KATE LEARNS SHE IS FREE.
A great masked ball was over at the opera house; the candles were
burning down into their sockets in the girandoles and lustres; the May
morning, which under ordinary circumstances should have broken so soft
and bright, had dawned foul, rainy, and snowy; and carriages, hackney
coaches, and sedan chairs were pushing their way up to the doors of
the theatre and carrying off their employers to their houses and beds.
But all were not yet departed; some still sat drinking or chatting at
the supper tables; some danced in groups without any music to
accompany them except the airs which they hummed or whistled
themselves, for the orchestra had put up its instruments and gone also
to its bed; and some, principally men, struggled and pushed in the
_vestiaires_ to obtain cloaks, roquelaures, hats and riding hoods, and
swords--which latter could not by law be worn in the ball-room. Mock
harlequins jostled imitation Henrys of Navarre; mock monks swore at
supposed Crusaders; minotaurs and cavaliers and priests all contended
against one another for their and their female companions' wraps, and
at the same time laughed and jested and proposed breakfasts at
neighbouring taverns, or a visit to the gambling hells, which on such
nights as these kept their doors perpetually open.
Amidst all this confusion there ran through the whole place a
rumour--a whisper, which reached first those in the _vestiaires_, and
next the people at the supper tables--that those who so chose might
yet finish their night's enjoyment with another spectacle--a grim and
dismal but still enjoyable one--which was far better than any tavern
breakfast or punting at the gaming table.
"_Figurez-vous!_" screamed one reveller, a deformed creature by
nature, who had, with true Parisian appreciation of ludicrousness,
arrayed himself consequently as Venus--"_figurez-vous, mes enfants_,
there are two for execution, although, _malheureusement_, but only one
is to be broken. The other, they say--because, _peste!_ he is a _sal
Anglais_ and also of high rank--escapes the wheel and is only to be
decapitated. A curse upon the law, say I, that treats an Englishman
better than us!"
"_Ma petite Vénus de poche_," remarked another to him, clad as an
arquebusier, "have a care how you curse the law; otherwise you may get
broken yourself. There are plenty of police here in disguise, and if
they hear you, that goodly hump of yours will stand a fine chance of
being smashed by the executioner's bar. _Ma foi!_ the _coup de grâce_
is generally administered to the chest bone; with you, I presume, it
will be administered on the _bosse_."
"I spoke only in jest," exclaimed the deformed one, glancing round
apprehensively; "I meant no harm. A good subject, I, of the King of
France and all his ministers. But come, let us away. Who's for the
Grève? _Mon Dieu!_ we must not miss the show!"
"I am for it, for one!" screamed a girl not over twenty, whose golden
hair hung down over her back, and whose tones and glances proclaimed
her to be already far sunken in dissipation. "I have never yet seen a
man done to death; and as for the wheel, why, I have prayed often for
a chance of seeing it. They say the _coup de grâce_ is magnificent if
the--the patient--is still sensible. Now, in our old village, before
the young lord brought me to town, we never saw anything but a beggar
in the stocks. And, _dame! les ceps_ cease to be interesting after one
has pelted the occupiers for half an hour."
"Pretty things," said the arquebusier, looking down sardonically on
her, "have a care, _ma chère_, that you never come to worse than _les
ceps_ yourself. I have known many country girls brought to town by
their young lords, and--hem!--who got worse shift than the stocks when
they were discarded."
"_Ah! voyons!_" exclaimed the girl, "_avec ça!_ Look you, my figure of
fun, you are insolent. Get you home to your wife and family, and earn
bread for them. We of the fashion desire none of your _banalités_."
Yet, as she spoke, she was being inducted into her long cloak by some
of her would-be admirers, and also many others were getting ready. For
Paris had not had an execution for some two months now, and the
"half-tiger, half-monkey nature" which Voltaire attributed to his
countrymen was thirsty for its favourite form of entertainment.
In the ball-room itself there sat, however, a group very different
from those in the vestibule, who, since the masquerades were open to
all who could pay for admission, had attended the ball. This group
consisted of Sir Charles and Lady Ames--once Lady Belrose--and Kate,
who, in spite of her melancholy and her ill-health, had been persuaded
to accompany them. Heaven knows such diversions were little enough in
her way now! yet Lady Ames had been kind to her when she needed
kindness, and, at the express desire of Sir Charles and his wife, she
had consented to go with them.
In one way she was not unhappy: she knew, she felt certain, that this
second disappearance of Bertie Elphinston from the knowledge of the
world was not of his own accord. That something terrible had happened
she could not doubt; yet she knew also that, whatever that something
might be, it was not due to any desire to hide himself from her--that
was, if he was still alive. But was he?
Douglas's awful death by an unknown hand might also have been
Elphinston's lot: who could tell? And then her own husband's
disappearance! Did not that point to some catastrophe? Over and over
again she had meditated on all these things, lying awake for nights
together, pondering over them, wondering, wondering always. For even
now she was in total ignorance of who the murderer of Douglas had
been, of what Archibald had discovered. He had written to her at
intervals, it was true, but he had either avoided all reference to the
tragedy, or had said that, if the murderer was ever brought to
justice, she would doubtless know all. Her husband he never mentioned.
Yet, those who are aware of what she could not guess can understand
how difficult a task it would have been for the Jesuit to tell her
that he had discovered the assassin, and that Fordingbridge, her
husband, was the man. It may be that, after he had handed him over to
the proper authorities, he hoped, nay, endeavoured so to arrange that
she should never discover that her husband was the criminal. Better
that he should disappear from her knowledge forever, go to his doom
without her dreaming that he had paid for the crime with his life,
than that she should know to what a foul thing she had been united.
The candles guttered lower in their sockets, the attendants were
putting out even the few lights that still burned; it was time to go.
The opera house was emptying fast of all who had danced the night away
there; amidst shrieks and whoops and yells the lower class of visitors
were departing in coaches and chairs or on foot--some to their homes,
but many to the Place de Grève. The spectacle of one man being broken
to death and another decapitated was not to be missed.
"They say," exclaimed Sir Charles, as he returned with the cloaks and
hoods of the two ladies, "that an execution takes place this morning
on the Place de Grève. Hark! you may hear the creatures chattering
over it as they go forth. Well, our coachman need not go through the
_Place_, though it is on our road. Surely he can skirt round it. At
least, I will bid him do so," and he escorted his wife and Kate to
their carriage.
Outside, the crowd that was making its way to the place of execution
was stamping down the now fast-falling snow as it fell, and hurrying
forward for fear it should be too late for the show. With renewed
shrieks and yells it went onward, singing songs and choruses, roaring
out ballads that perhaps it deemed suitable to the occasion, beating
on _tambours-de-basque_ and little tabours which formed the
accompaniments of many of the masquers' costumes, and hammering on
doors that were as yet unopened, with their shepherds' crooks and
wooden swords (which were allowed to form part of their dress) and
canes, and howling at the inhabitants to arise and come forth to _le
spectacle_. They halted very little on their short way, sometimes only
to shake the falling snow off their clothes, sometimes to wipe the
paint and raddle from their faces which the wet snow had turned into
sticky filth, and sometimes to kick over the braziers of the early
morning chestnut-sellers, or to run into an early-opened wineshop,
hastily gulp down a drink, and then go on again.
"Heavens!" exclaimed Sir Charles, as the slow-progressing coach kept
pace with the creatures that passed along the miserable three-foot
sideways or crunched along the road--"heavens! what a crowd is a
Parisian one! Their laughter is as ferocious in its way as the
roughness of our English rabble--nay, I believe, far more deadly. How
they revel in what they are going to see!"
"I tell you, my friends," screamed one painted harridan from the sedan
chair she was being carried in, to a number of her friends who walked
beside it, "that it is a great, a magnificent spectacle. I have seen
it, _voyez-vous_, at Lyons, on the Place Bellecour, often--once,
twice, thrice. _Ma foi!_ the shriek at the first blow as the man lies
back, his body tied to the wheel, is _pénétrant écrasant!_ And so on,
the cries becoming lower, till they are no better than sobs or groans,
until the _coup de grâce_. Then, sometimes, but alas! not always,
there will be one more wild shriek, and _voilà! c'est fini_. After
that it is always time for breakfast."
One or two girls in the crowd making its way onward glanced at the
ogress in the sedan chair and turned white; and Kate, who had heard
all her words, grasped Lady Belrose's hand; while a man, walking
steadily along through the snow, answered the woman, saying:
"_Peste!_ 'tis not always as good as that. I waited once all
through a summer night at Caen to see a man broken--I remember we
played cards, I and the others, in the moonlight, and I lost four gold
pistoles--and, _dame!_ the fellow was a favoured one. Favoured, you
understand. A vile aristocrat. So, as we thought, they strangled him
as they bound him, and, _malediction!_ he suffered not at all. Never
screamed once--not once. 'Twas a cruel wrong to the spectators."
"'Tis an aristocrat who suffers to-day, they say," another man
exclaimed.
"Nay," screamed still another, "not so. The aristocrat will suffer
not; they will but slice his head off with the axe. There is no
suffering in that; 'tis done and over in a moment. Yet I would see him
die, too. He is an English aristocrat, and I hate all English; one
beat me the other day for regarding his flaxen-haired wife too
admiringly! I have never seen an Englishman die. They are brutes, yet
they have the courage of devils."
"An English aristocrat!" said Sir Charles to his companions. "I do not
understand this. There have been no Englishmen arrested in Paris for a
longtime; otherwise I must have heard of it among our friends here.
What does he mean?"
"My dear Charles," replied his wife, "you do not know the Parisians
very well. An English aristocrat to them is any Englishman who is
outside his own country for pleasure and with his pocket well lined
with guineas. Doubtless, however, this is some needy ragamuffin or
copper captain, who has come to the scaffold for his sins, and they
suppose him an aristocrat."
Whatever Sir Charles may have replied was drowned now by an increase
of the howls and yells of the crowd, by fiercer beatings on the
_tambours-de-basque_ and tabours, by snatches of wild, frenzied songs,
and by bursts of hysterical laughter.
The Place de Grève was in sight.
"Turn off!" said Sir Charles, putting his head out of the window and
addressing the coachman--"turn off, I say! I told you to leave the
route to that infernal _Place_ and avoid it. Why have you disobeyed
me?"
The man shrugged his shoulders as he looked round from his
seat--doubtless, in spite of the orders he had received, he meant to
see _le spectacle_ himself if possible--then he said:
"Monsieur, it is impossible to turn off, or scarcely now to proceed.
The crowd encompasses us. Yet the _Place_ is not so full but we may
pass through it. _Mon Dieu!_ if it had been a fine May morning, a fly
could not have passed."
"Is--is there anything--dreadful--taking place yet? If so, we will not
proceed."
The driver stood up on his box and gazed forward; then he shook his
head and said:
"_Non_, monsieur, there is nothing. Only the erection itself, and the
soldiers and people; not many of the latter, either. _Nous autres_,"
pointing to the howling crowd from the Bal Masqué seething around
them, "will double the sightseers." But he muttered to himself, "Ere we
get into the middle of the _Place_ we shall see something, or I'm a
stupid _escargot_."
"Go on, then," said Sir Charles, "as quickly as you can, since you
cannot now turn round. Lose no time." And he spoke to his companions,
saying, "Best put on your masks. This is no place for ladies to be
seen in. But we shall be through it all in five minutes."
Lady Belrose and Kate did as he bade them, and then the coach went on,
slowly following all those in the road before them. Unfortunately, it
had no curtains to the windows, which shut from within as was the
custom of the day, otherwise the baronet would have closed out the
whole of their surroundings. But this was impossible.
And still the crowd accompanying them shrieked and howled more and
more--fighting and struggling to pass each other; thrusting those in
front of them away, elbowing and pushing--the man who had waited all
night at Caen playing at cards, throwing another almost under the
wheels of Sir Charles's coach, while a girl was borne down in the
crush and dragged aside fainting--stamping with glee and excitement,
almost dancing in frenzy.
For the bell of the neighbouring church was tolling now, and, through
the flakes of snow as they fell, the wheel and the block for the two
condemned men were visible on the scaffold.
That scaffold itself was a platform some seven feet high, around which
stood a company of the grenadiers, with, on either side of it, a guard
of the musketeers. On the left of it was the wheel itself, fixed
horizontally between stout wooden supports let into the platform, it
being a large cannon-wheel. On the right side was a headsman's block,
with, beneath it, a basket filled with sawdust, now half covered by
snow. By the wheel and leaning against it was a huge club, iron-bound
at the head, and at this sight the crowd became still more excited, if
possible, pointing it out to each other and saying, "Behold, _la
massue_. She will do her work well, _Ça pese bien_," and laughing and
screaming once more, and rubbing their hands.
Next came a roar, with shrieks from women and more faintings among
them, while, by some impulse unrecognised perhaps by themselves, all
of the latter produced their masks and put them on. It may be that
something feminine, some feeling of womanly shame, prompted them to
hide their features, to disguise their presence there. As for the men,
the excitability of their natures affected them in a different way,
for at what was happening now some of them, even strangers to each
other, shook hands effusively, and some clapped others on the back.
For the condemned ones were in sight.
They came forth together from a small door in the wall of the _Hôtel
de Ville_, side by side, these two who were to suffer; one--he who was
to perish on the wheel--being nearly naked, and having on him nothing
but a short pair of breeches reaching to his knees and a sleeveless
singlet. He was a great, bull-chested man, with massive limbs that
would have become a gladiator, and, as he strode along attended by a
confessor with a crucifix in his hand, he seemed to the mob to appear
like one who would suffer severely. Therefore they roared and shrieked
at him, and some waved handkerchiefs and clapped and cried, while he
regarded them almost with contempt. Yet there was a glance in his eyes
as if he could not comprehend why all these people, whom he saw
through the falling flakes, should be thus fantastically dressed and
should also be masked.
In truth it was a weird scene in the Place de Grève that morning, with
the condemned men approaching the scaffold through the snow, and with,
for the greater part of the spectators, these women, through the holes
of whose masks their eyes glittered, and whose grotesque costumes were
but little suited either to the occasion or the wintry morning.
Yet still there was the other doomed one. He, however, approached the
platform very differently from the manner in which the man whose
portion was the wheel came forward. He, too, had by his side a
confessor with a crucifix--after each there walked the executioners,
and also the officials--and it seemed as if he would shelter himself
behind the robes of the priest. Yet sometimes, too, he smiled and
gibbered at the crowd as though it was composed of his friends, and
only when he saw the masked faces of the women and all the quaint
garbs of the onlookers did he seem astonished.
At his appearance the crowd appeared startled, the shouts died down;
instead of them a whisper ran through their ranks. "He is mad! _Il est
fou!_" they cried, and again some women fainted.
"Great God!" muttered Sir Charles Ames hoarsely, catching sight of
him. Then, suddenly, he said: "Kate--Lady Fordingbridge--do not look
out; for pity's sake do not!" And to his wife he made signs that she
should prevent her friend from glancing at the scaffold.
But he was too late! Already she had done so; already she, peering
from the window of the coach, her own face masked, had seen the face
of the trembling, grinning wretch; and, since gradually the coachman
had edged the carriage through the crowd until it was not now ten
paces from the platform, he, too, saw her--the woman with her face
disguised--glaring at him.
She herself was nearly fainting at this time, yet she could see the
headsman grasp his axe and motion to the victim to kneel down and
place his head upon the block, and in her agony she raised her hand to
her brow. In doing so it struck and loosened the mask, so that it fell
off, leaving her face exposed.
And then the crowd's enjoyment culminated!
For he saw the mask fall away from her--he saw her face.
And with a wild scream--a scream that penetrated to the hearts of all
in the Place de Grève--he shrieked:
"Kate! Kate! I have seen him! He forgives! He is a prisoner in----"
and fell back, dying, into the executioner's arms.
The frenzied brain had failed at last.