bloodshed and injustice reached the little sun-kissed village of Caen.
The name of Marat was on every tongue--Marat, who made the streets
run with blood; Marat, the murderer of thousands whose only crime was
loyalty; Marat, through whose wanton ferocity the blood-stained Loire
was discolored for miles, to whose rage for extermination the gloomy
solitude of the towns and the desolation of the country bore ghastly
testimony. The very crimson of the autumn woods seemed to reflect the
bloodshed of those cruel September massacres.
It was then, no doubt, that the thought first entered the mind of this
young girl; the idea that perhaps she, though only a woman, with no
knowledge of the world, without experience, might achieve what men
seemed frightened to attempt, something that should help to retrieve
the lost honor of France. It was ambitious, surely; but then, was not
Joan of Arc a girl?
Marat, the murderer of peace, if only he were dead, thought Charlotte
Corday, peace would be restored. "It is expedient for one man to die
for all."
The shadow of Marat darkened the whole picture, and in the background
stood the scaffold, which liberty was mounting in company with the
victims of this murderer, at whose name one shuddered, as at the
mention of death. Marat, without Danton's courage or the integrity of
Robespierre, seemed but a wild beast bent on devouring France.
Charlotte saw her beloved country in its death agony, she saw the
victims and the tyrant. She sought to avenge the one, to punish the
other, to save all.
Many a long summer night did she lie awake in her little attic room at
Caen, wondering what she should do. Suddenly all seemed to clear before
her. Her mind was made up.
After a sad parting with her family, who believed that she was going
to England with the many other refugees who found a haven there at
this time, she started for Paris, arriving there with no friend save a
battered copy of her beloved Plutarch. During the two days and nights
that she spent at the little Hotel de la Providence in the Rue des
Vieux Augustins, but one thought was uppermost in her mind; to seek out
Marat and do what she had to do.
The recital of these incidents had brought a tinge of color into the
girl's cheeks, and to Hauer, as he sat and gazed at her in admiration,
her beauty appealed irresistibly. He could picture the whole scene
as she described it. In imagination he accompanied heron that early
morning walk, on the fatal Saturday, the eve of the anniversary of
the taking of the Bastille, when she went to the Palais Royal to buy
the knife with which the murder was committed. He could fancy, as
she described it, the sun shining through the trees, the children
playing in the public gardens. She told him how she had helped one
little curly-headed lad to recover his top which had rolled through
the railings out of reach. The little fellow had kissed her, little
realizing what she carried so carefully hidden in her bosom. In his
heart Hauer blessed that little boy; he was grateful for that childish
kiss, the last that Charlotte was to know. He followed her to the house
in the Rue des Cordeliers, where Marat lived, and where for so long she
strove in vain to gain admission, until, at last, toward evening, she
forced her way in.
"You know the rest," continued Charlotte. "How I pretended to be a
traitor to my cause.--God will forgive me," she added, "for we owe no
truth to tyrants.--How I informed Marat of the names of the refugee
deputies at Caen who were organizing the Federalist movement. 'Ah!' he
exclaimed, his irresistible thirst for blood rekindled at the thought
of these new victims, 'they shall be guillotined within a week!'
Guillotined!" repeated Charlotte, rising to her feet. "My friends! The
patriots of Caen!"
She turned and saw Hauer's eye fixed upon her as though awaiting the
end of the story. "And then?" he asked.
There was silence for a short space, broken only by the quick breathing
of the girl.
"I stabbed him to the heart."
"Did you not realize----?"
"I realized nothing," she interrupted, "save that I was carrying
out my unalterable purpose. I felt no more remorse than if I were
treading on the head of some loathsome snake. The hideousness of
Marat's appearance, the squalor of his surroundings, the infamy of his
character, all these urged me on to accomplish the deed I had planned.
And in my heart a voice kept whispering that the end justified the
means."
"Brave little Jesuit!"
"Oh, I am glad I killed him! I have no regrets, none. I was ready, I am
ready now, to pay the penalty." She paused, "Ah, I weary you with all
this," she said. "But I have had no one to speak to, all these days;
nobody seems to understand----"
"_I_ understand," said Hauer with feeling.
"Yes, I believe you do, and I thank you for it." She sat at the table
where the artist was putting the finishing touches to his picture.
"I had hoped that an old friend of mine," she added, "one on whose
loyalty I relied implicitly, would have appeared to defend me at the
trial. I wrote and asked him. But he never came. He did not even
trouble to reply. Well," she sighed, "I am no poorer for the loss of
such a friend."
Hauer laid down his brushes, rose, and stood before her. His voice was
unsteady, and his face had grown pale.
"Others may fail you," he exclaimed, "but you know that I will always
stand by you, though the whole world turn against you."
He took both her hands in one of his, and, looking into her eyes, saw
down to the very depths of her pure soul. A rush of memories flooded
his brain as he gazed at this woman whose life was to close so soon.
He recalled the very first time he had ever seen her--how long ago was
it?--in the gardens at Caen, opposite the little Church of St. Antoine.
Five years ago; and yet to him it seemed but yesterday. She had been
a girl then; a timid, neatly-dressed girl of nineteen she looked,
as she walked slowly along, deep in meditation, intent upon her own
thoughts. Hauer was sitting sketching beneath a tree as she passed.
She dropped one of the books she was carrying; he picked it up for her;
she thanked him. That was all--and yet at the sound of that one word
something had stirred in the young artist's heart, something that he
had not been able to understand at the time, but that he had understood
in the court-house to-day, when he heard once more the music of her
voice--something that he understood now, and knew to be love.
"Charlotte," he exclaimed, with a sudden passionate cry, as he flung
himself on his knees at her feet, "I love you, I love you!"
The girl gazed tenderly down at him, with a look of innocent affection
in those eyes which no hint of any deeper passion had ever illumined.
She laid her hand lightly upon his head for a moment and then drew him
to his feet.
"Please, monsieur," she said gently, "please; you will not say that.
You are my very good friend, and you must think of me as a friend, and
nothing more. You know well that I can never be grateful enough for the
blessing of your friendship, and for all you have done for me."
Hauer had recovered his self-possession. "Alas! I have done nothing for
you--I, who would gladly lay down my life for your happiness."
"You have done much," replied the girl. "You have spoken to me, when
all others were afraid and held aloof. You have given me the comfort of
your welcome society, while other friends stayed away. Are your words
of sympathy nothing?" she asked. "Ah, I could not bear to think that I
should cause you any unhappiness. I pray you, let us be friends, and
friends only. The parting will be the easier for that."
"Don't speak of parting," he cried, aghast at the picture conjured up
in his imagination by her ominous words.
"And yet it is to be so soon. In a little while I shall go out of your
life forever. I shall be nothing to you but a memory. It is hard enough
to have to die, do not make it harder for me."
"Charlotte!" cried the young man in an agonized voice, "you shall not
go out of my life like this! I will kill myself! I will share your
fate. I cannot live without you!"
The girl gazed up at him with a look of infinite tenderness and pity.
"Do you really love me?" she asked.
"Charlotte----"
"Remember then that the price of love is sacrifice; and do as I ask."
She sat down on the edge of the hard bed and drew him down beside her.
"Is it so easy for me to be brave?" she asked, "to leave the sunshine,
to say goodby to all the bright and beautiful things of this world,
to life and love? Do not make it harder for me; then. Ah, I pray you,
forget me; or rather, rejoice at my fate, remembering that the cause
for which I lay down my life is indeed a glorious one. Help me to bear
the trials of this last scene bravely, with a courage you would wish to
see in one you loved."
Hauer seized her hands and kissed them feverishly.
Charlotte smiled sadly at him.
"I have had but little tenderness in my life," she said. "Your kisses
are dear to me, believe. I will bear them in my hands to the scaffold,
as I shall bear the comfort of your friendship in my heart.
"Do not weep for me," she added, as the tears, which he was unable to
control, fell and mingled with his kisses upon her pale hands. "I want
all your help, all your courage, if I am to face the end bravely, to
meet death with a smile."
There was a loud and peremptory knock at the entrance. With a swift
exclamation Hauer crossed the floor and threw open the door.
A tall man, dressed entirely in black, with a thick beard half covering
a sallow but not un-kindly face, entered the room. He carried a long
red smock over his shoulder, a short piece of thick cord in his hand,
and to his wide leather belt was suspended a pair of shears. It was
Charles Henry Sanson, the public executioner.
A momentary expression of terror flitted across Charlotte Corday's
eyes as they gazed upon this sinister figure, whose mission required
no explanation. After a brief inward struggle, she regained possession
of her wonted calm and faced the unwelcome visitor with an unflinching
gaze.
The executioner advanced, holding out the red smock, a roughly made
cloak of common scarlet material, which condemned persons wore on their
way to the scaffold. Without a word spoken on either side, Charlotte
allowed him to throw this garment round her shoulders.
Sanson then drew the shears from his belt. But the prisoner,
anticipating his intention, stopped him with a quick gesture and took
the instruments from his hand.
"Give them to me," she said quietly, and the man obeyed. Then, throwing
off her cap, she unbound the ribbon with which her hair was confined
and with a quick, graceful movement of the head, shook down its burden
of auburn hair so that it covered her shoulders. With a few swift
strokes of the scissors she cut off the waving masses, which fell in a
heap in her lap and at her feet, and handed the shears back to Sanson.
With her bared head, its aureole of close-cropped hair crowning the
small oval face beneath it, Charlotte looked like some beautiful boy,
and it was evident that even the impassive executioner was moved by her
charm and by the tender grace of her every movement.
One of the many curls which she had severed so ruthlessly had fallen
into the bosom of her dress, and Charlotte now held it in her hand and
turned toward Hauer, who had been watching the sacrifice with much
emotion.
"Will you accept this?" she asked timidly, "I--it is all I have to
give. If you would care to have it----"
The young man took it tenderly from her and raised it to his lips.
"I shall hold it dearer than all else in the world," he said; "this
lock of your beautiful hair."
"Is it beautiful? I used to be very vain of my hair once." She
smiled. "If you will keep it," she continued, "and perhaps look at it
sometimes, and, when you do, recall the memory of one to whom you were
kind--of one who will never forget--who will offer prayers for your
welfare and your happiness at the very throne of God----" She brushed
away a tear that had crept out unseen upon her cheek, and for the
moment her voice failed her.
Sanson moved forward silently and seized her wrist with one hand, while
with the other he shook out the short coil of cord which he held.
The blood flamed in Charlotte's cheek, and she shrank back suddenly,
dreading some fresh indignity.
"Ah, no!" she exclaimed passionately. "I beg of you! Not that again! I
promise you, I will be good!" she reiterated, standing with her hands
behind her, like some frightened child expecting punishment, "I will
keep still! I will do whatever you tell me. I will not move. Oh, let me
be free, for this last hour of my life!"
Hauer approached the executioner. "Surely she has suffered enough
already," he said. "Look at her wrists." For the severity of her former
bondage had left cruel marks upon the white skin of her delicate arms.
Sanson spoke for the first time. His voice was low and had a tone of
refinement which perhaps reassured his listeners.
"You need not be afraid," he said. "I am not rough. I will not hurt
you. It is for the best."
Charlotte looked up into his face and, reading there nothing but the
desire of a blunt but honest man to discharge an unpleasant duty with
as little pain as possible to all concerned, submitted without further
entreaty.
"As you will," she said, holding out her hands to him. He laid one
small wrist across the other and with a few quick turns of the rope
tied her hands behind her back, fastening them securely but without
unnecessary severity.
As he opened the cell-door, a loud tumult rose from the street below.
Charlotte drew back in terror.
"What sound is that?" she asked trembling.
"'Tis but the crowd growing impatient. Do not be frightened," said
Sanson in a reassuring voice. "You are safe enough with me."
Hauer stepped forward. "I will accompany you," he said, in a determined
tone.
"No, no!" entreated the girl. "Please not. 'Farewell' is always a hard
word to say. I shall want all my courage on the scaffold." She moved
towards the door, then turned again to the artist. "One last request
I have to make," she said. "That you will send the portrait to my old
father at Argentan. It will comfort his heart, perhaps," she added,
"and help him to forgive me for disposing of my life without his
permission."
"Now," she continued, "let us say goodby."
With an effort Hauer restrained his tears. He fell on one knee at her
feet, as though to kiss her hands once more. But she shook her head
sadly, unable to lift them, bound as they were, to his lips. "Ah, no,"
she said, "you see, it is no longer allowed!"
Hauer raised the edge of her red smock and kissed it passionately. "I
kiss the tips of your wings!" he said.
Charlotte turned to the executioner, who was waiting somewhat
impatiently at the door. "I am ready," she said. Then, as her eye fell
upon the lonely kneeling figure of her lover, "Farewell," she added.
"Farewell, for the last time. God bless you for all that you have been
to me. You will not forget me, I know. And I shall carry with me the
memory of your friendship to the end. Be happy in the knowledge that
I am glad to die for France; and remember that it is guilt alone that
brings disgrace, and not the scaffold!"
With a resolute step she walked through the open door and out into the
tumult of the street.
An hour later, when the warder, Richard, entered the cell, he found
the young artist still on his knees, convulsive sobs shaking his whole
body, while tears of anguish rained down his cheeks and fell unheeded
upon a long lock of hair which he was holding tenderly in his hands and
which he now and again raised to his lips.
With a grunt, half scorn, half sympathy, the old warder shook his head
and, closing the door quickly behind him, stole away in search of the
more cheerful society of his wife and little Jean.
THE BURIED ANCHOR
BY
PERCEVAL GIBBON
There was a tale that Oom Piet used to tell, of the days when he showed
his back to the tax-gatherers, and trekked east to the very edge of
the world, where the veld broke into patches of sand and shelved down
into the sea. It was the only one of all his stories that did not
make him out a hero; the rest were all of war with the kafirs and
hunting in new-found lands, where the game was so thick that it jostled
for pasture. But this was a tale of wonder, and he wondered over it
contentedly till he went to that place where all riddles are answered.
It began always with the long Odyssey of the trek, while the slow
wagons drew indomitably to ever fresh horizons and each dawn showed a
new country and the fresh spoor of buck. Then there were the mountains,
seen afar for days, that stood across his track; he had searched them
north and south for more than a month ere he found the winding thread
of valley that let him through. Not once but a dozen times in that
year-long journey his ripe craft of war had served him well, and the
wagons had been laagered in time to stand off an attack of kafirs; each
lonely battle was fresh in his memory, and he never omitted to tell
how his wife crouched beside him as he fought, loading his spare rifle
and passing it into his hand. Sometimes, at this stage in the history,
some of his old force would return to him, and one could see all the
face harden and grow keen behind the big beard. Oom Piet was very old
and much under the dominion of his years; for him one thing in a story
was as much as another; and he always carried us through every stage
of that trek, from the Bushmen he shot in the mountains to the baby he
buried at Weenen Drift.[12]
And thus at last, when they had passed through an easy country, where
Zulu satraps from the north ruled the terror-stricken kraals, and
nothing any longer had the power to make him wonder, they came upon
the sea. It was a still evening when they drew down to its shore, and
before them the unimagined ocean filled the world and lay against the
sky, and its murmur hushed the long-familiar noises of the veld. A
broken reef of rock stood a hundred yards from the beach and the water
creamed about it; the crags were like gapped and broken teeth. Oom Piet
stood with his wife's hand on his arm and his three sons at his elbow,
and all five gazed awhile in silence. The spell of the stillness and
the great space worked within them all.
"It is a place of peace, at all events," said Oom Piet, at last.
The hand on his arm tightened. Susanna looked up at him with a smile.
"But I am glad I am not alone here," she answered.
As for the lads, theirs was a bewilderment that stilled their judgment.
Klein Piet, the eldest, leaned on his rifle and stared out at the sea
with empty eyes, for it spoke to unguessed depths in his soul; and Jan
and Andries were both a little afraid. They had nothing to say, and
when presently Piet led the way back to the wagons, they followed him
hesitating, casting nervous glances over their shoulders as they went.
Even by the fires, as they sat together over their evening meal, some
constraint remained with them, so that they talked with an effort of
trivial things while their thoughts abode elsewhere, and Susanna looked
from one to another with a little frown of perplexity. Not one of them
could have told what troubled him, or guessed that in his very name of
Van Praagh there closed a long tradition of the salt and sound of the
sea.
It was when a new dawn had shown them the place in clear light,
unwitched by evening shadows and calm, that Piet made his decision.
Landward of the sand the veld was rich, with patches of bush; a stream
ran through it handily, and to his eyes, wise in a hundred aspects
of game land, cattle land, and mealie land, it spoke of security and
comfort. He was not a man to be drawn from his sure judgment by trifles
of liking and curiosity; he had lived too close to the real things of
life to be deluded by semblances; but none the less, there was gladness
for him that all these good things, the materials of a home and a
livelihood, lay at the flank of that great tame sea, to whose noise his
ears were already become accustomed. There was a welcome in the sound
of it; under the morning sun it showed a face as bright as a host's;
and when the lads came back from the beach, with their hair blown about
their faces and their hands full of shells, they found him sitting
on an ant hill, in the middle of a square he had marked out with big
smooth stones.
"What is it?" asked Klein Piet.
"Our house," answered his father. "We will build it here, with the
stoop looking out to the water. That--" he pointed a line with his
finger--"that shall be the front of it, to face the sun each day when
he up-saddles. There, yonder, shall be the kraals; and we will live
between the sea and the veld and have the best of both. What do you
think of it?"
Andries laughed delightedly; a new thing was always a good thing for
him. Jan, too, was pleased and curious; only Klein Piet looked grave,
but not with any doubt or dissatisfaction.
"Well?" asked the father again. "What do you think of it, my son?"
Klein Piet answered slowly. "I think well of it," he said, meeting
his father's gaze with his steady blue eyes; "so well, father, that I
should have stayed in any case, even if you had turned back."
"Eh?" The elder man doubted if he heard aright.
Klein Piet seemed to be in a dream. "I only know," he said, in the
same slow manner of speech, "that this place I stand on is like a
birth-place to me. I must have dreamed of it when I was a child."
The younger boys were watching the pair of them in wonder. Piet put out
his hand to his son.
"Then we shall not quarrel," he said. "I cannot say what it is, the
finger of God stirring or the lusts of the flesh, but the same thing
has hold of me, Klein Piet. I am fallen at the same dyke; I could not
leave this place if I would."
Only Susanna was not completely at her ease. Piet found no matter for
surprise in this, but looked to see a change when the house should be
built and the offices of home-keeping should have set up landmarks in
her life. A Boer woman should live between her kitchen and her bed, he
was used to say, and he held to this unswervingly even when the kitchen
was but the cheek of a wood-fire in the veld and the bed the windy sail
of a wagon. So when her face showed that the strangeness of the place
did not abate for her, when she shrank from being alone and shivered
at the on-coming of the nights that strode in from the sea, he only
smiled on her and was careful to be close to her, and was glad, with a
mild satisfaction, that the long trek and the fights and the sorrows
had left her womanly and soft. She was a De Villiers from the western
edge of the Karoo, fair and still as all the women of that stock are;
but it never happened to him to think of the dead men and women who had
gone to the making of her family, soldiers and gospellers and martyrs,
but never a sailor among them. Neither did it happen that he took any
account of his kafirs, for Piet was sound Boer to the bone; or he might
have seen that they, too, had their fears and misgivings. The black
man's solitude is peopled with ghosts and devils; beyond the ring of
his firelight, the dark is uneasy with presences; and it was not fear
of the Zulus alone that kept these tremblers close about the camp,
and cowed them to an anxious obedience the sjambok could never have
commanded.
Indeed, there was no time for Piet and his sons to become infected with
doubts, for they set to work at once on the building of their house.
The stone thereabouts lay over the face of the land in rounded boulders
and splintered cleanly under the sledge-hammer. The house they devised
to face the sea was to be of stone from eaves to the foot of the walls
and rooted well in the ground. Piet marked it all out with little
gutters, and, since he himself was the strongest of them, he set the
lads to dig a firm foundation with half the kafirs, while he took the
other half to split and carry stone. They had all a good will to work;
their task was to justify to themselves their choice of a home, and the
skinny kafirs had to bend their naked backs freely to keep pace with
the eager work of their masters. The thud of the picks and the ring
of Piet's great hammer made a loud answer to the ceaseless murmur and
rustle of the sea on the sand; even Susanna was stirred from her cares
by the briskness of the work.