed writing
this letter; it so reminded me of happy days in Boulogne.”
Chauvelin pressed his lips together. Truly now he felt that a retort
from him would have been undignified, more especially as just at this
moment there came from the guard room the sound of men’s voices talking
and laughing, the occasional clang of steel, or of a heavy boot
against the tiled floor, the rattling of dice, or a sudden burst of
laughter--sounds, in fact, that betokened the presence of a number of
soldiers close by.
Chauvelin contented himself with a nod in the direction of the
guard-room.
“The conditions are somewhat different now,” he said placidly, “from
those that reigned in Boulogne. But will you not sign your letter, Sir
Percy?”
“With pleasure, sir,” responded Blakeney, as with an elaborate flourish
of the pen he appended his name to the missive.
Chauvelin was watching him with eyes that would have shamed a lynx by
their keenness. He took up the completed letter, read it through very
carefully, as if to find some hidden meaning behind the very words which
he himself had dictated; he studied the signature, and looked vainly for
a mark or a sign that might convey a different sense to that which he
had intended. Finally, finding none, he folded the letter up with his
own hand, and at once slipped it in the pocket of his coat.
“Take care, M. Chambertin,” said Blakeney lightly; “it will burn a hole
in that elegant vest of yours.”
“It will have no time to do that, Sir Percy,” retorted Chauvelin
blandly; “an you will furnish me with citizen St. Just’s present
address, I will myself convey the letter to him at once.”
“At this hour of the night? Poor old Armand, he’ll be abed. But his
address, sir, is No. 32, Rue de la Croix Blanche, on the first floor,
the door on your right as you mount the stairs; you know the room well,
citizen Chauvelin; you have been in it before. And now,” he added with a
loud and ostentatious yawn, “shall we all to bed? We start at dawn, you
said, and I am so d--d fatigued.”
Frankly, he did not look it now. Chauvelin himself, despite his matured
plans, despite all the precautions that he meant to take for the success
of this gigantic scheme, felt a sudden strange sense of fear creeping
into his bones. Half an hour ago he had seen a man in what looked
like the last stage of utter physical exhaustion, a hunched up figure,
listless and limp, hands that twitched nervously, the face as of a dying
man. Now those outward symptoms were still there certainly; the face by
the light of the lamp still looked livid, the lips bloodless, the hands
emaciated and waxen, but the eyes!--they were still hollow, with heavy
lids still purple, but in their depths there was a curious, mysterious
light, a look that seemed to see something that was hidden to natural
sight.
Citizen Chauvelin thought that Heron, too, must be conscious of
this, but the Committee’s agent was sprawling on a chair, sucking a
short-stemmed pipe, and gazing with entire animal satisfaction on the
prisoner.
“The most perfect piece of work we have ever accomplished, you and I,
citizen Chauvelin,” he said complacently.
“You think that everything is quite satisfactory?” asked the other with
anxious stress on his words.
“Everything, of course. Now you see to the letter. I will give final
orders for to-morrow, but I shall sleep in the guard-room.”
“And I on that inviting bed,” interposed the prisoner lightly, as he
rose to his feet. “Your servant, citizens!”
He bowed his head slightly, and stood by the table whilst the two men
prepared to go. Chauvelin took a final long look at the man whom he
firmly believed he had at last brought down to abject disgrace.
Blakeney was standing erect, watching the two retreating figures--one
slender hand was on the table. Chauvelin saw that it was leaning rather
heavily, as if for support, and that even whilst a final mocking
laugh sped him and his colleague on their way, the tall figure of the
conquered lion swayed like a stalwart oak that is forced to bend to the
mighty fury of an all-compelling wind.
With a sigh of content Chauvelin took his colleague by the arm, and
together the two men walked out of the cell.
CHAPTER XXXIX. KILL HIM!
Two hours after midnight Armand St. Just was wakened from sleep by a
peremptory pull at his bell. In these days in Paris but one meaning
could as a rule be attached to such a summons at this hour of the night,
and Armand, though possessed of an unconditional certificate of
safety, sat up in bed, quite convinced that for some reason which would
presently be explained to him he had once more been placed on the list
of the “suspect,” and that his trial and condemnation on a trumped-up
charge would follow in due course.
Truth to tell, he felt no fear at the prospect, and only a very little
sorrow. The sorrow was not for himself; he regretted neither life nor
happiness. Life had become hateful to him since happiness had fled with
it on the dark wings of dishonour; sorrow such as he felt was only for
Jeanne! She was very young, and would weep bitter tears. She would be
unhappy, because she truly loved him, and because this would be the
first cup of bitterness which life was holding out to her. But she
was very young, and sorrow would not be eternal. It was better so. He,
Armand St. Just, though he loved her with an intensity of passion that
had been magnified and strengthened by his own overwhelming shame,
had never really brought his beloved one single moment of unalloyed
happiness.
From the very first day when he sat beside her in the tiny boudoir
of the Square du Roule, and the heavy foot fall of Heron and his
bloodhounds broke in on their first kiss, down to this hour which he
believed struck his own death-knell, his love for her had brought more
tears to her dear eyes than smiles to her exquisite mouth.
Her he had loved so dearly, that for her sweet sake he had sacrificed
honour, friendship and truth; to free her, as he believed, from the
hands of impious brutes he had done a deed that cried Cain-like for
vengeance to the very throne of God. For her he had sinned, and because
of that sin, even before it was committed, their love had been blighted,
and happiness had never been theirs.
Now it was all over. He would pass out of her life, up the steps of the
scaffold, tasting as he mounted them the most entire happiness that he
had known since that awful day when he became a Judas.
The peremptory summons, once more repeated, roused him from his
meditations. He lit a candle, and without troubling to slip any of his
clothes on, he crossed the narrow ante-chamber, and opened the door that
gave on the landing.
“In the name of the people!”
He had expected to hear not only those words, but also the grounding of
arms and the brief command to halt. He had expected to see before him
the white facings of the uniform of the Garde de Paris, and to feel
himself roughly pushed back into his lodging preparatory to the search
being made of all his effects and the placing of irons on his wrists.
Instead of this, it was a quiet, dry voice that said without undue
harshness:
“In the name of the people!”
And instead of the uniforms, the bayonets and the scarlet caps with
tricolour cockades, he was confronted by a slight, sable-clad figure,
whose face, lit by the flickering light of the tallow candle, looked
strangely pale and earnest.
“Citizen Chauvelin!” gasped Armand, more surprised than frightened at
this unexpected apparition.
“Himself, citizen, at your service,” replied Chauvelin with his quiet,
ironical manner. “I am the bearer of a letter for you from Sir Percy
Blakeney. Have I your permission to enter?”
Mechanically Armand stood aside, allowing the other man to pass in. He
closed the door behind his nocturnal visitor, then, taper in hand, he
preceded him into the inner room.
It was the same one in which a fortnight ago a fighting lion had been
brought to his knees. Now it lay wrapped in gloom, the feeble light of
the candle only lighting Armand’s face and the white frill of his shirt.
The young man put the taper down on the table and turned to his visitor.
“Shall I light the lamp?” he asked.
“Quite unnecessary,” replied Chauvelin curtly. “I have only a letter to
deliver, and after that to ask you one brief question.”
From the pocket of his coat he drew the letter which Blakeney had
written an hour ago.
“The prisoner wrote this in my presence,” he said as he handed the
letter over to Armand. “Will you read it?”
Armand took it from him, and sat down close to the table; leaning
forward he held the paper near the light, and began to read. He read
the letter through very slowly to the end, then once again from the
beginning. He was trying to do that which Chauvelin had wished to do
an hour ago; he was trying to find the inner meaning which he felt must
inevitably lie behind these words which Percy had written with his own
hand.
That these bare words were but a blind to deceive the enemy Armand never
doubted for a moment. In this he was as loyal as Marguerite would have
been herself. Never for a moment did the suspicion cross his mind that
Blakeney was about to play the part of a coward, but he, Armand, felt
that as a faithful friend and follower he ought by instinct to know
exactly what his chief intended, what he meant him to do.
Swiftly his thoughts flew back to that other letter, the one which
Marguerite had given him--the letter full of pity and of friendship
which had brought him hope and a joy and peace which he had thought at
one time that he would never know again. And suddenly one sentence in
that letter stood out so clearly before his eyes that it blurred the
actual, tangible ones on the paper which even now rustled in his hand.
But if at any time you receive another letter from me--be its contents
what they may--act in accordance with the letter, but send a copy of it
at once to Ffoulkes or to Marguerite.
Now everything seemed at once quite clear; his duty, his next actions,
every word that he would speak to Chauvelin. Those that Percy had
written to him were already indelibly graven on his memory.
Chauvelin had waited with his usual patience, silent and imperturbable,
while the young man read. Now when he saw that Armand had finished, he
said quietly:
“Just one question, citizen, and I need not detain you longer. But first
will you kindly give me back that letter? It is a precious document
which will for ever remain in the archives of the nation.”
But even while he spoke Armand, with one of those quick intuitions
that come in moments of acute crisis, had done just that which he felt
Blakeney would wish him to do. He had held the letter close to the
candle. A corner of the thin crisp paper immediately caught fire, and
before Chauvelin could utter a word of anger, or make a movement to
prevent the conflagration, the flames had licked up fully one half of
the letter, and Armand had only just time to throw the remainder on the
floor and to stamp out the blaze with his foot.
“I am sorry, citizen,” he said calmly; “an accident.”
“A useless act of devotion,” interposed Chauvelin, who already had
smothered the oath that had risen to his lips. “The Scarlet Pimpernel’s
actions in the present matter will not lose their merited publicity
through the foolish destruction of this document.”
“I had no thought, citizen,” retorted the young man, “of commenting on
the actions of my chief, or of trying to deny them that publicity which
you seem to desire for them almost as much as I do.”
“More, citizen, a great deal more! The impeccable Scarlet Pimpernel,
the noble and gallant English gentleman, has agreed to deliver into our
hands the uncrowned King of France--in exchange for his own life and
freedom. Methinks that even his worst enemy would not wish for a better
ending to a career of adventure, and a reputation for bravery unequalled
in Europe. But no more of this, time is pressing, I must help citizen
Heron with his final preparations for his journey. You, of course,
citizen St. Just, will act in accordance with Sir Percy Blakeney’s
wishes?”
“Of course,” replied Armand.
“You will present yourself at the main entrance of the house of Justice
at six o’clock this morning.”
“I will not fail you.”
“A coach will be provided for you. You will follow the expedition as
hostage for the good faith of your chief.”
“I quite understand.”
“H’m! That’s brave! You have no fear, citizen St. Just?”
“Fear of what, sir?”
“You will be a hostage in our hands, citizen; your life a guarantee that
your chief has no thought of playing us false. Now I was thinking of--of
certain events--which led to the arrest of Sir Percy Blakeney.”
“Of my treachery, you mean,” rejoined the young man calmly, even
though his face had suddenly become pale as death. “Of the damnable
lie wherewith you cheated me into selling my honour, and made me what I
am--a creature scarce fit to walk upon this earth.”
“Oh!” protested Chauvelin blandly.
“The damnable lie,” continued Armand more vehemently, “that hath made me
one with Cain and the Iscariot. When you goaded me into the hellish act,
Jeanne Lange was already free.”
“Free--but not safe.”
“A lie, man! A lie! For which you are thrice accursed. Great God, is it
not you that should have cause for fear? Methinks were I to strangle you
now I should suffer less of remorse.”
“And would be rendering your ex-chief but a sorry service,” interposed
Chauvelin with quiet irony. “Sir Percy Blakeney is a dying man, citizen
St. Just; he’ll be a dead man at dawn if I do not put in an appearance
by six o’clock this morning. This is a private understanding between
citizen Heron and myself. We agreed to it before I came to see you.”
“Oh, you take care of your own miserable skin well enough! But you need
not be afraid of me--I take my orders from my chief, and he has not
ordered me to kill you.”
“That was kind of him. Then we may count on you? You are not afraid?”
“Afraid that the Scarlet Pimpernel would leave me in the lurch because
of the immeasurable wrong I have done to him?” retorted Armand, proud
and defiant in the name of his chief. “No, sir, I am not afraid of that;
I have spent the last fortnight in praying to God that my life might yet
be given for his.”
“H’m! I think it most unlikely that your prayers will be granted,
citizen; prayers, I imagine, so very seldom are; but I don’t know, I
never pray myself. In your case, now, I should say that you have not the
slightest chance of the Deity interfering in so pleasant a manner. Even
were Sir Percy Blakeney prepared to wreak personal revenge on you, he
would scarcely be so foolish as to risk the other life which we shall
also hold as hostage for his good faith.”
“The other life?”
“Yes. Your sister, Lady Blakeney, will also join the expedition
to-morrow. This Sir Percy does not yet know; but it will come as a
pleasant surprise for him. At the slightest suspicion of false play on
Sir Percy’s part, at his slightest attempt at escape, your life and that
of your sister are forfeit; you will both be summarily shot before his
eyes. I do not think that I need be more precise, eh, citizen St. Just?”
The young man was quivering with passion. A terrible loathing for
himself, for his crime which had been the precursor of this terrible
situation, filled his soul to the verge of sheer physical nausea. A red
film gathered before his eyes, and through it he saw the grinning face
of the inhuman monster who had planned this hideous, abominable thing.
It seemed to him as if in the silence and the hush of the night, above
the feeble, flickering flame that threw weird shadows around, a group of
devils were surrounding him, and were shouting, “Kill him! Kill him now!
Rid the earth of this hellish brute!”
No doubt if Chauvelin had exhibited the slightest sign of fear, if he
had moved an inch towards the door, Armand, blind with passion, driven
to madness by agonising remorse more even than by rage, would have
sprung at his enemy’s throat and crushed the life out of him as he would
out of a venomous beast. But the man’s calm, his immobility, recalled
St. Just to himself. Reason, that had almost yielded to passion again,
found strength to drive the enemy back this time, to whisper a warning,
an admonition, even a reminder. Enough harm, God knows, had been done
by tempestuous passion already. And God alone knew what terrible
consequences its triumph now might bring in its trial, and striking on
Armand’s buzzing ears Chauvelin’s words came back as a triumphant and
mocking echo:
“He’ll be a dead man at dawn if I do not put in an appearance by six
o’clock.”
The red film lifted, the candle flickered low, the devils vanished, only
the pale face of the Terrorist gazed with gentle irony out of the gloom.
“I think that I need not detain you any longer, citizen, St. Just,” he
said quietly; “you can get three or four hours’ rest yet before you need
make a start, and I still have a great many things to see to. I wish you
good-night, citizen.”