“Good-night,” murmured Armand mechanically.

He took the candle and escorted his visitor back to the door. He waited

on the landing, taper in hand, while Chauvelin descended the narrow,

winding stairs.

There was a light in the concierge’s lodge. No doubt the woman had

struck it when the nocturnal visitor had first demanded admittance. His

name and tricolour scarf of office had ensured him the full measure of

her attention, and now she was evidently sitting up waiting to let him

out.

St. Just, satisfied that Chauvelin had finally gone, now turned back to

his own rooms.

CHAPTER XL. GOD HELP US ALL

He carefully locked the outer door. Then he lit the lamp, for the candle

gave but a flickering light, and he had some important work to do.

Firstly, he picked up the charred fragment of the letter, and smoothed

it out carefully and reverently as he would a relic. Tears had gathered

in his eyes, but he was not ashamed of them, for no one saw them; but

they eased his heart, and helped to strengthen his resolve. It was a

mere fragment that had been spared by the flame, but Armand knew every

word of the letter by heart.

He had pen, ink and paper ready to his hand, and from memory wrote out

a copy of it. To this he added a covering letter from himself to

Marguerite:

This--which I had from Percy through the hands of Chauvelin--I neither

question nor understand.... He wrote the letter, and I have no thought

but to obey. In his previous letter to me he enjoined me, if ever he

wrote to me again, to obey him implicitly, and to communicate with you.

To both these commands do I submit with a glad heart. But of this must I

give you warning, little mother--Chauvelin desires you also to accompany

us to-morrow.... Percy does not know this yet, else he would never

start. But those fiends fear that his readiness is a blind... and that

he has some plan in his head for his own escape and the continued safety

of the Dauphin.... This plan they hope to frustrate through holding you

and me as hostages for his good faith. God only knows how gladly I would

give my life for my chief... but your life, dear little mother... is

sacred above all.... I think that I do right in warning you. God help us

all.

Having written the letter, he sealed it, together with the copy of

Percy’s letter which he had made. Then he took up the candle and went

downstairs.

There was no longer any light in the concierge’s lodge, and Armand had

some difficulty in making himself heard. At last the woman came to the

door. She was tired and cross after two interruptions of her night’s

rest, but she had a partiality for her young lodger, whose pleasant ways

and easy liberality had been like a pale ray of sunshine through the

squalor of every-day misery.

“It is a letter, citoyenne,” said Armand, with earnest entreaty, “for my

sister. She lives in the Rue de Charonne, near the fortifications, and

must have it within an hour; it is a matter of life and death to her, to

me, and to another who is very dear to us both.”

The concierge threw up her hands in horror.

“Rue de Charonne, near the fortifications,” she exclaimed, “and within

an hour! By the Holy Virgin, citizen, that is impossible. Who will take

it? There is no way.”

“A way must be found, citoyenne,” said Armand firmly, “and at once; it

is not far, and there are five golden louis waiting for the messenger!”

Five golden louis! The poor, hardworking woman’s eyes gleamed at the

thought. Five louis meant food for at least two months if one was

careful, and--

“Give me the letter, citizen,” she said, “time to slip on a warm

petticoat and a shawl, and I’ll go myself. It’s not fit for the boy to

go at this hour.”

“You will bring me back a line from my sister in reply to this,” said

Armand, whom circumstances had at last rendered cautious. “Bring it up

to my rooms that I may give you the five louis in exchange.”

He waited while the woman slipped back into her room. She heard him

speaking to her boy; the same lad who a fortnight ago had taken the

treacherous letter which had lured Blakeney to the house into the fatal

ambuscade that had been prepared for him. Everything reminded Armand of

that awful night, every hour that he had since spent in the house had

been racking torture to him. Now at last he was to leave it, and on an

errand which might help to ease the load of remorse from his heart.

The woman was soon ready. Armand gave her final directions as to how to

find the house; then she took the letter and promised to be very quick,

and to bring back a reply from the lady.

Armand accompanied her to the door. The night was dark, a thin drizzle

was falling; he stood and watched until the woman’s rapidly walking

figure was lost in the misty gloom.

Then with a heavy sigh he once more went within.

CHAPTER XLI. WHEN HOPE WAS DEAD

In a small upstairs room in the Rue de Charonne, above the shop of

Lucas the old-clothes dealer, Marguerite sat with Sir Andrew Ffoulkes.

Armand’s letter, with its message and its warning, lay open on the table

between them, and she had in her hand the sealed packet which Percy had

given her just ten days ago, and which she was only to open if all hope

seemed to be dead, if nothing appeared to stand any longer between that

one dear life and irretrievable shame.

A small lamp placed on the table threw a feeble yellow light on the

squalid, ill-furnished room, for it lacked still an hour or so before

dawn. Armand’s concierge had brought her lodger’s letter, and Marguerite

had quickly despatched a brief reply to him, a reply that held love and

also encouragement.

Then she had summoned Sir Andrew. He never had a thought of leaving her

during these days of dire trouble, and he had lodged all this while in a

tiny room on the top-most floor of this house in the Rue de Charonne.

At her call he had come down very quickly, and now they sat together at

the table, with the oil-lamp illumining their pale, anxious faces; she

the wife and he the friend holding a consultation together in this most

miserable hour that preceded the cold wintry dawn.

Outside a thin, persistent rain mixed with snow pattered against the

small window panes, and an icy wind found out all the crevices in

the worm-eaten woodwork that would afford it ingress to the room. But

neither Marguerite nor Ffoulkes was conscious of the cold. They had

wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and did not feel the chill

currents of air that caused the lamp to flicker and to smoke.

“I can see now,” said Marguerite in that calm voice which comes so

naturally in moments of infinite despair--“I can see now exactly what

Percy meant when he made me promise not to open this packet until it

seemed to me--to me and to you, Sir Andrew--that he was about to play

the part of a coward. A coward! Great God!” She checked the sob that had

risen to her throat, and continued in the same calm manner and quiet,

even voice:

“You do think with me, do you not, that the time has come, and that we

must open this packet?”

“Without a doubt, Lady Blakeney,” replied Ffoulkes with equal

earnestness. “I would stake my life that already a fortnight ago

Blakeney had that same plan in his mind which he has now matured.

Escape from that awful Conciergerie prison with all the precautions so

carefully taken against it was impossible. I knew that alas! from the

first. But in the open all might yet be different. I’ll not believe it

that a man like Blakeney is destined to perish at the hands of those

curs.”

She looked on her loyal friend with tear-dimmed eyes through which shone

boundless gratitude and heart-broken sorrow.

He had spoken of a fortnight! It was ten days since she had seen Percy.

It had then seemed as if death had already marked him with its grim

sign. Since then she had tried to shut away from her mind the terrible

visions which her anguish constantly conjured up before her of his

growing weakness, of the gradual impairing of that brilliant intellect,

the gradual exhaustion of that mighty physical strength.

“God bless you, Sir Andrew, for your enthusiasm and for your trust,” she

said with a sad little smile; “but for you I should long ago have

lost all courage, and these last ten days--what a cycle of misery they

represent--would have been maddening but for your help and your loyalty.

God knows I would have courage for everything in life, for everything

save one, but just that, his death; that would be beyond my

strength--neither reason nor body could stand it. Therefore, I am so

afraid, Sir Andrew,” she added piteously.

“Of what, Lady Blakeney?”

“That when he knows that I too am to go as hostage, as Armand says in

his letter, that my life is to be guarantee for his, I am afraid that he

will draw back--that he will--my God!” she cried with sudden fervour,

“tell me what to do!”

“Shall we open the packet?” asked Ffoulkes gently, “and then just make

up our minds to act exactly as Blakeney has enjoined us to do, neither

more nor less, but just word for word, deed for deed, and I believe that

that will be right--whatever may betide--in the end.”

Once more his quiet strength, his earnestness and his faith comforted

her. She dried her eyes and broke open the seal. There were two separate

letters in the packet, one unaddressed, obviously intended for her and

Ffoulkes, the other was addressed to M. le baron Jean de Batz, 15, Rue

St. Jean de Latran a Paris.

“A letter addressed to that awful Baron de Batz,” said Marguerite,

looking with puzzled eyes on the paper as she turned it over and over in

her hand, “to that bombastic windbag! I know him and his ways well! What

can Percy have to say to him?”

Sir Andrew too looked puzzled. But neither of them had the mind to waste

time in useless speculations. Marguerite unfolded the letter which was

intended for her, and after a final look on her friend, whose kind face

was quivering with excitement, she began slowly to read aloud:

I need not ask either of you two to trust me, knowing that you will. But

I could not die inside this hole like a rat in a trap--I had to try and

free myself, at the worst to die in the open beneath God’s sky. You two

will understand, and understanding you will trust me to the end. Send

the enclosed letter at once to its address. And you, Ffoulkes, my most

sincere and most loyal friend, I beg with all my soul to see to the

safety of Marguerite. Armand will stay by me--but you, Ffoulkes, do not

leave her, stand by her. As soon as you read this letter--and you will

not read it until both she and you have felt that hope has fled and I

myself am about to throw up the sponge--try and persuade her to make

for the coast as quickly as may be.... At Calais you can open up

communications with the Day-Dream in the usual way, and embark on her at

once. Let no member of the League remain on French soil one hour longer

after that. Then tell the skipper to make for Le Portel--the place which

he knows--and there to keep a sharp outlook for another three nights.

After that make straight for home, for it will be no use waiting any

longer. I shall not come. These measures are for Marguerite’s safety,

and for you all who are in France at this moment. Comrade, I entreat you

to look on these measures as on my dying wish. To de Batz I have given

rendezvous at the Chapelle of the Holy Sepulchre, just outside the park

of the Chateau d’Ourde. He will help me to save the Dauphin, and if

by good luck he also helps me to save myself I shall be within seven

leagues of Le Portel, and with the Liane frozen as she is I could reach

the coast.

But Marguerite’s safety I leave in your hands, Ffoulkes. Would that I

could look more clearly into the future, and know that those devils

will not drag her into danger. Beg her to start at once for Calais

immediately you have both read this. I only beg, I do not command. I

know that you, Ffoulkes, will stand by her whatever she may wish to do.

God’s blessing be for ever on you both.

Marguerite’s voice died away in the silence that still lay over this

deserted part of the great city and in this squalid house where she and

Sir Andrew Ffoulkes had found shelter these last ten days. The agony

of mind which they had here endured, never doubting, but scarcely ever

hoping, had found its culmination at last in this final message, which

almost seemed to come to them from the grave.

It had been written ten days ago. A plan had then apparently formed in

Percy’s mind which he had set forth during the brief half-hour’s respite

which those fiends had once given him. Since then they had never given

him ten consecutive minutes’ peace; since then ten days had gone by; how

much power, how much vitality had gone by too on the leaden wings of all

those terrible hours spent in solitude and in misery?

“We can but hope, Lady Blakeney,” said Sir Andrew Ffoulkes after a

while, “that you will be allowed out of Paris; but from what Armand

says--”

“And Percy does not actually send me away,” she rejoined with a pathetic

little smile.

“No. He cannot compel you, Lady Blakeney. You are not a member of the

League.”

“Oh, yes, I am!” she retorted firmly; “and I have sworn obedience, just

as all of you have done. I will go, just as he bids me, and you, Sir

Andrew, you will obey him too?”

“My orders are to stand by you. That is an easy task.”

“You know where this place is?” she asked--“the Chateau d’Ourde?”

“Oh, yes, we all know it! It is empty, and the park is a wreck; the

owner fled from it at the very outbreak of the revolution; he left some

kind of steward nominally in charge, a curious creature, half imbecile;

the chateau and the chapel in the forest just outside the grounds have

oft served Blakeney and all of us as a place of refuge on our way to the

coast.”

“But the Dauphin is not there?” she said.

“No. According to the first letter which you brought me from Blakeney

ten days ago, and on which I acted, Tony, who has charge of the Dauphin,

must have crossed into Holland with his little Majesty to-day.”

“I understand,” she said simply. “But then--this letter to de Batz?”

“Ah, there I am completely at sea! But I’ll deliver it, and at once too,

only I don’t like to leave you. Will you let me get you out of Paris

first? I think just before dawn it could be done. We can get the cart

from Lucas, and if we could reach St. Germain before noon, I could come

straight back then and deliver the letter to de Batz. This, I feel, I

ought to do myself; but at Achard’s farm I would know that you were safe

for a few hours.”

“I will do whatever you think right, Sir Andrew,” she said simply;

“my will is bound up with Percy’s dying wish. God knows I would rather

follow him now, step by step,--as hostage, as prisoner--any way so long

as I can see him, but--”

She rose and turned to go, almost impassive now in that great calm born

of despair.

A stranger seeing her now had thought her indifferent. She was very

pale, and deep circles round her eyes told of sleepless nights and

days of mental misery, but otherwise there was not the faintest outward

symptom of that terrible anguish which was rending her heartstrings. Her

lips did not quiver, and the source of her tears had been dried up ten

days ago.

“Ten minutes and I’ll be ready, Sir Andrew,” she said. “I have but few

belongings. Will you the while see Lucas about the cart?”

He did as she desired. Her calm in no way deceived him; he knew that she

must be suffering keenly, and would suffer more keenly still while she

would be trying to efface her own personal feelings all through that

coming dreary journey to Calais.

He went to see the landlord about the horse and cart, and a quarter of

an hour later Marguerite came downstairs ready to start. She found Sir

Andrew in close converse with an officer of the Garde de Paris, whilst

two soldiers of the same regiment were standing at the horse’s head.

When she appeared in the doorway Sir Andrew came at once up to her.

“It is just as I feared, Lady Blakeney,” he said; “this man has been

sent here to take charge of you. Of course, he knows nothing beyond the

fact that his orders are to convey you at once to the guard-house of the

Rue Ste. Anne, where he is to hand you over to citizen Chauvelin of the

Committee of Public Safety.”

Sir Andrew could not fail to see the look of intense relief which, in

the midst of all her sorrow, seemed suddenly to have lighted up the

whole of Marguerite’s wan face. The thought of wending her own way to

safety whilst Percy, mayhap, was fighting an uneven fight with death

had been well-nigh intolerable; but she had been ready to obey without

a murmur. Now Fate and the enemy himself had decided otherwise. She felt

as if a load had been lifted from her heart.

“I will at once go and find de Batz,” Sir Andrew contrived to whisper

hurriedly. “As soon as Percy’s letter is safely in his hands I will make

my way northwards and communicate with all the members of the League, on

whom the chief has so strictly enjoined to quit French soil immediately.

We will proceed to Calais first and open up communication with the

Day-Dream in the usual way. The others had best embark on board her, and

the skipper shall then make for the known spot of Le Portel, of which

Percy speaks in his letter. I myself will go by land to Le Portel, and

thence, if I have no news of you or of the expedition, I will slowly

work southwards in the direction of the Chateau d’Ourde. That is all

that I can do. If you can contrive to let Percy or even Armand know my

movements, do so by all means. I know that I shall be doing right, for,

in a way, I shall be watching over you and arranging for your safety, as

Blakeney begged me to do. God bless you, Lady Blakeney, and God save the

Scarlet Pimpernel!”

He stooped and kissed her hand, and she intimated to the officer that

she was ready. He had a hackney coach waiting for her lower down the

street. To it she walked with a firm step, and as she entered it she

waved a last farewell to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes.

CHAPTER XLII. THE GUARD-HOUSE OF THE RUE STE. ANNE

The little cortege was turning out of the great gates of the house of

Justice. It was intensely cold; a bitter north-easterly gale was blowing

from across the heights of Montmartre, driving sleet and snow and

half-frozen rain into the faces of the men, and finding its way up their

sleeves, down their collars and round the knees of their threadbare

breeches.

Armand, whose fingers were numb with the cold, could scarcely feel the

reins in his hands. Chauvelin was riding close beside him, but the two

men had not exchanged one word since the moment when the small troop

of some twenty mounted soldiers had filed up inside the courtyard, and

Chauvelin, with a curt word of command, had ordered one of the troopers

to take Armand’s horse on the lead.

A hackney coach brought up the rear of the cortege, with a man riding

at either door and two more following at a distance of twenty paces.

Heron’s gaunt, ugly face, crowned with a battered, sugar-loaf hat,

appeared from time to time at the window of the coach. He was no

horseman, and, moreover, preferred to keep the prisoner closely under

his own eye. The corporal had told Armand that the prisoner was with

citizen Heron inside the coach--in irons. Beyond that the soldiers could

tell him nothing; they knew nothing of the object of this expedition.

Vaguely they might have wondered in their dull minds why this particular

prisoner was thus being escorted out of the Conciergerie prison with so

much paraphernalia and such an air of mystery, when there were thousands

of prisoners in the city and the provinces at the present moment who

anon would be bundled up wholesale into carts to be dragged to the

guillotine like a flock of sheep to the butchers.

But even if they wondered they made no remarks among themselves.

Their faces, blue with the cold, were the perfect mirrors of their own

unconquerable stolidity.

The tower clock of Notre Dame struck seven when the small cavalcade

finally moved slowly out of the monumental gates. In the east the wan

light of a February morning slowly struggled out of the surrounding

gloom. Now the towers of many churches loomed ghostlike against the dull

grey sky, and down below, on the right, the frozen river, like a smooth

sheet of steel, wound its graceful curves round the islands and past the

facade of the Louvres palace, whose walls looked grim and silent, like

the mausoleum of the dead giants of the past.

All around the great city gave signs of awakening; the business of the

day renewed its course every twenty-four hours, despite the tragedies of

death and of dishonour that walked with it hand in hand. From the Place

de La Revolution the intermittent roll of drums came from time to time

with its muffled sound striking the ear of the passer-by. Along the quay

opposite an open-air camp was already astir; men, women, and children

engaged in the great task of clothing and feeding the people of France,

armed against tyranny, were bending to their task, even before the

wintry dawn had spread its pale grey tints over the narrower streets of

the city.

Armand shivered under his cloak. This silent ride beneath the leaden sky,

through the veil of half-frozen rain and snow, seemed like a dream to

him. And now, as the outriders of the little cavalcade turned to cross

the Pont au Change, he saw spread out on his left what appeared like the

living panorama of these three weeks that had just gone by. He could

see the house of the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois where Percy had lodged

before he carried through the rescue of the little Dauphin. Armand could

even see the window at which the dreamer had stood, weaving noble dreams

that his brilliant daring had turned into realities, until the hand of a

traitor had brought him down to--to what? Armand would not have dared at

this moment to look back at that hideous, vulgar hackney coach wherein

that proud, reckless adventurer, who had defied Fate and mocked Death,

sat, in chains, beside a loathsome creature whose very propinquity was

an outrage.

Now they were passing under the very house on the Quai de La Ferraille,

above the saddler’s shop, the house where Marguerite had lodged ten days

ago, whither Armand had come, trying to fool himself into the belief

that the love of “little mother” could be deceived into blindness

against his own crime. He had tried to draw a veil before those eyes

which he had scarcely dared encounter, but he knew that that veil

must lift one day, and then a curse would send him forth, outlawed and

homeless, a wanderer on the face of the earth.

Soon as the little cortege wended its way northwards it filed out

beneath the walls of the Temple prison; there was the main gate with its

sentry standing at attention, there the archway with the guichet of the

concierge, and beyond it the paved courtyard. Armand closed his eyes

deliberately; he could not bear to look.

No wonder that he shivered and tried to draw his cloak closer around

him. Every stone, every street corner was full of memories. The chill

that struck to the very marrow of his bones came from no outward cause;

it was the very hand of remorse that, as it passed over him, froze the

blood in his veins and made the rattle of those wheels behind him sound

like a hellish knell.

At last the more closely populated quarters of the city were left

behind. On ahead the first section of the guard had turned into the Rue

St. Anne. The houses became more sparse, intersected by narrow pieces of

terrains vagues, or small weed-covered bits of kitchen garden.

Then a halt was called.

It was quite light now. As light as it would ever be beneath this leaden

sky. Rain and snow still fell in gusts, driven by the blast.

Some one ordered Armand to dismount. It was probably Chauvelin. He did

as he was told, and a trooper led him to the door of an irregular brick

building that stood isolated on the right, extended on either side by

a low wall, and surrounded by a patch of uncultivated land, which now

looked like a sea of mud.

On ahead was the line of fortifications dimly outlined against the grey

of the sky, and in between brown, sodden earth, with here and there

a detached house, a cabbage patch, a couple of windmills deserted and

desolate.

The loneliness of an unpopulated outlying quarter of the great mother

city, a useless limb of her active body, an ostracised member of her

vast family.

Mechanically Armand had followed the soldier to the door of the

building. Here Chauvelin was standing, and bade him follow. A smell of

hot coffee hung in the dark narrow passage in front. Chauvelin led the

way to a room on the left.

Still that smell of hot coffee. Ever after it was associated in Armand’s

mind with this awful morning in the guard-house of the Rue Ste. Anne,

when the rain and snow beat against the windows, and he stood there in

the low guard-room shivering and half-numbed with cold.

There was a table in the middle of the room, and on it stood cups of

hot coffee. Chauvelin bade him drink, suggesting, not unkindly, that the

warm beverage would do him good. Armand advanced further into the room,

and saw that there were wooden benches all round against the wall. On

one of these sat his sister Marguerite.

When she saw him she made a sudden, instinctive movement to go to him,

but Chauvelin interposed in his usual bland, quiet manner.

“Not just now, citizeness,” he said.

She sat down again, and Armand noted how cold and stony seemed her eyes,

as if life within her was at a stand-still, and a shadow that was almost

like death had atrophied every emotion in her.

“I trust you have not suffered too much from the cold, Lady Blakeney,”

resumed Chauvelin politely; “we ought not to have kept you waiting here

for so long, but delay at departure is sometimes inevitable.”

She made no reply, only acknowledging his reiterated inquiry as to her

comfort with an inclination of the head.

Armand had forced himself to swallow some coffee, and for the moment he

felt less chilled. He held the cup between his two hands, and gradually

some warmth crept into his bones.

“Little mother,” he said in English, “try and drink some of this, it

will do you good.”

“Thank you, dear,” she replied. “I have had some. I am not cold.”

Then a door at the end of the room was pushed open, and Heron stalked

in.

“Are we going to be all day in this confounded hole?” he queried

roughly.

Armand, who was watching his sister very closely, saw that she started

at the sight of the wretch, and seemed immediately to shrink still

further within herself, whilst her eyes, suddenly luminous and dilated,

rested on him like those of a captive bird upon an approaching cobra.

But Chauvelin was not to be shaken out of his suave manner.

“One moment, citizen Heron,” he said; “this coffee is very comforting.

Is the prisoner with you?” he added lightly.

Heron nodded in the direction of the other room.

“In there,” he said curtly.

“Then, perhaps, if you will be so good, citizen, to invite him thither,

I could explain to him his future position and our own.”

Heron muttered something between his fleshy lips, then he turned back

towards the open door, solemnly spat twice on the threshold, and nodded

his gaunt head once or twice in a manner which apparently was understood

from within.

“No, sergeant, I don’t want you,” he said gruffly; “only the prisoner.”

A second or two later Sir Percy Blakeney stood in the doorway; his hands

were behind his back, obviously hand-cuffed, but he held himself very

erect, though it was clear that this caused him a mighty effort. As soon

as he had crossed the threshold his quick glance had swept right round

the room.

He saw Armand, and his eyes lit up almost imperceptibly.

Then he caught sight of Marguerite, and his pale face took on suddenly a

more ashen hue.

Chauvelin was watching him with those keen, light-coloured eyes of his.

Blakeney, conscious of this, made no movement, only his lips tightened,

and the heavy lids fell over the hollow eyes, completely hiding their

glance.

But what even the most astute, most deadly enemy could not see was that

subtle message of understanding that passed at once between Marguerite

and the man she loved; it was a magnetic current, intangible, invisible

to all save to her and to him. She was prepared to see him, prepared to

see in him all that she had feared; the weakness, the mental exhaustion,

the submission to the inevitable. Therefore she had also schooled her

glance to express to him all that she knew she would not be allowed to

say--the reassurance that she had read his last letter, that she had

obeyed it to the last word, save where Fate and her enemy had interfered

with regard to herself.

With a slight, imperceptible movement--imperceptible to every one save

to him, she had seemed to handle a piece of paper in her kerchief, then

she had nodded slowly, with her eyes--steadfast, reassuring--fixed upon

him, and his glance gave answer that he had understood.

But Chauvelin and Heron had seen nothing of this. They were satisfied

that there had been no communication between the prisoner and his wife

and friend.

“You are no doubt surprised, Sir Percy,” said Chauvelin after a while,

“to see Lady Blakeney here. She, as well as citizen St. Just, will

accompany our expedition to the place where you will lead us. We none

of us know where that place is--citizen Heron and myself are entirely in

your hands--you might be leading us to certain death, or again to a spot

where your own escape would be an easy matter to yourself. You will

not be surprised, therefore, that we have thought fit to take certain

precautions both against any little ambuscade which you may have

prepared for us, or against your making one of those daring attempts at

escape for which the noted Scarlet Pimpernel is so justly famous.”

He paused, and only Heron’s low chuckle of satisfaction broke the

momentary silence that followed. Blakeney made no reply. Obviously he

knew exactly what was coming. He knew Chauvelin and his ways, knew the

kind of tortuous conception that would find origin in his brain; the

moment that he saw Marguerite sitting there he must have guessed that

Chauvelin once more desired to put her precious life in the balance of

his intrigues.

“Citizen Heron is impatient, Sir Percy,” resumed Chauvelin after a

while, “so I must be brief. Lady Blakeney, as well as citizen St. Just,

will accompany us on this expedition to whithersoever you may lead

us. They will be the hostages which we will hold against your own good

faith. At the slightest suspicion--a mere suspicion perhaps--that you

have played us false, at a hint that you have led us into an ambush, or

that the whole of this expedition has been but a trick on your part to

effect your own escape, or if merely our hope of finding Capet at the

end of our journey is frustrated, the lives of our two hostages belong

to us, and your friend and your wife will be summarily shot before your

eyes.”

Outside the rain pattered against the window-panes, the gale whistled

mournfully among the stunted trees, but within this room not a sound

stirred the deadly stillness of the air, and yet at this moment hatred

and love, savage lust and sublime self-abnegation--the most power full

passions the heart of man can know--held three men here enchained; each

a slave to his dominant passion, each ready to stake his all for the

satisfaction of his master. Heron was the first to speak.

“Well!” he said with a fierce oath, “what are we waiting for? The

prisoner knows how he stands. Now we can go.”

“One moment, citizen,” interposed Chauvelin, his quiet manner

contrasting strangely with his colleague’s savage mood. “You have quite

understood, Sir Percy,” he continued, directly addressing the prisoner,

“the conditions under which we are all of us about to proceed on this

journey?”

“All of us?” said Blakeney slowly. “Are you taking it for granted then

that I accept your conditions and that I am prepared to proceed on the

journey?”

“If you do not proceed on the journey,” cried Heron with savage fury,

“I’ll strangle that woman with my own hands--now!”

Blakeney looked at him for a moment or two through half-closed lids, and

it seemed then to those who knew him well, to those who loved him and

to the man who hated him, that the mighty sinews almost cracked with

the passionate desire to kill. Then the sunken eyes turned slowly to

Marguerite, and she alone caught the look--it was a mere flash, of a

humble appeal for pardon.

It was all over in a second; almost immediately the tension on the

pale face relaxed, and into the eyes there came that look of

acceptance--nearly akin to fatalism--an acceptance of which the strong

alone are capable, for with them it only comes in the face of the

inevitable.

Now he shrugged his broad shoulders, and once more turning to Heron he

said quietly:

“You leave me no option in that case. As you have remarked before,

citizen Heron, why should we wait any longer? Surely we can now go.”

CHAPTER XLIII. THE DREARY JOURNEY

Rain! Rain! Rain! Incessant, monotonous and dreary! The wind had changed

round to the southwest. It blew now in great gusts that sent weird,

sighing sounds through the trees, and drove the heavy showers into the

faces of the men as they rode on, with heads bent forward against the

gale.

The rain-sodden bridles slipped through their hands, bringing out sores

and blisters on their palms; the horses were fidgety, tossing their

heads with wearying persistence as the wet trickled into their ears, or

the sharp, intermittent hailstones struck their sensitive noses.

Three days of this awful monotony, varied only by the halts at wayside

inns, the changing of troops at one of the guard-houses on the way, the

reiterated commands given to the fresh squad before starting on the next

lap of this strange, momentous way; and all the while, audible above

the clatter of horses’ hoofs, the rumbling of coach-wheels--two closed

carriages, each drawn by a pair of sturdy horses; which were changed at

every halt. A soldier on each box urged them to a good pace to keep up

with the troopers, who were allowed to go at an easy canter or light

jog-trot, whatever might prove easiest and least fatiguing. And from

time to time Heron’s shaggy, gaunt head would appear at the window of

one of the coaches, asking the way, the distance to the next city or

to the nearest wayside inn; cursing the troopers, the coachman, his

colleague and every one concerned, blaspheming against the interminable

length of the road, against the cold and against the wet.

Early in the evening on the second day of the journey he had met with an

accident. The prisoner, who presumably was weak and weary, and not over

steady on his feet, had fallen up against him as they were both about to

re-enter the coach after a halt just outside Amiens, and citizen Heron

had lost his footing in the slippery mud of the road. His head came in

violent contact with the step, and his right temple was severely cut.

Since then he had been forced to wear a bandage across the top of his

face, under his sugar-loaf hat, which had added nothing to his beauty,

but a great deal to the violence of his temper. He wanted to push the

men on, to force the pace, to shorten the halts; but Chauvelin knew

better than to allow slackness and discontent to follow in the wake of

over-fatigue.

The soldiers were always well rested and well fed, and though the delay

caused by long and frequent halts must have been just as irksome to him

as it was to Heron, yet he bore it imperturbably, for he would have had

no use on this momentous journey for a handful of men whose enthusiasm

and spirit had been blown away by the roughness of the gale, or drowned

in the fury of the constant downpour of rain.

Of all this Marguerite had been conscious in a vague, dreamy kind of

way. She seemed to herself like the spectator in a moving panoramic

drama, unable to raise a finger or to do aught to stop that final,

inevitable ending, the cataclysm of sorrow and misery that awaited her,

when the dreary curtain would fall on the last act, and she and all the

other spectators--Armand, Chauvelin, Heron, the soldiers--would slowly

wend their way home, leaving the principal actor behind the fallen

curtain, which never would be lifted again.

After that first halt in the guard-room of the Rue Ste. Anne she had

been bidden to enter a second hackney coach, which, followed the other

at a distance of fifty metres or so, and was, like that other, closely

surrounded by a squad of mounted men.

Armand and Chauvelin rode in this carriage with her; all day she sat

looking out on the endless monotony of the road, on the drops of rain

that pattered against the window-glass, and ran down from it like a

perpetual stream of tears.

There were two halts called during the day--one for dinner and one

midway through the afternoon--when she and Armand would step out of

the coach and be led--always with soldiers close around them--to some

wayside inn, where some sort of a meal was served, where the atmosphere

was close and stuffy and smelt of onion soup and of stale cheese.

Armand and Marguerite would in most cases have a room to themselves,

with sentinels posted outside the door, and they would try and eat

enough to keep body and soul together, for they would not allow their

strength to fall away before the end of the journey was reached.

For the night halt--once at Beauvais and the second night at

Abbeville--they were escorted to a house in the interior of the city,

where they were accommodated with moderately clean lodgings. Sentinels,

however, were always at their doors; they were prisoners in all but

name, and had little or no privacy; for at night they were both so tired

that they were glad to retire immediately, and to lie down on the hard

beds that had been provided for them, even if sleep fled from their

eyes, and their hearts and souls were flying through the city in search

of him who filled their every thought.

Of Percy they saw little or nothing. In the daytime food was evidently

brought to him in the carriage, for they did not see him get down, and

on those two nights at Beauvais and Abbeville, when they caught sight of

him stepping out of the coach outside the gates of the barracks, he was

so surrounded by soldiers that they only saw the top of his head and his

broad shoulders towering above those of the men.

Once Marguerite had put all her pride, all her dignity by, and asked

citizen Chauvelin for news of her husband.

“He is well and cheerful, Lady Blakeney,” he had replied with his

sarcastic smile. “Ah!” he added pleasantly, “those English are

remarkable people. We, of Gallic breed, will never really understand

them. Their fatalism is quite Oriental in its quiet resignation to the

decree of Fate. Did you know, Lady Blakeney, that when Sir Percy was

arrested he did not raise a hand. I thought, and so did my colleague,

that he would have fought like a lion. And now, that he has no doubt

realised that quiet submission will serve him best in the end, he is

as calm on this journey as I am myself. In fact,” he concluded

complacently, “whenever I have succeeded in peeping into the coach I

have invariably found Sir Percy Blakeney fast asleep.”

“He--” she murmured, for it was so difficult to speak to this callous

wretch, who was obviously mocking her in her misery--“he--you--you are

not keeping him in irons?”

“No! Oh no!” replied Chauvelin with perfect urbanity. “You see, now

that we have you, Lady Blakeney, and citizen St. Just with us we have no

reason to fear that that elusive Pimpernel will spirit himself away.”

A hot retort had risen to Armand’s lips. The warm Latin blood in him

rebelled against this intolerable situation, the man’s sneers in the

face of Marguerite’s anguish. But her restraining, gentle hand had

already pressed his. What was the use of protesting, of insulting this

brute, who cared nothing for the misery which he had caused so long as

he gained his own ends?

And Armand held his tongue and tried to curb his temper, tried to

cultivate a little of that fatalism which Chauvelin had said was

characteristic of the English. He sat beside his sister, longing to

comfort her, yet feeling that his very presence near her was an outrage

and a sacrilege. She spoke so seldom to him, even when they were alone,

that at times the awful thought which had more than once found birth in

his weary brain became crystallised and more real. Did Marguerite guess?

Had she the slightest suspicion that the awful cataclysm to which they

were tending with every revolution of the creaking coach-wheels had been

brought about by her brother’s treacherous hand?

And when that thought had lodged itself quite snugly in his mind he

began to wonder whether it would not be far more simple, far more easy,

to end his miserable life in some manner that might suggest itself on

the way. When the coach crossed one of those dilapidated, parapetless

bridges, over abysses fifty metres deep, it might be so easy to throw

open the carriage door and to take one final jump into eternity.

So easy--but so damnably cowardly.

Marguerite’s near presence quickly brought him back to himself. His life

was no longer his own to do with as he pleased; it belonged to the chief

whom he had betrayed, to the sister whom he must endeavour to protect.

Of Jeanne now he thought but little. He had put even the memory of her

by--tenderly, like a sprig of lavender pressed between the faded leaves

of his own happiness. His hand was no longer fit to hold that of any

pure woman--his hand had on it a deep stain, immutable, like the brand

of Cain.

Yet Marguerite beside him held his hand and together they looked out on

that dreary, dreary road and listened to of the patter of the rain and

the rumbling of the wheels of that other coach on ahead--and it was all

so dismal and so horrible, the rain, the soughing of the wind in the

stunted trees, this landscape of mud and desolation, this eternally grey

sky.

CHAPTER XLIV. THE HALT AT CRECY

“Now, then, citizen, don’t go to sleep; this is Crecy, our last halt!”

Armand woke up from his last dream. They had been moving steadily on

since they left Abbeville soon after dawn; the rumble of the wheels, the

swaying and rocking of the carriage, the interminable patter of the rain

had lulled him into a kind of wakeful sleep.

Chauvelin had already alighted from the coach. He was helping Marguerite

to descend. Armand shook the stiffness from his limbs and followed in

the wake of his sister. Always those miserable soldiers round them, with

their dank coats of rough blue cloth, and the red caps on their heads!

Armand pulled Marguerite’s hand through his arm, and dragged her with

him into the house.

The small city lay damp and grey before them; the rough pavement of the

narrow street glistened with the wet, reflecting the dull, leaden sky

overhead; the rain beat into the puddles; the slate-roofs shone in the

cold wintry light.

This was Crecy! The last halt of the journey, so Chauvelin had said. The

party had drawn rein in front of a small one-storied building that had a

wooden verandah running the whole length of its front.

The usual low narrow room greeted Armand and Marguerite as they entered;

the usual mildewed walls, with the colour wash flowing away in streaks

from the unsympathetic beam above; the same device, “Liberte, Egalite,

Fraternite!” scribbled in charcoal above the black iron stove; the usual

musty, close atmosphere, the usual smell of onion and stale cheese,

the usual hard straight benches and central table with its soiled and

tattered cloth.

Marguerite seemed dazed and giddy; she had been five hours in

that stuffy coach with nothing to distract her thoughts except the

rain-sodden landscape, on which she had ceaselessly gazed since the

early dawn.

Armand led her to the bench, and she sank down on it, numb and inert,

resting her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.

“If it were only all over!” she sighed involuntarily. “Armand, at times

now I feel as if I were not really sane--as if my reason had already

given way! Tell me, do I seem mad to you at times?”

He sat down beside her and tried to chafe her little cold hands.

There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for permission

Chauvelin entered the room.

“My humble apologies to you, Lady Blakeney,” he said in his usual suave

manner, “but our worthy host informs me that this is the only room in

which he can serve a meal. Therefore I am forced to intrude my presence

upon you.”

Though he spoke with outward politeness, his tone had become more

peremptory, less bland, and he did not await Marguerite’s reply before

he sat down opposite to her and continued to talk airily.

“An ill-conditioned fellow, our host,” he said--“quite reminds me of

our friend Brogard at the Chat Gris in Calais. You remember him, Lady

Blakeney?”

“My sister is giddy and over-tired,” interposed Armand firmly. “I pray

you, citizen, to have some regard for her.”

“All regard in the world, citizen St. Just,” protested Chauvelin

jovially. “Methought that those pleasant reminiscences would cheer

her. Ah! here comes the soup,” he added, as a man in blue blouse and

breeches, with sabots on his feet, slouched into the room, carrying a

tureen which he incontinently placed upon the table. “I feel sure that

in England Lady Blakeney misses our excellent croutes-au-pot, the glory

of our bourgeois cookery--Lady Blakeney, a little soup?”

“I thank you, sir,” she murmured.

“Do try and eat something, little mother,” Armand whispered in her ear;

“try and keep up your strength for his sake, if not for mine.”

She turned a wan, pale face to him, and tried to smile.

“I’ll try, dear,” she said.

“You have taken bread and meat to the citizens in the coach?” Chauvelin

called out to the retreating figure of mine host.

“H’m!” grunted the latter in assent.

“And see that the citizen soldiers are well fed, or there will be

trouble.”

“H’m!” grunted the man again. After which he banged the door to behind

him.

“Citizen Heron is loath to let the prisoner out of his sight,” explained

Chauvelin lightly, “now that we have reached the last, most important

stage of our journey, so he is sharing Sir Percy’s mid-day meal in the

interior of the coach.”

He ate his soup with a relish, ostentatiously paying many small

attentions to Marguerite all the time. He ordered meat for her--bread,

butter--asked if any dainties could be got. He was apparently in the

best of tempers.

After he had eaten and drunk he rose and bowed ceremoniously to her.

“Your pardon, Lady Blakeney,” he said, “but I must confer with the

prisoner now, and take from him full directions for the continuance of

our journey. After that I go to the guard-house, which is some distance

from here, right at the other end of the city. We pick up a fresh squad

here, twenty hardened troopers from a cavalry regiment usually stationed

at Abbeville. They have had work to do in this town, which is a hot-bed

of treachery. I must go inspect the men and the sergeant who will be in

command. Citizen Heron leaves all these inspections to me; he likes to

stay by his prisoner. In the meanwhile you will be escorted back to your

coach, where I pray you to await my arrival, when we change guard first,

then proceed on our way.”

Marguerite was longing to ask him many questions; once again she

would have smothered her pride and begged for news of her husband,

but Chauvelin did not wait. He hurried out of the room, and Armand and

Marguerite could hear him ordering the soldiers to take them forthwith

back to the coach.

As they came out of the inn they saw the other coach some fifty metres

further up the street. The horses that had done duty since leaving

Abbeville had been taken out, and two soldiers in ragged shirts, and

with crimson caps set jauntily over their left ear, were leading the two

fresh horses along. The troopers were still mounting guard round both

the coaches; they would be relieved presently.

Marguerite would have given ten years of her life at this moment for the

privilege of speaking to her husband, or even of seeing him--of seeing

that he was well. A quick, wild plan sprang up in her mind that she

would bribe the sergeant in command to grant her wish while citizen

Chauvelin was absent. The man had not an unkind face, and he must be

very poor--people in France were very poor these days, though the rich

had been robbed and luxurious homes devastated ostensibly to help the

poor.

She was about to put this sudden thought into execution when Heron’s

hideous face, doubly hideous now with that bandage of doubtful

cleanliness cutting across his brow, appeared at the carriage window.

He cursed violently and at the top of his voice.

“What are those d--d aristos doing out there?” he shouted.

“Just getting into the coach, citizen,” replied the sergeant promptly.

And Armand and Marguerite were immediately ordered back into the coach.

Heron remained at the window for a few moments longer; he had a

toothpick in his hand which he was using very freely.

“How much longer are we going to wait in this cursed hole?” he called

out to the sergeant.

“Only a few moments longer, citizen. Citizen Chauvelin will be back soon

with the guard.”

A quarter of an hour later the clatter of cavalry horses on the rough,

uneven pavement drew Marguerite’s attention. She lowered the carriage

window and looked out. Chauvelin had just returned with the new escort.

He was on horseback; his horse’s bridle, since he was but an indifferent

horseman, was held by one of the troopers.

Outside the inn he dismounted; evidently he had taken full command of

the expedition, and scarcely referred to Heron, who spent most of his

time cursing at the men or the weather when he was not lying half-asleep

and partially drunk in the inside of the carriage.

The changing of the guard was now accomplished quietly and in perfect

order. The new escort consisted of twenty mounted men, including a

sergeant and a corporal, and of two drivers, one for each coach. The

cortege now was filed up in marching order; ahead a small party of

scouts, then the coach with Marguerite and Armand closely surrounded by

mounted men, and at a short distance the second coach with citizen Heron

and the prisoner equally well guarded.

Chauvelin superintended all the arrangements himself. He spoke for some

few moments with the sergeant, also with the driver of his own coach. He

went to the window of the other carriage, probably in order to consult

with citizen Heron, or to take final directions from the prisoner,

for Marguerite, who was watching him, saw him standing on the step and

leaning well forward into the interior, whilst apparently he was taking

notes on a small tablet which he had in his hand.

A small knot of idlers had congregated in the narrow street; men in

blouses and boys in ragged breeches lounged against the verandah of

the inn and gazed with inexpressive, stolid eyes on the soldiers, the

coaches, the citizen who wore the tricolour scarf. They had seen this

sort of thing before now--aristos being conveyed to Paris under arrest,

prisoners on their way to or from Amiens. They saw Marguerite’s pale

face at the carriage window. It was not the first woman’s face they had

seen under like circumstances, and there was no special interest about

this aristo. They were smoking or spitting, or just lounging idly

against the balustrade. Marguerite wondered if none of them had wife,

sister, or mother, or child; if every sympathy, every kind of feeling in

these poor wretches had been atrophied by misery or by fear.

At last everything was in order and the small party ready to start.

“Does any one here know the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, close by the

park of the Chateau d’Ourde?” asked Chauvelin, vaguely addressing the

knot of gaffers that stood closest to him.

The men shook their heads. Some had dimly heard of the Chateau d’Ourde;

it was some way in the interior of the forest of Boulogne, but no one

knew about a chapel; people did not trouble about chapels nowadays. With

the indifference so peculiar to local peasantry, these men knew no more

of the surrounding country than the twelve or fifteen league circle that

was within a walk of their sleepy little town.

One of the scouts on ahead turned in his saddle and spoke to citizen

Chauvelin:

“I think I know the way pretty well; citizen Chauvelin,” he said; “at

any rate, I know it as far as the forest of Boulogne.”

Chauvelin referred to his tablets.

“That’s good,” he said; “then when you reach the mile-stone that stands

on this road at the confine of the forest, bear sharply to your

right and skirt the wood until you see the hamlet of--Le--something.

Le--Le--yes--Le Crocq--that’s it in the valley below.”

“I know Le Crocq, I think,” said the trooper.

“Very well, then; at that point it seems that a wide road strikes at

right angles into the interior of the forest; you follow that until a

stone chapel with a colonnaded porch stands before you on your left, and

the walls and gates of a park on your right. That is so, is it not, Sir

Percy?” he added, once more turning towards the interior of the coach.

Apparently the answer satisfied him, for he gave the quick word of

command, “En avant!” then turned back towards his own coach and finally

entered it.

“Do you know the Chateau d’Ourde, citizen St. Just?” he asked abruptly

as soon as the carriage began to move.

Armand woke--as was habitual with him these days--from some gloomy

reverie.

“Yes, citizen,” he replied. “I know it.”

“And the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre?”

“Yes. I know it too.”

Indeed, he knew the chateau well, and the little chapel in the forest,

whither the fisher-folk from Portel and Boulogne came on a pilgrimage

once a year to lay their nets on the miracle-working relic. The chapel

was disused now. Since the owner of the chateau had fled no one had

tended it, and the fisher-folk were afraid to wander out, lest their

superstitious faith be counted against them by the authorities, who had

abolished le bon Dieu.

But Armand had found refuge there eighteen months ago, on his way to

Calais, when Percy had risked his life in order to save him--Armand--from

death. He could have groaned aloud with the anguish of this

recollection. But Marguerite’s aching nerves had thrilled at the name.

The Chateau d’Ourde! The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre! That was the

place which Percy had mentioned in his letter, the place where he had

given rendezvous to de Batz. Sir Andrew had said that the Dauphin could

not possibly be there, yet Percy was leading his enemies thither,

and had given the rendezvous there to de Batz. And this despite that

whatever plans, whatever hopes, had been born in his mind when he was

still immured in the Conciergerie prison must have been set at naught by

the clever counter plot of Chauvelin and Heron.

“At the merest suspicion that you have played us false, at a hint that

you have led us into an ambush, or if merely our hopes of finding Capet

at the end of the journey are frustrated, the lives of your wife and of

your friend are forfeit to us, and they will both be shot before your

eyes.”

With these words, with this precaution, those cunning fiends had

effectually not only tied the schemer’s hands, but forced him either to

deliver the child to them or to sacrifice his wife and his friend.

The impasse was so horrible that she could not face it even in her

thoughts. A strange, fever-like heat coursed through her veins, yet

left her hands icy-cold; she longed for, yet dreaded, the end of the

journey--that awful grappling with the certainty of coming death.

Perhaps, after all, Percy, too, had given up all hope. Long ago he had

consecrated his life to the attainment of his own ideals; and there

was a vein of fatalism in him; perhaps he had resigned himself to the

inevitable, and his only desire now was to give up his life, as he had

said, in the open, beneath God’s sky, to draw his last breath with the

storm-clouds tossed through infinity above him, and the murmur of the

wind in the trees to sing him to rest.

Crecy was gradually fading into the distance, wrapped in a mantle of

damp and mist. For a long while Marguerite could see the sloping slate

roofs glimmering like steel in the grey afternoon light, and the quaint

church tower with its beautiful lantern, through the pierced stonework

of which shone patches of the leaden sky.

Then a sudden twist of the road hid the city from view; only the

outlying churchyard remained in sight, with its white monuments and

granite crosses, over which the dark yews, wet with the rain and shaken

by the gale, sent showers of diamond-like sprays.

CHAPTER XLV. THE FOREST OF BOULOGNE

Progress was not easy, and very slow along the muddy road; the two

coaches moved along laboriously, with wheels creaking and sinking deeply

from time to time in the quagmire.

When the small party finally reached the edge of the wood the greyish

light of this dismal day had changed in the west to a dull reddish

glow--a glow that had neither brilliance nor incandescence in it; only a

weird tint that hung over the horizon and turned the distance into lines

of purple.

The nearness of the sea made itself already felt; there was a briny

taste in the damp atmosphere, and the trees all turned their branches

away in the same direction against the onslaught of the prevailing

winds.

The road at this point formed a sharp fork, skirting the wood on either

side, the forest lying like a black close mass of spruce and firs on the

left, while the open expanse of country stretched out on the right. The

south-westerly gale struck with full violence against the barrier of

forest trees, bending the tall crests of the pines and causing their

small dead branches to break and fall with a sharp, crisp sound like a

cry of pain.

The squad had been fresh at starting; now the men had been four hours

in the saddle under persistent rain and gusty wind; they were tired, and

the atmosphere of the close, black forest so near the road was weighing

upon their spirits.

Strange sounds came to them from out the dense network of trees--the

screeching of night-birds, the weird call of the owls, the swift and

furtive tread of wild beasts on the prowl. The cold winter and lack of

food had lured the wolves from their fastnesses--hunger had emboldened

them, and now, as gradually the grey light fled from the sky, dismal

howls could be heard in the distance, and now and then a pair of eyes,

bright with the reflection of the lurid western glow, would shine

momentarily out of the darkness like tiny glow-worms, and as quickly

vanish away.

The men shivered--more with vague superstitious fear than with cold.

They would have urged their horses on, but the wheels of the coaches

stuck persistently in the mud, and now and again a halt had to be called

so that the spokes and axles might be cleared.

They rode on in silence. No one had a mind to speak, and the mournful

soughing of the wind in the pine-trees seemed to check the words on

every lip. The dull thud of hoofs in the soft road, the clang of steel

bits and buckles, the snorting of the horses alone answered the wind,

and also the monotonous creaking of the wheels ploughing through the

ruts.

Soon the ruddy glow in the west faded into soft-toned purple and then

into grey; finally that too vanished. Darkness was drawing in on

every side like a wide, black mantle pulled together closer and closer

overhead by invisible giant hands.

The rain still fell in a thin drizzle that soaked through caps and

coats, made the bridles slimy and the saddles slippery and damp. A veil

of vapour hung over the horses’ cruppers, and was rendered fuller and

thicker every moment with the breath that came from their nostrils. The

wind no longer blew with gusty fury--its strength seemed to have been

spent with the grey light of day--but now and then it would still come

sweeping across the open country, and dash itself upon the wall of

forest trees, lashing against the horses’ ears, catching the corner of

a mantle here, an ill-adjusted cap there, and wreaking its mischievous

freak for a while, then with a sigh of satisfaction die, murmuring among

the pines.

Suddenly there was a halt, much shouting, a volley of oaths from the

drivers, and citizen Chauvelin thrust his head out of the carriage

window.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The scouts, citizen,” replied the sergeant, who had been riding close

to the coach door all this while; “they have returned.”

“Tell one man to come straight to me and report.”

Marguerite sat quite still. Indeed, she had almost ceased to live

momentarily, for her spirit was absent from her body, which felt neither

fatigue, nor cold, nor pain. But she heard the snorting of the horse

close by as its rider pulled him up sharply beside the carriage door.

“Well?” said Chauvelin curtly.

“This is the cross-road, citizen,” replied the man; “it strikes straight

into the wood, and the hamlet of Le Crocq lies down in the valley on the

right.”

“Did you follow the road in the wood?”

“Yes, citizen. About two leagues from here there is a clearing with a

small stone chapel, more like a large shrine, nestling among the trees.

Opposite to it the angle of a high wall with large wrought-iron gates at

the corner, and from these a wide drive leads through a park.”

“Did you turn into the drive?”

“Only a little way, citizen. We thought we had best report first that

all is safe.”

“You saw no one?”

“No one.”

“The chateau, then, lies some distance from the gates?”

“A league or more, citizen. Close to the gates there are outhouses and

stabling, the disused buildings of the home farm, I should say.”

“Good! We are on the right road, that is clear. Keep ahead with your men

now, but only some two hundred metres or so. Stay!” he added, as if on

second thoughts. “Ride down to the other coach and ask the prisoner if

we are on the right track.”

The rider turned his horse sharply round. Marguerite heard-the clang of

metal and the sound of retreating hoofs.

A few moments later the man returned.

“Yes, citizen,” he reported, “the prisoner says it is quite right. The

Chateau d’Ourde lies a full league from its gates. This is the nearest

road to the chapel and the chateau. He says we should reach the former

in half an hour. It will be very dark in there,” he added with a

significant nod in the direction of the wood.

Chauvelin made no reply, but quietly stepped out of the coach.

Marguerite watched him, leaning out of the window, following his

small trim figure as he pushed his way past the groups of mounted men,

catching at a horse’s bit now and then, or at a bridle, making a way for

himself amongst the restless, champing animals, without the slightest

hesitation or fear.

Soon his retreating figure lost its sharp outline silhouetted against

the evening sky. It was enfolded in the veil of vapour which was blown

out of the horses’ nostrils or rising from their damp cruppers;

it became more vague, almost ghost-like, through the mist and the

fast-gathering gloom.

Presently a group of troopers hid him entirely from her view, but she

could hear his thin, smooth voice quite clearly as he called to citizen

Heron.

“We are close to the end of our journey now, citizen,” she heard him

say. “If the prisoner has not played us false little Capet should be in

our charge within the hour.”

A growl not unlike those that came from out the mysterious depths of the

forest answered him.

“If he is not,” and Marguerite recognised the harsh tones of citizen

Heron--“if he is not, then two corpses will be rotting in this wood

tomorrow for the wolves to feed on, and the prisoner will be on his way

back to Paris with me.”

Some one laughed. It might have been one of the troopers, more callous

than his comrades, but to Marguerite the laugh had a strange, familiar

ring in it, the echo of something long since past and gone.

Then Chauvelin’s voice once more came clearly to her ear:

“My suggestion, citizen,” he was saying, “is that the prisoner shall now

give me an order--couched in whatever terms he may think necessary--but

a distinct order to his friends to give up Capet to me without any

resistance. I could then take some of the men with me, and ride as

quickly as the light will allow up to the chateau, and take possession

of it, of Capet, and of those who are with him. We could get along

faster thus. One man can give up his horse to me and continue the

journey on the box of your coach. The two carriages could then follow at

foot pace. But I fear that if we stick together complete darkness

will overtake us and we might find ourselves obliged to pass a very

uncomfortable night in this wood.”

“I won’t spend another night in this suspense--it would kill me,”

growled Heron to the accompaniment of one of his choicest oaths. “You

must do as you think right--you planned the whole of this affair--see to

it that it works out well in the end.”

“How many men shall I take with me? Our advance guard is here, of

course.”

“I couldn’t spare you more than four more men--I shall want the others

to guard the prisoners.”

“Four men will be quite sufficient, with the four of the advance guard.

That will leave you twelve men for guarding your prisoners, and you

really only need to guard the woman--her life will answer for the

others.”

He had raised his voice when he said this, obviously intending that

Marguerite and Armand should hear.

“Then I’ll ahead,” he continued, apparently in answer to an assent

from his colleague. “Sir Percy, will you be so kind as to scribble the

necessary words on these tablets?”

There was a long pause, during which Marguerite heard plainly the long

and dismal cry of a night bird that, mayhap, was seeking its mate. Then

Chauvelin’s voice was raised again.

“I thank you,” he said; “this certainly should be quite effectual. And

now, citizen Heron, I do not think that under the circumstances we need

fear an ambuscade or any kind of trickery--you hold the hostages. And

if by any chance I and my men are attacked, or if we encounter armed

resistance at the chateau, I will despatch a rider back straightway to

you, and--well, you will know what to do.”

His voice died away, merged in the soughing of the wind, drowned by

the clang of metal, of horses snorting, of men living and breathing.

Marguerite felt that beside her Armand had shuddered, and that in the

darkness his trembling hand had sought and found hers.

She leaned well out of the window, trying to see. The gloom had gathered

more closely in, and round her the veil of vapour from the horses’

steaming cruppers hung heavily in the misty air. In front of her the

straight lines of a few fir trees stood out dense and black against the

greyness beyond, and between these lines purple tints of various tones

and shades mingled one with the other, merging the horizon line with the

sky. Here and there a more solid black patch indicated the tiny houses

of the hamlet of Le Crocq far down in the valley below; from some of

these houses small lights began to glimmer like blinking yellow eyes.

Marguerite’s gaze, however, did not rest on the distant landscape--it

tried to pierce the gloom that hid her immediate surroundings; the

mounted men were all round the coach--more closely round her than the

trees in the forest. But the horses were restless, moving all the

time, and as they moved she caught glimpses of that other coach and of

Chauvelin’s ghostlike figure, walking rapidly through the mist. Just for

one brief moment she saw the other coach, and Heron’s head and shoulders

leaning out of the window. His sugar-loaf hat was on his head, and the

bandage across his brow looked like a sharp, pale streak below it.

“Do not doubt it, citizen Chauvelin,” he called out loudly in his harsh,

raucous voice, “I shall know what to do; the wolves will have their meal

to-night, and the guillotine will not be cheated either.”

Armand put his arm round his sister’s shoulders and gently drew her back

into the carriage.

“Little mother,” he said, “if you can think of a way whereby my life

would redeem Percy’s and yours, show me that way now.”

But she replied quietly and firmly:

“There is no way, Armand. If there is, it is in the hands of God.”

CHAPTER XLVI. OTHERS IN THE PARK

Chauvelin and his picked escort had in the meanwhile detached themselves

from the main body of the squad. Soon the dull thud of their horses’

hoofs treading the soft ground came more softly--then more softly still

as they turned into the wood, and the purple shadows seemed to enfold

every sound and finally to swallow them completely.

Armand and Marguerite from the depth of the carriage heard Heron’s voice

ordering his own driver now to take the lead. They sat quite still and

watched, and presently the other coach passed them slowly on the road,

its silhouette standing out ghostly and grim for a moment against the

indigo tones of the distant country.

Heron’s head, with its battered sugar-loaf hat, and the soiled bandage

round the brow, was as usual out of the carriage window. He leered

across at Marguerite when he saw the outline of her face framed by the

window of the carriage.

“Say all the prayers you have ever known, citizeness,” he said with a

loud laugh, “that my friend Chauvelin may find Capet at the chateau, or

else you may take a last look at the open country, for you will not see

the sun rise on it to-morrow. It is one or the other, you know.”

She tried not to look at him; the very sight of him filled her with

horror--that blotched, gaunt face of his, the fleshy lips, that hideous

bandage across his face that hid one of his eyes! She tried not to see

him and not to hear him laugh.

Obviously he too laboured under the stress of great excitement. So far

everything had gone well; the prisoner had made no attempt at escape,

and apparently did not mean to play a double game. But the crucial hour

had come, and with it darkness and the mysterious depths of the forest

with their weird sounds and sudden flashes of ghostly lights. They

naturally wrought on the nerves of men like Heron, whose conscience

might have been dormant, but whose ears were nevertheless filled with

the cries of innocent victims sacrificed to their own lustful ambitions

and their blind, unreasoning hates.

He gave sharp orders to the men to close up round the carriages, and

then gave the curt word of command:

“En avant!”

Marguerite could but strain her ears to listen. All her senses, all her

faculties had merged into that of hearing, rendering it doubly keen. It

seemed to her that she could distinguish the faint sound--that even as

she listened grew fainter and fainter yet--of Chauvelin and his squad

moving away rapidly into the thickness of the wood some distance already

ahead.

Close to her there was the snorting of horses, the clanging and noise of

moving mounted men. Heron’s coach had taken the lead; she could hear the

creaking of its wheels, the calls of the driver urging his beasts.

The diminished party was moving at foot-pace in the darkness that seemed

to grow denser at every step, and through that silence which was so full

of mysterious sounds.

The carriage rolled and rocked on its springs; Marguerite, giddy and

overtired, lay back with closed eyes, her hand resting in that of

Armand. Time, space and distance had ceased to be; only Death, the

great Lord of all, had remained; he walked on ahead, scythe on skeleton

shoulder, and beckoned patiently, but with a sure, grim hand.

There was another halt, the coach-wheels groaned and creaked on their

axles, one or two horses reared with the sudden drawing up of the curb.

“What is it now?” came Heron’s hoarse voice through the darkness.

“It is pitch-dark, citizen,” was the response from ahead. “The drivers

cannot see their horses’ ears. They wait to know if they may light their

lanthorns and then lead their horses.”

“They can lead their horses,” replied Heron roughly, “but I’ll have no

lanthorns lighted. We don’t know what fools may be lurking behind trees,

hoping to put a bullet through my head--or yours, sergeant--we don’t

want to make a lighted target of ourselves--what? But let the drivers

lead their horses, and one or two of you who are riding greys might

dismount too and lead the way--the greys would show up perhaps in this

cursed blackness.”

While his orders were being carried out, he called out once more:

“Are we far now from that confounded chapel?”

“We can’t be far, citizen; the whole forest is not more than six leagues

wide at any point, and we have gone two since we turned into it.”

“Hush!” Heron’s voice suddenly broke in hoarsely. “What was that?

Silence, I say. Damn you--can’t you hear?”

There was a hush--every ear straining to listen; but the horses were

not still--they continued to champ their bits, to paw the ground, and

to toss their heads, impatient to get on. Only now and again there

would come a lull even through these sounds--a second or two, mayhap,

of perfect, unbroken silence--and then it seemed as if right through the

darkness a mysterious echo sent back those same sounds--the champing of

bits, the pawing of soft ground, the tossing and snorting of animals,

human life that breathed far out there among the trees.

“It is citizen Chauvelin and his men,” said the sergeant after a while,

and speaking in a whisper.

“Silence--I want to hear,” came the curt, hoarsely-whispered command.

Once more every one listened, the men hardly daring to breathe, clinging

to their bridles and pulling on their horses’ mouths, trying to keep

them still, and again through the night there came like a faint echo

which seemed to throw back those sounds that indicated the presence of

men and of horses not very far away.

“Yes, it must be citizen Chauvelin,” said Heron at last; but the tone of

his voice sounded as if he were anxious and only half convinced; “but I

thought he would be at the chateau by now.”

“He may have had to go at foot-pace; it is very dark, citizen Heron,”

remarked the sergeant.

“En avant, then,” quoth the other; “the sooner we come up with him the

better.”

And the squad of mounted men, the two coaches, the drivers and the

advance section who were leading their horses slowly restarted on the

way. The horses snorted, the bits and stirrups clanged, and the springs

and wheels of the coaches creaked and groaned dismally as the ramshackle

vehicles began once more to plough the carpet of pine-needles that lay

thick upon the road.

But inside the carriage Armand and Marguerite held one another tightly

by the hand.

“It is de Batz--with his friends,” she whispered scarce above her

breath.

“De Batz?” he asked vaguely and fearfully, for in the dark he could not

see her face, and as he did not understand why she should suddenly be

talking of de Batz he thought with horror that mayhap her prophecy anent

herself had come true, and that her mind wearied and over-wrought--had

become suddenly unhinged.

“Yes, de Batz,” she replied. “Percy sent him a message, through me,

to meet him--here. I am not mad, Armand,” she added more calmly. “Sir

Andrew took Percy’s letter to de Batz the day that we started from

Paris.”

“Great God!” exclaimed Armand, and instinctively, with a sense of

protection, he put his arms round his sister. “Then, if Chauvelin or the

squad is attacked--if--”

“Yes,” she said calmly; “if de Batz makes an attack on Chauvelin, or

if he reaches the chateau first and tries to defend it, they will shoot

us... Armand, and Percy.”

“But is the Dauphin at the Chateau d’Ourde?”

“No, no! I think not.”

“Then why should Percy have invoked the aid of de Batz? Now, when--”

“I don’t know,” she murmured helplessly. “Of course, when he wrote the

letter he could not guess that they would hold us as hostages. He may

have thought that under cover of darkness and of an unexpected attack he

might have saved himself had he been alone; but now--now that you and I

are here--Oh! it is all so horrible, and I cannot understand it all.”

“Hark!” broke in Armand, suddenly gripping her arm more tightly.

“Halt!” rang the sergeant’s voice through the night.

This time there was no mistaking the sound; already it came from no far

distance. It was the sound of a man running and panting, and now and

again calling out as he ran.

For a moment there was stillness in the very air, the wind itself

was hushed between two gusts, even the rain had ceased its incessant

pattering. Heron’s harsh voice was raised in the stillness.

“What is it now?” he demanded.

“A runner, citizen,” replied the sergeant, “coming through the wood from

the right.”

“From the right?” and the exclamation was accompanied by a volley of

oaths; “the direction of the chateau? Chauvelin has been attacked; he is

sending a messenger back to me. Sergeant--sergeant, close up round that

coach; guard your prisoners as you value your life, and--”

The rest of his words were drowned in a yell of such violent fury that

the horses, already over-nervous and fidgety, reared in mad terror,

and the men had the greatest difficulty in holding them in. For a few

minutes noisy confusion prevailed, until the men could quieten their

quivering animals with soft words and gentle pattings.

Then the troopers obeyed, closing up round the coach wherein brother and

sister sat huddled against one another.

One of the men said under his breath:

“Ah! but the citizen agent knows how to curse! One day he will break his

gullet with the fury of his oaths.”

In the meanwhile the runner had come nearer, always at the same

breathless speed.

The next moment he was challenged:

“Qui va la?”

“A friend!” he replied, panting and exhausted. “Where is citizen Heron?”

“Here!” came the reply in a voice hoarse with passionate excitement.

“Come up, damn you. Be quick!”

“A lanthorn, citizen,” suggested one of the drivers.

“No--no--not now. Here! Where the devil are we?”

“We are close to the chapel on our left, citizen,” said the sergeant.

The runner, whose eyes were no doubt accustomed to the gloom, had drawn

nearer to the carriage.

“The gates of the chateau,” he said, still somewhat breathlessly, “are

just opposite here on the right, citizen. I have just come through

them.”

“Speak up, man!” and Heron’s voice now sounded as if choked with

passion. “Citizen Chauvelin sent you?”

“Yes. He bade me tell you that he has gained access to the chateau, and

that Capet is not there.”

A series of citizen Heron’s choicest oaths interrupted the man’s speech.

Then he was curtly ordered to proceed, and he resumed his report.

“Citizen Chauvelin rang at the door of the chateau; after a while he was

admitted by an old servant, who appeared to be in charge, but the place

seemed otherwise absolutely deserted--only--”

“Only what? Go on; what is it?”

“As we rode through the park it seemed to us as if we were being

watched, and followed. We heard distinctly the sound of horses behind

and around us, but we could see nothing; and now, when I ran back, again

I heard. There are others in the park to-night besides us, citizen.”

There was silence after that. It seemed as if the flood of Heron’s

blasphemous eloquence had spent itself at last.

“Others in the park!” And now his voice was scarcely above a whisper,

hoarse and trembling. “How many? Could you see?”

“No, citizen, we could not see; but there are horsemen lurking round the

chateau now. Citizen Chauvelin took four men into the house with him and

left the others on guard outside. He bade me tell you that it might be

safer to send him a few more men if you could spare them. There are

a number of disused farm buildings quite close to the gates, and he

suggested that all the horses be put up there for the night, and that

the men come up to the chateau on foot; it would be quicker and safer,

for the darkness is intense.”

Even while the man spoke the forest in the distance seemed to wake from

its solemn silence, the wind on its wings brought sounds of life and

movement different from the prowling of beasts or the screeching of

night-birds. It was the furtive advance of men, the quick whispers of

command, of encouragement, of the human animal preparing to attack his

kind. But all in the distance still, all muffled, all furtive as yet.

“Sergeant!” It was Heron’s voice, but it too was subdued, and almost

calm now; “can you see the chapel?”

“More clearly, citizen,” replied the sergeant. “It is on our left; quite

a small building, I think.”

“Then dismount, and walk all round it. See that there are no windows or

door in the rear.”

There was a prolonged silence, during which those distant sounds of men

moving, of furtive preparations for attack, struck distinctly through

the night.

Marguerite and Armand, clinging to one another, not knowing what to

think, nor yet what to fear, heard the sounds mingling with those

immediately round them, and Marguerite murmured under her breath:

“It is de Batz and some of his friends; but what can they do? What can

Percy hope for now?”

But of Percy she could hear and see nothing. The darkness and the

silence had drawn their impenetrable veil between his unseen presence

and her own consciousness. She could see the coach in which he was, but

Heron’s hideous personality, his head with its battered hat and soiled

bandage, had seemed to obtrude itself always before her gaze, blotting

out from her mind even the knowledge that Percy was there not fifty

yards away from her.

So strong did this feeling grow in her that presently the awful dread

seized upon her that he was no longer there; that he was dead, worn out

with fatigue and illness brought on by terrible privations, or if not

dead that he had swooned, that he was unconscious--his spirit absent

from his body. She remembered that frightful yell of rage and hate which

Heron had uttered a few minutes ago. Had the brute vented his fury on

his helpless, weakened prisoner, and stilled forever those lips that,

mayhap, had mocked him to the last?

Marguerite could not guess. She hardly knew what to hope. Vaguely, when

the thought of Percy lying dead beside his enemy floated through her

aching brain, she was almost conscious of a sense of relief at the

thought that at least he would be spared the pain of the final,

inevitable cataclysm.

CHAPTER XLVII. THE CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

The sergeant’s voice broke in upon her misery.

The man had apparently done as the citizen agent had ordered, and had

closely examined the little building that stood on the left--a vague,

black mass more dense than the surrounding gloom.

“It is all solid stone, citizen,” he said; “iron gates in front, closed

but not locked, rusty key in the lock, which turns quite easily; no

windows or door in the rear.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Quite certain, citizen; it is plain, solid stone at the back, and the

only possible access to the interior is through the iron gate in front.”

“Good.”

Marguerite could only just hear Heron speaking to the sergeant. Darkness

enveloped every form and deadened every sound. Even the harsh voice

which she had learned to loathe and to dread sounded curiously subdued

and unfamiliar. Heron no longer seemed inclined to storm, to rage, or

to curse. The momentary danger, the thought of failure, the hope

of revenge, had apparently cooled his temper, strengthened his

determination, and forced his voice down to a little above a whisper. He

gave his orders clearly and firmly, and the words came to Marguerite on

the wings of the wind with strange distinctness, borne to her ears by

the darkness itself, and the hush that lay over the wood.

“Take half a dozen men with you, sergeant,” she heard him say, “and join

citizen Chauvelin at the chateau. You can stable your horses in the farm

buildings close by, as he suggests and run to him on foot. You and your

men should quickly get the best of a handful of midnight prowlers; you

are well armed and they only civilians. Tell citizen Chauvelin that I

in the meanwhile will take care of our prisoners. The Englishman I shall

put in irons and lock up inside the chapel, with five men under the

command of your corporal to guard him, the other two I will drive myself

straight to Crecy with what is left of the escort. You understand?”

“Yes, citizen.”

“We may not reach Crecy until two hours after midnight, but directly

I arrive I will send citizen Chauvelin further reinforcements, which,

however, I hope may not necessary, but which will reach him in the early

morning. Even if he is seriously attacked, he can, with fourteen men he

will have with him, hold out inside the castle through the night. Tell

him also that at dawn two prisoners who will be with me will be shot in

the courtyard of the guard-house at Crecy, but that whether he has got

hold of Capet or not he had best pick up the Englishman in the chapel in

the morning and bring him straight to Crecy, where I shall be awaiting

him ready to return to Paris. You understand?”

“Yes, citizen.”

“Then repeat what I said.”

“I am to take six men with me to reinforce citizen Chauvelin now.”

“Yes.”

“And you, citizen, will drive straight back to Crecy, and will send

us further reinforcements from there, which will reach us in the early

morning.”

“Yes.”

“We are to hold the chateau against those unknown marauders if necessary

until the reinforcements come from Crecy. Having routed them, we return

here, pick up the Englishman whom you will have locked up in the

chapel under a strong guard commanded by Corporal Cassard, and join you

forthwith at Crecy.”

“This, whether citizen Chauvelin has got hold of Capet or not.”

“Yes, citizen, I understand,” concluded the sergeant imperturbably; “and

I am also to tell citizen Chauvelin that the two prisoners will be shot

at dawn in the courtyard of the guard-house at Crecy.”

“Yes. That is all. Try to find the leader of the attacking party, and

bring him along to Crecy with the Englishman; but unless they are

in very small numbers do not trouble about the others. Now en avant;

citizen Chauvelin might be glad of your help. And--stay--order all the

men to dismount, and take the horses out of one of the coaches, then

let the men you are taking with you each lead a horse, or even two, and

stable them all in the farm buildings. I shall not need them, and could

not spare any of my men for the work later on. Remember that, above

all, silence is the order. When you are ready to start, come back to me

here.”

The sergeant moved away, and Marguerite heard him transmitting the

citizen agent’s orders to the soldiers. The dismounting was carried

on in wonderful silence--for silence had been one of the principal

commands--only one or two words reached her ears.

“First section and first half of second section fall in, right wheel.

First section each take two horses on the lead. Quietly now there; don’t

tug at his bridle--let him go.”

And after that a simple report:

“All ready, citizen!”

“Good!” was the response. “Now detail your corporal and two men to come

here to me, so that we may put the Englishman in irons, and take him

at once to the chapel, and four men to stand guard at the doors of the

other coach.”

The necessary orders were given, and after that there came the curt

command:

“En avant!”

The sergeant, with his squad and all the horses, was slowly moving away

in the night. The horses’ hoofs hardly made a noise on the soft carpet

of pine-needles and of dead fallen leaves, but the champing of the bits

was of course audible, and now and then the snorting of some poor, tired

horse longing for its stable.

Somehow in Marguerite’s fevered mind this departure of a squad of men

seemed like the final flitting of her last hope; the slow agony of the

familiar sounds, the retreating horses and soldiers moving away amongst

the shadows, took on a weird significance. Heron had given his last

orders. Percy, helpless and probably unconscious, would spend the night

in that dank chapel, while she and Armand would be taken back to Crecy,

driven to death like some insentient animals to the slaughter.

When the grey dawn would first begin to peep through the branches of the

pines Percy would be led back to Paris and the guillotine, and she and

Armand will have been sacrificed to the hatred and revenge of brutes.

The end had come, and there was nothing more to be done. Struggling,

fighting, scheming, could be of no avail now; but she wanted to get to

her husband; she wanted to be near him now that death was so imminent

both for him and for her.

She tried to envisage it all, quite calmly, just as she knew that Percy

would wish her to do. The inevitable end was there, and she would

not give to these callous wretches here the gratuitous spectacle of a

despairing woman fighting blindly against adverse Fate.

But she wanted to go to her husband. She felt that she could face death

more easily on the morrow if she could but see him once, if she could

but look once more into the eyes that had mirrored so much enthusiasm,

such absolute vitality and whole-hearted self-sacrifice, and such an

intensity of love and passion; if she could but kiss once more those

lips that had smiled through life, and would smile, she knew, even in

the face of death.

She tried to open the carriage door, but it was held from without, and a

harsh voice cursed her, ordering her to sit still.

But she could lean out of the window and strain her eyes to see. They

were by now accustomed to the gloom, the dilated pupils taking in

pictures of vague forms moving like ghouls in the shadows. The other

coach was not far, and she could hear Heron’s voice, still subdued and

calm, and the curses of the men. But not a sound from Percy.

“I think the prisoner is unconscious,” she heard one of the men say.

“Lift him out of the carriage, then,” was Heron’s curt command; “and you

go and throw open the chapel gates.”

Marguerite saw it all. The movement, the crowd of men, two vague, black

forms lifting another one, which appeared heavy and inert, out of the

coach, and carrying it staggering up towards the chapel.

Then the forms disappeared, swallowed up by the more dense mass of the

little building, merged in with it, immovable as the stone itself.

Only a few words reached her now.

“He is unconscious.”

“Leave him there, then; he’ll not move!”

“Now close the gates!”

There was a loud clang, and Marguerite gave a piercing scream. She tore

at the handle of the carriage door.

“Armand, Armand, go to him!” she cried; and all her self-control, all

her enforced calm, vanished in an outburst of wild, agonising passion.

“Let me get to him, Armand! This is the end; get me to him, in the name

of God!”

“Stop that woman screaming,” came Heron’s voice clearly through the

night. “Put her and the other prisoner in irons--quick!”

But while Marguerite expended her feeble strength in a mad, pathetic

effort to reach her husband, even now at this last hour, when all hope

was dead and Death was so nigh, Armand had already wrenched the carriage

door from the grasp of the soldier who was guarding it. He was of the

South, and knew the trick of charging an unsuspecting adversary with

head thrust forward like a bull inside a ring. Thus he knocked one of

the soldiers down and made a quick rush for the chapel gates.

The men, attacked so suddenly and in such complete darkness, did not

wait for orders. They closed in round Armand; one man drew his sabre and

hacked away with it in aimless rage.

But for the moment he evaded them all, pushing his way through them,

not heeding the blows that came on him from out the darkness. At last he

reached the chapel. With one bound he was at the gate, his numb fingers

fumbling for the lock, which he could not see.

It was a vigorous blow from Heron’s fist that brought him at last to his

knees, and even then his hands did not relax their hold; they gripped

the ornamental scroll of the gate, shook the gate itself in its rusty

hinges, pushed and pulled with the unreasoning strength of despair.

He had a sabre cut across his brow, and the blood flowed in a warm,

trickling stream down his face. But of this he was unconscious; all that

he wanted, all that he was striving for with agonising heart-beats

and cracking sinews, was to get to his friend, who was lying in there

unconscious, abandoned--dead, perhaps.

“Curse you,” struck Heron’s voice close to his ear. “Cannot some of you

stop this raving maniac?”

Then it was that the heavy blow on his head caused him a sensation of

sickness, and he fell on his knees, still gripping the ironwork.

Stronger hands than his were forcing him to loosen his hold; blows that

hurt terribly rained on his numbed fingers; he felt himself dragged

away, carried like an inert mass further and further from that gate

which he would have given his lifeblood to force open.

And Marguerite heard all this from the inside of the coach where she was

imprisoned as effectually as was Percy’s unconscious body inside that

dark chapel. She could hear the noise and scramble, and Heron’s hoarse

commands, the swift sabre strokes as they cut through the air.

Already a trooper had clapped irons on her wrists, two others held the

carriage doors. Now Armand was lifted back into the coach, and she could

not even help to make him comfortable, though as he was lifted in she

heard him feebly moaning. Then the carriage doors were banged to again.

“Do not allow either of the prisoners out again, on peril of your

lives!” came with a vigorous curse from Heron.

After which there was a moment’s silence; whispered commands came

spasmodically in deadened sound to her ear.

“Will the key turn?”

“Yes, citizen.”

“All secure?”

“Yes, citizen. The prisoner is groaning.”

“Let him groan.”

“The empty coach, citizen? The horses have been taken out.”

“Leave it standing where it is, then; citizen Chauvelin will need it in

the morning.”

“Armand,” whispered Marguerite inside the coach, “did you see Percy?”

“It was so dark,” murmured Armand feebly; “but I saw him, just inside

the gates, where they had laid him down. I heard him groaning. Oh, my

God!”

“Hush, dear!” she said. “We can do nothing more, only die, as he lived,

bravely and with a smile on our lips, in memory of him.”

“Number 35 is wounded, citizen,” said one of the men.

“Curse the fool who did the mischief,” was the placid response. “Leave

him here with the guard.”

“How many of you are there left, then?” asked the same voice a moment

later.

“Only two, citizen; if one whole section remains with me at the chapel

door, and also the wounded man.”

“Two are enough for me, and five are not too many at the chapel door.”

And Heron’s coarse, cruel laugh echoed against the stone walls of the

little chapel. “Now then, one of you get into the coach, and the other

go to the horses’ heads; and remember, Corporal Cassard, that you and

your men who stay here to guard that chapel door are answerable to the

whole nation with your lives for the safety of the Englishman.”

The carriage door was thrown open, and a soldier stepped in and sat down

opposite Marguerite and Armand. Heron in the meanwhile was apparently

scrambling up the box. Marguerite could hear him muttering curses as he

groped for the reins, and finally gathered them into his hand.

The springs of the coach creaked and groaned as the vehicle slowly

swung round; the wheels ploughed deeply through the soft carpet of dead

leaves.

Marguerite felt Armand’s inert body leaning heavily against her

shoulder.

“Are you in pain, dear?” she asked softly.

He made no reply, and she thought that he had fainted. It was better

so; at least the next dreary hours would flit by for him in the blissful

state of unconsciousness. Now at last the heavy carriage began to move

more evenly. The soldier at the horses’ heads was stepping along at a

rapid pace.

Marguerite would have given much even now to look back once more at

the dense black mass, blacker and denser than any shadow that had ever

descended before on God’s earth, which held between its cold, cruel

walls all that she loved in the world.

But her wrists were fettered by the irons, which cut into her flesh when

she moved. She could no longer lean out of the window, and she could

not even hear. The whole forest was hushed, the wind was lulled to rest;

wild beasts and night-birds were silent and still. And the wheels of the

coach creaked in the ruts, bearing Marguerite with every turn further

and further away from the man who lay helpless in the chapel of the Holy

Sepulchre.

CHAPTER XLVIII. THE WANING MOON

Armand had wakened from his attack of faintness, and brother and sister

sat close to one another, shoulder touching shoulder. That sense of

nearness was the one tiny spark of comfort to both of them on this

dreary, dreary way.

The coach had lumbered on unceasingly since all eternity--so it seemed

to them both. Once there had been a brief halt, when Heron’s rough voice

had ordered the soldier at the horses’ heads to climb on the box beside

him, and once--it had been a very little while ago--a terrible cry of

pain and terror had rung through the stillness of the night. Immediately

after that the horses had been put at a more rapid pace, but it had

seemed to Marguerite as if that one cry of pain had been repeated by

several others which sounded more feeble and soon appeared to be dying

away in the distance behind.

The soldier who sat opposite to them must have heard the cry too, for he

jumped up, as if wakened from sleep, and put his head out of the window.

“Did you hear that cry, citizen?” he asked.

But only a curse answered him, and a peremptory command not to lose

sight of the prisoners by poking his head out of the window.

“Did you hear the cry?” asked the soldier of Marguerite as he made haste

to obey.

“Yes! What could it be?” she murmured.

“It seems dangerous to drive so fast in this darkness,” muttered the

soldier.

After which remark he, with the stolidity peculiar to his kind,

figuratively shrugged his shoulders, detaching himself, as it were, of

the whole affair.

“We should be out of the forest by now,” he remarked in an undertone a

little while later; “the way seemed shorter before.”

Just then the coach gave an unexpected lurch to one side, and after much

groaning and creaking of axles and springs it came to a standstill, and

the citizen agent was heard cursing loudly and then scrambling down from

the box.

The next moment the carriage-door was pulled open from without, and the

harsh voice called out peremptorily:

“Citizen soldier, here--quick!--quick!--curse you!--we’ll have one of

the horses down if you don’t hurry!”

The soldier struggled to his feet; it was never good to be slow in

obeying the citizen agent’s commands. He was half-asleep and no doubt

numb with cold and long sitting still; to accelerate his movements he

was suddenly gripped by the arm and dragged incontinently out of the

coach.

Then the door was slammed to again, either by a rough hand or a sudden

gust of wind, Marguerite could not tell; she heard a cry of rage and one

of terror, and Heron’s raucous curses. She cowered in the corner of the

carriage with Armand’s head against her shoulder, and tried to close her

ears to all those hideous sounds.

Then suddenly all the sounds were hushed and all around everything

became perfectly calm and still--so still that at first the silence

oppressed her with a vague, nameless dread. It was as if Nature herself

had paused, that she might listen; and the silence became more and more

absolute, until Marguerite could hear Armand’s soft, regular breathing

close to her ear.

The window nearest to her was open, and as she leaned forward with that

paralysing sense of oppression a breath of pure air struck full upon her

nostrils and brought with it a briny taste as if from the sea.

It was not quite so dark; and there was a sense as of open country

stretching out to the limits of the horizon. Overhead a vague greyish

light suffused the sky, and the wind swept the clouds in great rolling

banks right across that light.

Marguerite gazed upward with a more calm feeling that was akin to

gratitude. That pale light, though so wan and feeble, was thrice welcome

after that inky blackness wherein shadows were less dark than the

lights. She watched eagerly the bank of clouds driven by the dying gale.

The light grew brighter and faintly golden, now the banks of

clouds--storm-tossed and fleecy--raced past one another, parted

and reunited like veils of unseen giant dancers waved by hands that

controlled infinite space--advanced and rushed and slackened speed

again--united and finally torn asunder to reveal the waning moon,

honey-coloured and mysterious, rising as if from an invisible ocean far

away.

The wan pale light spread over the wide stretch of country, throwing

over it as it spread dull tones of indigo and of blue. Here and there

sparse, stunted trees with fringed gaunt arms bending to prevailing

winds proclaimed the neighbourhood of the sea.

Marguerite gazed on the picture which the waning moon had so suddenly

revealed; but she gazed with eyes that knew not what they saw. The moon

had risen on her right--there lay the east--and the coach must have been

travelling due north, whereas Crecy...

In the absolute silence that reigned she could perceive from far, very

far away, the sound of a church clock striking the midnight hour; and

now it seemed to her supersensitive senses that a firm footstep was

treading the soft earth, a footstep that drew nearer--and then nearer

still.

Nature did pause to listen. The wind was hushed, the night-birds in

the forest had gone to rest. Marguerite’s heart beat so fast that its

throbbings choked her, and a dizziness clouded her consciousness.

But through this state of torpor she heard the opening of the carriage

door, she felt the onrush of that pure, briny air, and she felt a long,

burning kiss upon her hands.

She thought then that she was really dead, and that God in His infinite

love had opened to her the outer gates of Paradise.

“My love!” she murmured.

She was leaning back in the carriage and her eyes were closed, but she

felt that firm fingers removed the irons from her wrists, and that a

pair of warm lips were pressed there in their stead.

“There, little woman, that’s better so--is it not? Now let me get hold

of poor old Armand!”

It was Heaven, of course, else how could earth hold such heavenly joy?

“Percy!” exclaimed Armand in an awed voice.

“Hush, dear!” murmured Marguerite feebly; “we are in Heaven you and I--”

Whereupon a ringing laugh woke the echoes of the silent night.

“In Heaven, dear heart!” And the voice had a delicious earthly ring in

its whole-hearted merriment. “Please God, you’ll both be at Portel with

me before dawn.”

Then she was indeed forced to believe. She put out her hands and groped

for him, for it was dark inside the carriage; she groped, and felt

his massive shoulders leaning across the body of the coach, while his

fingers busied themselves with the irons on Armand’s wrist.

“Don’t touch that brute’s filthy coat with your dainty fingers, dear

heart,” he said gaily. “Great Lord! I have worn that wretch’s clothes

for over two hours; I feel as if the dirt had penetrated to my bones.”

Then with that gesture so habitual to him he took her head between his

two hands, and drawing her to him until the wan light from without lit

up the face that he worshipped, he gazed his fill into her eyes.

She could only see the outline of his head silhouetted against the

wind-tossed sky; she could not see his eyes, nor his lips, but she felt

his nearness, and the happiness of that almost caused her to swoon.

“Come out into the open, my lady fair,” he murmured, and though she

could not see, she could feel that he smiled; “let God’s pure air blow

through your hair and round your dear head. Then, if you can walk so

far, there’s a small half-way house close by here. I have knocked up

the none too amiable host. You and Armand could have half an hour’s rest

there before we go further on our way.”

“But you, Percy?--are you safe?”

“Yes, m’dear, we are all of us safe until morning-time enough to reach

Le Portel, and to be aboard the Day-Dream before mine amiable friend M.

Chambertin has discovered his worthy colleague lying gagged and bound

inside the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. By Gad! how old Heron will

curse--the moment he can open his mouth!”

He half helped, half lifted her out of the carriage. The strong pure air

suddenly rushing right through to her lungs made her feel faint, and she

almost fell. But it was good to feel herself falling, when one pair of

arms amongst the millions on the earth were there to receive her.

“Can you walk, dear heart?” he asked. “Lean well on me--it is not far,

and the rest will do you good.”

“But you, Percy--”

He laughed, and the most complete joy of living seemed to resound

through that laugh. Her arm was in his, and for one moment he stood

still while his eyes swept the far reaches of the country, the mellow

distance still wrapped in its mantle of indigo, still untouched by the

mysterious light of the waning moon.

He pressed her arm against his heart, but his right hand was stretched

out towards the black wall of the forest behind him, towards the dark

crests of the pines in which the dying wind sent its last mournful

sighs.

“Dear heart,” he said, and his voice quivered with the intensity of his

excitement, “beyond the stretch of that wood, from far away over there,

there are cries and moans of anguish that come to my ear even now.

But for you, dear, I would cross that wood to-night and re-enter Paris

to-morrow. But for you, dear--but for you,” he reiterated earnestly as

he pressed her closer to him, for a bitter cry had risen to her lips.

She went on in silence. Her happiness was great--as great as was her

pain. She had found him again, the man whom she worshipped, the husband

whom she thought never to see again on earth. She had found him, and

not even now--not after those terrible weeks of misery and suffering

unspeakable--could she feel that love had triumphed over the

wild, adventurous spirit, the reckless enthusiasm, the ardour of

self-sacrifice.

CHAPTER XLIX. THE LAND OF ELDORADO

It seems that in the pocket of Heron’s coat there was a letter-case with

some few hundred francs. It was amusing to think that the brute’s money

helped to bribe the ill-tempered keeper of the half-way house to receive

guests at midnight, and to ply them well with food, drink, and the

shelter of a stuffy coffee-room.

Marguerite sat silently beside her husband, her hand in his. Armand,

opposite to them, had both elbows on the table. He looked pale and wan,

with a bandage across his forehead, and his glowing eyes were resting on

his chief.

“Yes! you demmed young idiot,” said Blakeney merrily, “you nearly upset

my plan in the end, with your yelling and screaming outside the chapel

gates.”

“I wanted to get to you, Percy. I thought those brutes had got you there

inside that building.”

“Not they!” he exclaimed. “It was my friend Heron whom they had trussed

and gagged, and whom my amiable friend M. Chambertin will find in there

to-morrow morning. By Gad! I would go back if only for the pleasure of

hearing Heron curse when first the gag is taken from his mouth.”

“But how was it all done, Percy? And there was de Batz--”

“De Batz was part of the scheme I had planned for mine own escape before

I knew that those brutes meant to take Marguerite and you as hostages

for my good behaviour. What I hoped then was that under cover of a

tussle or a fight I could somehow or other contrive to slip through

their fingers. It was a chance, and you know my belief in bald-headed

Fortune, with the one solitary hair. Well, I meant to grab that hair;

and at the worst I could but die in the open and not caged in that awful

hole like some noxious vermin. I knew that de Batz would rise to the

bait. I told him in my letter that the Dauphin would be at the Chateau

d’Ourde this night, but that I feared the revolutionary Government had

got wind of this fact, and were sending an armed escort to bring the

lad away. This letter Ffoulkes took to him; I knew that he would make a

vigorous effort to get the Dauphin into his hands, and that during

the scuffle that one hair on Fortune’s head would for one second only,

mayhap, come within my reach. I had so planned the expedition that we

were bound to arrive at the forest of Boulogne by nightfall, and night

is always a useful ally. But at the guard-house of the Rue Ste. Anne

I realised for the first time that those brutes had pressed me into a

tighter corner than I had pre-conceived.”

He paused, and once again that look of recklessness swept over his face,

and his eyes--still hollow and circled--shone with the excitement of

past memories.

“I was such a weak, miserable wretch, then,” he said, in answer

to Marguerite’s appeal. “I had to try and build up some strength,

when--Heaven forgive me for the sacrilege--I had unwittingly risked your

precious life, dear heart, in that blind endeavour to save mine own.

By Gad! it was no easy task in that jolting vehicle with that noisome

wretch beside me for sole company; yet I ate and I drank and I slept for

three days and two nights, until the hour when in the darkness I struck

Heron from behind, half-strangled him first, then gagged him, and

finally slipped into his filthy coat and put that loathsome bandage

across my head, and his battered hat above it all. The yell he gave when

first I attacked him made every horse rear--you must remember it--the

noise effectually drowned our last scuffle in the coach. Chauvelin was

the only man who might have suspected what had occurred, but he had gone

on ahead, and bald-headed Fortune had passed by me, and I had managed

to grab its one hair. After that it was all quite easy. The sergeant and

the soldiers had seen very little of Heron and nothing of me; it did not

take a great effort to deceive them, and the darkness of the night was

my most faithful friend. His raucous voice was not difficult to imitate,

and darkness always muffles and changes every tone. Anyway, it was not

likely that those loutish soldiers would even remotely suspect the trick

that was being played on them. The citizen agent’s orders were promptly

and implicitly obeyed. The men never even thought to wonder that after

insisting on an escort of twenty he should drive off with two prisoners

and only two men to guard them. If they did wonder, it was not theirs

to question. Those two troopers are spending an uncomfortable night

somewhere in the forest of Boulogne, each tied to a tree, and some two

leagues apart one from the other. And now,” he added gaily, “en voiture,

my fair lady; and you, too, Armand. ‘Tis seven leagues to Le Portel, and

we must be there before dawn.”

“Sir Andrew’s intention was to make for Calais first, there to

open communication with the Day-Dream and then for Le Portel,” said

Marguerite; “after that he meant to strike back for the Chateau d’Ourde

in search of me.”

“Then we’ll still find him at Le Portel--I shall know how to lay hands

on him; but you two must get aboard the Day-Dream at once, for Ffoulkes

and I can always look after ourselves.”

It was one hour after midnight when--refreshed with food and

rest--Marguerite, Armand and Sir Percy left the half-way house.

Marguerite was standing in the doorway ready to go. Percy and Armand had

gone ahead to bring the coach along.

“Percy,” whispered Armand, “Marguerite does not know?”

“Of course she does not, you young fool,” retorted Percy lightly. “If

you try and tell her I think I would smash your head.”

“But you--” said the young man with sudden vehemence; “can you bear the

sight of me? My God! when I think--”

“Don’t think, my good Armand--not of that anyway. Only think of the

woman for whose sake you committed a crime--if she is pure and good, woo

her and win her--not just now, for it were foolish to go back to Paris

after her, but anon, when she comes to England and all these past days

are forgotten--then love her as much as you can, Armand. Learn your

lesson of love better than I have learnt mine; do not cause Jeanne Lange

those tears of anguish which my mad spirit brings to your sister’s eyes.

You were right, Armand, when you said that I do not know how to love!”

But on board the Day-Dream, when all danger was past, Marguerite felt

that he did.