It was well for La Boulaye that he had tethered his horse to a tree before approaching the coach. That solitary beast standing by the roadside in the deepening gloom attracted the attention of his followers, when—a half-hour or so later—they rode that way, making for Liege, as La Boulaye had bidden them.
At their approach the animal neighed, and Garin, hearing the sound, reined in and peered forward into the gloom, to descry the horse's head and back outlined above the blur of the hedge. His men halted behind him whilst he approached the riderless beast and made—as well as he could in the darkness—an examination of the saddle. One holster he found empty, at which he concluded that the rider, whoever he had been, had met with trouble; from the other he drew a heavy pistol, which, however, gave him no clue.
“Get down,” he ordered his men, “and search the roads hereabouts. I'll wager a horse to a horseshoe that you will find a body somewhere.”
He was obeyed, and presently a cry from one of the searchers announced a discovery. It was succeeded by another exclamation.
“Sacre nom!” swore the trooper. “It is the Citizen-deputy!”
In an instant Garin had leapt to the ground and with the others crowding about him, their bridles over their arms and their horses in a bunch behind them, he was bending under the dripping hedge to examine the body that lay supine in the sodden road. A vigorous oath escaped him when he assured himself that it was indeed La Boulaye.
“Is he dead?” cried the men in chorus.
“No—not dead” grumbled the corporal. “But there is a lump on his brow the size of an egg, and God knows how long he has been lying here in this bed of mud.”
They had no restoratives, and the only thing was to convey him to the nearest habitation and demand shelter. They held a short council on the matter, and in the end Garin bade four of them take him up and carry him in a cloak. Some two miles back they had passed a house, and thither the corporal now bade them retrace their steps. They made an odd procession; first went two mounted troopers leading the horses of the others, then the four on foot, carrying the Deputy in a cloak, and lastly, Garin riding in the rear.
In this manner they went back along the dark road, and for close upon a half-hour—for their progress was slow—they trudged along in silence. At last there was a short exclamation from one of the riders, as half a mile away an illuminated window beamed invitingly. Encouraged by it, they quickened their steps a little. But almost at the same time La Boulaye stirred on the cloak, and the men who carried him heard him speak. At first it was an incoherent mutter, then his words came more distinctly.
“Hold! Where are you carrying me? Who the devil are you?”
It was Garin's voice that came instantly to reassure him. Caron essayed to sit up, but finding it impracticable, he shortly bade his men set him down. They halted. Garin dismounted and came to the Deputy's side, and it was found that his condition was none so grave after all, for he was able to stand unaided. When, however, he attempted to walk, he reeled, and would of a certainty have fallen, but that Garin put out his arm to support him.
“Steady there, Citizen,” the corporal admonished him.
“Get my horse!” he commanded briefly.
“But, name of a name! you are not fit to ride,” Garin protested.
La Boulaye, however, would listen to no reason. With the recovery of his faculties came the consideration of how miserably Suzanne had duped him, and of how she had dealt with him when he had overtaken her. He burned now to be avenged, and at all costs he would ride after and recapture her. He announced, therefore, to the corporal that they must push on to Liege. Garin gasped at his obstinacy, and would have sought to have dissuaded him, but that La Boulaye turned on him with a fierceness that silenced his expostulations.
It was left to Nature to enforce what Garin could not achieve. When La Boulaye came to attempt to mount he found it impossible. He was stiff and numb from his long exposure in the rain, and when he moved with any vigour his head swam dizzily and throbbed with pain.
At last he was forced to realise—with inward girding—that he must relinquish his determination, and he acknowledged himself ready to take the corporal's advice and make for the house whose lighted window shone like a beacon in the darkness that had descended. He even allowed them to prevail upon him to lie down in the cloak again, and thus they carried him the remainder of the way. In his heart he still bore the hope that short rest, restoratives, and fresh clothes would fit him for the pursuit once more, and that if he set out within the next few hours he might yet come up with Mademoiselle before she had passed beyond his reach. Should the morning still find him unequal to the task of going after her, he would despatch Garin and his men.
At last they reached the cottage—it was little more—and Garin rapped on the door with his whip. It was opened by a woman, who told them, in answer to the corporal's request for shelter, that her husband was from home, and that she had no accommodation for them. It would seem that the woman had housed soldiers of the Republic before, and that her experiences had not been of a nature calculated to encourage her in the practice. But La Boulaye now staggered forward and promised her generous payment if she would receive them.
“Payment?” she cried. “In worthless assignats that nobody will take from me. I know the ways of you.”
“Not in assignats,” La Boulaye promised her, “but in coin.”
And having mollified her somewhat with that assurance, he proceeded to urge her to admit them. Yonder was a shed where the horses could be stabled for the night. But still the woman demurred.
“I lack the room,” she said, with some firmness.
“But at least,” put in Garin, “you could house the Citizen here. He has been hurt, and he is scarcely able to stand. Come, woman, if you will consent to that, we others can lie with the horses in the shed.”
This in the end they gained by renewed promises of good payment. She brewed a broth for them, and for La Boulaye she found a suit of her absent husband's clothes, whilst his own wet garments were spread to dry before the fire. Some brandy, too, she found and brought him, and the draught did much to restore him.
When they had supped, Garin and the troopers withdrew to the outhouse, leaving La Boulaye in sole possession of the cottage hearth. And there, in a suit of the absent farmer's grey homespun, his legs encased in coarse woollen stockings and sabots upon his feet, sat the young Deputy alone with his unpleasant thoughts. The woman had brought him a pipe, and, although the habit was foreign to him as a rule, he had lighted it and found the smoking somewhat soothing. Ruefully he passed his hand across his bandaged brow, and in pondering over all that had taken place since yesternight at Boisvert, his cheeks grew flushed at once with anger and with shame.
“To have been so duped!”
And now—his mind growing clearer as he recovered in vigour—it occurred to him that by to-morrow it would be too late to give pursuit. Once she crossed the Sambre at Liege, or elsewhere, who could tell him by what road she would elect to continue her journey? He had not sufficient men at his disposal to send out parties along each of the possible roads. That her ultimate destination was Treves he knew. But once there she was beyond his reach, at safety from the talons of the French Republic.
He sat on and thought, what time his brows came closer together and his teeth fastened viciously upon the stem of the pipe. By the table sat the woman, knitting industriously, and ever and anon glancing inquiry at her stern, thoughtful guest, and the click of her needles was the only sound that disturbed the stillness of the room. Outside the wind was wailing like the damned, and the rain which had recommenced with new vigour, rattled noisily upon the panes.
Suddenly above the din of the elements a shout sounded in the night. The Deputy raised his head, and glanced towards the woman. A moment later they heard the gate creak, and steps upon the path that led to the cottage door.
“Your husband?” inquired La Boulaye.
“No, monsieur. He has gone to Liege, and will not return until to-morrow. I do not know who it can be.”
There was alarm on her face, which La Boulaye now set himself to allay.
“At least you are well protected, Citoyenne. My men are close at hand, and we can summon them if there be the need.”
Reassured she rose, and at the same moment a knock sounded on the door. She went to open it, and from his seat by the hearth La Boulaye heard a gentle, mincing voice that was oddly familiar to him.
“Madame,” it said, “we are two poor, lost wayfarers, and we crave shelter for the night. We will pay you handsomely.”
“I am desolated that I have no room, Messieur,” she answered, with courteous firmness.
“Pardi!” interpolated another voice. “We need no room. A bundle of straw and a corner is all we seek. Of your charity, Madame, is this a night on which to leave a dog out of doors?”
A light of recollection leaped suddenly to La Boulaye's eyes, and with a sudden gasp he stooped to the hearth.
“But I cannot, Messieurs,” the woman was saying, when the second voice interrupted her.
“I see your husband by the fire, Madame. Let us hear what he has to say.”
The woman coloured to the roots of her hair. She stepped back a pace, and was about to answer them when, chancing to glance in La Boulaye's direction, she paused. He had risen, and was standing with his back to the fire. There was a black smudge across his face, which seemed to act as a mask, and his dark eyes glowed with an intensity of meaning which arrested her attention, and silenced the answer which was rising to her lips.
In the brief pause the new-comers had crossed the threshold, and stood within the rustic chamber. The first of these was he whose gentle voice La Boulaye had recognised—old M. des Cadoux, the friend of the Marquis de Bellecour. His companion, to the Deputy's vast surprise, was none other than the bearded courier who had that morning delivered him at Boisvert the letter from Robespierre. What did these two together, and upon such manifest terms of equality? That, it should be his business to discover.
“Come in, Messieurs,” he bade them, assuming the role of host. “We are unused to strangers, and Mathilde there is timid of robbers. Draw near the fire and dry yourselves. We will do the best we can for you. We are poor people, Messieurs; very poor.”
“I have already said that we will pay you handsomely my friend,” quoth Des Cadoux, coming forward with his companion. “Do your best for us and you shall not regret it. Have you aught to eat in the house?”
The woman was standing by the wall, her face expressing bewilderment and suspicion. Suspicious she was, yet that glance of La Boulaye's had ruled her strangely, and she was content to now await developments.
“We will see what we can do,” answered La Boulaye, as he made room for them by the hearth. “Come, Mathilde, let us try what the larder will yield.”
“I am afraid that Madame still mistrusts us,” deplored Des Cadoux.
La Boulaye laughed for answer as he gently but firmly drew her towards the door leading to the interior of the house. He held it for her to pass, what time his eyes were set in an intent but puzzled glance upon the courier. There was something about the man that was not wholly strange to La Boulaye. That morning, when he had spoken in the gruff accents of one of the rabble, no suspicion had entered the Deputy's mind that he was other than he seemed, for all that he now recalled how Tardivet had found the fellow's patriotism a little too patriotic. Now that he spoke in the voice that was naturally usual to him, it seemed to La Boulaye that it contained a note that he had heard before.
Still puzzled, he passed out of the room to be questioned sharply by the woman of the house touching his motives for passing himself off as her husband and inviting the new-comers to enter.
“I promise you their stay will be a very brief one,” he answered. “I have suspicions to verify the ends to serve, as you shall see. Will you do me the favour to go out by the back and call my men? Tell the corporal to make his way to the front of the house, and to hold himself in readiness to enter the moment I call him.”
“What are you about to do?” she asked and the face, as he saw it by the light of the candle she held, wore an expression of sullen disapproval.
He reassured her that there would be no bloodshed, and suggested that the men were dangerous characters whom it might be ill for her to entertain. And so at last he won his way, and she went to do his errand, whilst he reentered the kitchen.
He found Des Cadoux by the fire, intent upon drying as much of himself as possible. The younger man had seized upon the bottle of brandy that had been left on the table, and was in the act of filling himself a second glass. Nothing could be further from the mind of either than a suspicion of the identity of this rustically-clad and grimy-faced fellow.
“Mathilde will be here in a moment,” said Caron deferentially. “She is seeking something for you.”
Had he told them precisely what she was seeking they had been, possibly, less at ease.
“Let her hasten,” cried the courier, “for I am famished.”
“Have patience, Anatole,” murmured the ever-gentle Cadoux. “The good woman did not expect us.”
Anatole! The name buzzed through Caron's brain. To whom did it belong? He knew of someone who bore it. Yet question himself though he might, he could at the moment find no answer. And then the courier created a diversion by addressing him.
“Fill yourself a glass, mon bonhomme,” said he. “I have a toast for you.”
“For me, Monsieur,” cried La Boulaye, with surprised humility. “It were too great an honour.”
“Do as you are bidden, man,” returned this very peremptory courier. “There; now let us see how your favour runs. Cry 'Long Live the King!'”
Holding the brandy-glass, which the man had forced upon him, La Boulaye eyed him whimsically for a second.
“There is no toast I would more gladly drink,” said he at last, “if I considered it availing. But—alas—you propose it over-late.”
“Diable! What may you mean?”
“Why, that since the King is dead, it shall profit us little to cry, 'Long Live the King!'”
“The King, Monsieur, never dies,” said Cadoux sententiously.
“Since you put it so, Monsieur,” answered La Boulaye, as if convinced, “I'll honour the toast.” And with the cry they asked of him he drained his glass.
“And so, my honest fellow,” said Des Cadoux, producing his eternal snuff-box, “it seems that you are a Royalist. We did but test you with that toast, my friend.”
“What should a poor fellow know of politics, Messieurs?” he deprecated. “These are odd times. I doubt me the world has never seen their like. No man may safely know his neighbour. Now you, sir,” he pursued, turning to the younger man, “you have the air of a sans-culotte, yet from your speech you seem an honest enough gentleman.”
The fellow laughed with unction.
“The air of a sans-culotte?” he cried. “My faith, yes. So much so, that this morning I imposed myself as a courier from Paris upon no less an astute sleuth-hound of the Convention than the Citizen-deputy La Boulaye.”
“Is it possible?” cried Caron, his eyes opening wide in wonder. “But how, Monsieurs? For surely a courier must bear letters, and—”
“So did I, so did I, my friend,” the other interrupted, with vain glory. “I knocked a patriotic courier over the head to obtain them. He was genuine, that other courier, and I passed myself out of France with his papers.”
“Monsieur is amusing himself at the expense of my credulity,” La Boulaye complained.
“My good man, I am telling you facts,” the other insisted.
“But how could such a thing be accomplished?” asked Caron, seating himself at the table, and resting his chin upon his hand, his gaze so full of admiration as to seem awestruck.
“How? I will tell you. I am from Artois.”
“You'll be repeating that charming story once too often,” Des Cadoux cautioned him.
“Pish, you timorous one!” he laughed, and resumed his tale. “I am from Artois, then. I have some property there, and it lately came to my ears that this assembly of curs they call the Convention had determined to make an end of me. But before they could carry out their design, those sons of dogs, my tenants, incited by the choice examples set them by other tenantry, made a descent on my Chateau one night, and did themselves the pleasure of burning it to the ground. By a miracle I escaped with my life and lay hidden for three weeks in the house of an old peasant who had remained faithful. In that time I let my beard grow, and trained my hair into a patriotic unkemptness. Then, in filthy garments, like any true Republican, I set out to cross the frontier. As I approached it, I was filled with fears that I might not win across, and then, in the moment of my doubtings, I came upon that most opportune of couriers. I had the notion to change places with him, and I did. He was the bearer of a letter to the Deputy La Boulaye, of whom you may have heard, and this letter I opened to discover that it charged him to effect my arrest.”
If La Boulaye was startled, his face never betrayed it, not by so much as the quiver of an eyelid. He sat on, his jaw in his palm, his eyes admiringly bent upon the speaker.
“You may judge of my honesty, and of how fully sensible I was of the trust I had undertaken, when I tell you that with my own hand I delivered the letter this morning to that animal La Boulaye at Boisvert.” He seemed to swell with pride in his achievement. “Diable!” he continued. “Mine was a fine piece of acting. I would you could have seen me play the part of the patriot. Think of the irony of it! I won out of France with the very papers ordering my arrest. Ma foi! You should have seen me befool that dirt of a deputy! It was a performance worthy of Talma himself.” And he looked from Cadoux to La Boulaye for applause.
“I doubt not,” said the Deputy coldly. “It must have been worth witnessing. But does it not seem a pity to spoil everything and to neutralise so wonderful an achievement for the mere sake of boasting of it to a poor, ignorant peasant, Monsieur le Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval?”
With a sudden cry, the pseudo courier leapt to his feet, whilst Des Cadoux turned on the stool he occupied to stare alarmedly at the speaker.
“Name of God! Who are you?” demanded Ombreval advancing a step.
With his sleeve La Boulaye rubbed part of the disfiguring smear from his face as he stood up and made answer coolly:
“I am that dirt of a Deputy whom you befooled at Boisvert.” Then, raising his voice, “Garin!” he shouted, and immediately the door opened and the soldiers filed in.
Ombreval stood like a statue, thunderstruck with amazement at this most unlooked-for turning of the tables, his face ashen, his weak mouth fallen open and his eyes fearful.
Des Cadoux, who had also risen, seemed to take in the situation at a glance. Like a well-bred gamester who knows how to lose with a good grace the old gentleman laughed drily to himself as he tapped his snuff-box.
“We are delightfully taken, cher Vicomte,” he murmured, applying the tobacco to his nostril as he spoke. “It's odds you won't be able to repeat that pretty story to any more of your friends. I warned you that you inclined to relate it too often.”
With a sudden oath, Ombreval—moved to valour by the blind rage that possessed him—sprang at La Boulaye. But, as suddenly, Garin caught his arms from behind and held him fast.
“Remove them both,” La Boulaye commanded. “Place them in safety for the night, and see that they do not escape you, Garin, as you value your neck.”
Des Coudax shut his snuff-box with a snap.
“For my part, I am ready, Monsieur—your pardon—Citizen,” he said, “and I shall give you no trouble. But since I am not, I take it, included in the orders you have received, I have a proposal to make which may prove mutually convenient.”
“Pray make it, Citizen,” said La Boulaye.
“It occurs to me that it may occasion you some measure of annoyance to carry me all the way to Paris—and certainly, for my part, I should much prefer not to undertake the journey. For one thing, it will be fatiguing, for another, I have no desire to look upon the next world through the little window of the guillotine. I wish, then, to propose, Citizen,” pursued the old nobleman, nonchalantly dusting some fragments of tobacco from his cravat, “that you deal with me out of hand.”
“How, Citizen?” inquired La Boulaye.
“Why, your men, I take it are tolerable marksmen. I think that it might prove more convenient to both of us if you were to have me shot as soon as there is light enough.”
La Boulaye's eyes rested in almost imperceptible kindness upon Des Cadoux. Here, at least, was an aristocrat with a spirit to be admired and emulated.
“You are choosing the lesser of two evils, Citizen,” said the Deputy.
“Precisely,” answered Des Cadoux.
“But possibly, Citizen, it may be yours to avoid both. You shall hear from me in the morning. I beg that you will sleep tranquilly in the meantime. Garin, remove the prisoners.”
For fully an hour after their prisoners had been removed La Boulaye paced the narrow limits of the kitchen with face inscrutable and busy mind. He recalled what Suzanne had said touching her betrothal to Ombreval, whom she looked to meet at Treves. This miserable individual, then, was the man for whose sake she had duped him. But Ombreval at least was in Caron's power, and it came to him now that by virtue of that circumstance he might devise a way to bring her back without the need to go after her. He would send her word—aye, and proof—that he had taken him captive, and it should be hers to choose whether she would come to his rescue and humble herself to save him or leave him to his fate. In that hour it seemed all one to La Boulaye which course she followed, since by either, he reasoned, she must be brought to suffer. That he loved her was with him now a matter that had sunk into comparative insignificance. The sentiment that ruled his mind was anger, with its natural concomitant—the desire to punish.
And when morning came the Deputy's view of the situation was still unchanged. He was astir at an early hour, and without so much as waiting to break his fast, he bade Garin bring in the prisoners. Their appearance was in each case typical. Ombreval was sullen and his dress untidy, even when allowance had been made for the inherent untidiness of the Republican disguise which he had adopted to so little purpose. Des Cadoux looked well and fresh after his rest, and gave the Deputy an airy “Good morning” as he entered. He had been at some pains, too, with his toilet, and although his hair was slightly disarranged and most of the powder was gone from the right side, suggesting that he had lain on it, his appearance in the main was creditably elegant.
“Citizen Ombreval,” said La Boulaye, in that stern, emotionless voice that was becoming characteristic of him, “since you have acquainted yourself with the contents of the letter you stole from the man you murdered, you cannot be in doubt as to my intentions concerning you.”
The Vicomte reddened with anger.
“For your intentions I care nothing,” he answered hotly—rendered very brave by passion—“but I will have you consider your words. Do you say that I stole and murdered? You forget, M. le Republican, that I am a gentlemen.”
“Meaning, of course, that the class that so described itself could do these things with impunity without having them called by their proper names, is it not so? But you also forget that the Republic has abolished gentlemen, and with them, their disgraceful privileges.”
“Canaille!” growled the Vicomte, his eyes ablaze with wrath.
“Citizen-aristocrat, consider your words!” La Boulaye had stepped close up to him, and his voice throbbed with a sudden anger no whit less compelling than Ombreval's. “Fool! let me hear that word again, applied either to me or to any of my followers, and I'll have you beaten like a dog.”
And as the lesser ever does give way before the greater, so now did the anger that had sustained Ombreval go down and vanish before the overwhelming passion of La Boulaye. He grew pale to the lips at the Deputy's threat, and his eyes cravenly avoided the steady gaze of his captor.
“You deserve little consideration at my hands, Citizen,” said La Boulaye, more quietly, “and yet I have a mind to give you a lesson in generosity. We start for Paris in half-an-hour. If anywhere you should have friends expecting you, whom you might wish to apprise of your position, you may spend the half-hour that is left in writing to them. I will see that your letter reaches its destination.”
Ombreval's pallor seemed to intensify. His eyes looked troubled as they were raised to La Boulaye's. Then they fell again, and there was a pause. At last—.
“I shall be glad to avail myself of your offer,” he said, in a voice that for meekness was ludicrously at variance with his late utterances.
“Then pray do so at once.” And La Boulaye took down an inkhorn a quill, and a sheaf of paper from the mantel-shelf behind him. These he placed on the table, and setting a chair, he signed to the aristocrat to be seated.
“And now, Citizen Cadoux,” said La Boulaye, turning to the old nobleman, “I shall be glad if you will honour me by sharing my breakfast while Citizen Ombreval is at his writing.”
Des Cadoux looked up in some surprise.
“You are too good, Monsieur,” said he, inclining his head. “But afterwards?”
“I have decided,” said La Boulaye, with the ghost of a smile, “to deal with your case myself, Citizen.”
The old dandy took a deep breath, but the glance of his blue eyes was steadfast, and his lips smiled as he made answer:
“Again you are too good. I feared that you would carry me to Paris, and at my age the journey is a tiresome one. I am grateful, and meanwhile,—why, since you are so good as to invite me, let us breakfast, by all means.”
They sat down at a small table in the embrasure of the window, and their hostess placed before them a boiled fowl, a dish of eggs, a stew of herbs, and a flask of red wine, all of which La Boulaye had bidden her prepare.
“Why, it is a feast,” declared Des Cadoux, in excellent humour, and for all that he was under the impression that he was to die in half-an-hour he ate with the heartiest good-will, chatting pleasantly the while with the Republican—the first Republican with whom it had ever been his aristocratic lot to sit at table. And what time the meal proceeded Ombreval—with two soldiers standing behind his chair-penned his letter to Mademoiselle de Bellecour.
Had La Boulaye—inspired by the desire to avenge himself for the treachery of which he had been the victim—dictated that epistle, t could not have been indicted in a manner better suited to his ends. It was a maudlin, piteous letter, in which, rather than making his farewells, the Vicomte besought the aid of Suzanne. He was, he wrote, in the hands of men who might be bribed, and since she was rich—for he knew of the treasure with which she had escaped—he based his hopes upon her employing a portion of her riches to obtaining his enlargement. She, he continued, was his only hope, and for the sake of their love, for the sake of their common nobility, he besought her not to fail him now. Carried away by the piteousness of his entreaties the tears welled up to his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, one or two of them finding their way to the paper thus smearing it with an appeal more piteous still if possible than that of his maudlin words.
At last the letter was ended. He sealed it with a wafer and wrote the superscription:
“To Mademoiselle de Bellecour. At the 'Hotel des Trois Rois,' Treves.”
He announced the completion of his task, and La Boulaye bade him go join Des Cadoux at the next table and take some food before setting out, whilst the Deputy himself now sat down to write.
“Citoyenne,” he wrote, “the man to whom you are betrothed, for whose sake you stooped to treachery and attempted murder, is in my hands. Thus has Heaven set it in my power to punish you, if the knowledge that he travels to the guillotine is likely to prove a punishment. If you would rescue him, come to me in Paris, and, conditionally, I may give you his life.”
That, he thought should humble her. He folded his letter round Ombreval's and having sealed the package, he addressed it as Ombreval had addressed his own missive.
“Garin,” he commanded briefly, “remove the Citizen Ombreval.”
When he had been obeyed, and Garin had conducted the Vicomte from the room, La Boulaye turned again to Des Cadoux. They were alone, saving the two soldiers guarding the door.
The old man rose, and making the sign of the cross, he stepped forward, calm and intrepid of bearing.
“Monsieur,” he announced to La Boulaye, who was eyeing him with the faintest tinge of surprise, “I am quite ready.”
“Have you always been so devout, Citizen?” inquired the Deputy.
“Alas! no Monsieur. But there comes a time in the life of every man when, for a few moments at least, he is prone to grow mindful of the lessons learnt in childhood.”
The surprise increased in La Boulaye's countenance. At last he shrugged his shoulders, after the manner of one who abandons a problem that has grown too knotty.
“Citizen des Cadoux,” said he, “I have deliberated that since I have received no orders from Paris concerning you, and also since I am not by profession a catch-poll there is no reason whatever why I should carry you to Paris. In fact, Citizen, I know of no reason why I should interfere with your freedom at all. On the contrary when I recall the kindness you sought to do me that day, years ago, at Bellecour, I find every reason why I should further your escape from the Revolutionary tribunal. A horse, Citizen, stands ready saddled for you, and you are free to depart, with the one condition, however, that you will consent to become my courier for once, and carry a letter for me—a matter which should occasion you, I think, no deviation from your journey.”
The old dandy, in whose intrepid spirit the death which he had believed imminent had occasioned no trembling, turned pale as La Boulaye ceased. His blue eyes were lifted almost timidly to the Deputy's face, and his lip quivered.
“You are not going to have me shot, then?” he faltered.
“Shot?” echoed La Boulaye, and then he remembered the precise words of the request which Des Cadoux had preferred the night before, but which, at the time, he had treated lightly. “Ma foi, you do not flatter me!” he cried. “Am I a murderer, then? Come, come, Citizen, here is the letter that you are to carry. It is addressed to Mademoiselle de Bellecour, at Treves, and encloses Ombreval's farewell epistle to that lady.”
“But, gladly, Monsieur,” exclaimed Des Cadoux.
And then, as if to cover his sudden access of emotion, of which he was most heartily ashamed, he fumbled for his snuff-box, and, having found it, he took an enormous pinch.
They parted on the very best of terms did these two—the aristocrat and the Revolutionary—actuated by a mutual esteem tempered in each case with gratitude.
When at last Des Cadoux had taken a sympathetic leave of Ombreval and departed, Caron ordered the Vicomte to be brought before him again, and at the same time bade his men make ready for the road.
“Citizen,” said La Boulaye, “we start for Paris at once. If you will pass me your word of honour to attempt no escape you shall travel with us in complete freedom and with all dignity.”
Ombreval looked at him with insolent surprise, his weak supercilious mouth growing more supercilious even than its wont. He had recovered a good deal of his spirit by now.
“Pass you my word of honour?” he echoed. “Mon Dieu! my good fellow a word of honour is a bond between gentlemen. I think too well of mine to pass it to the first greasy rascal of the Republic that asks it of me.”
La Boulaye eyed him a second with a glance before which the aristocrat grew pale, and already regretted him of his words. The veins in the Deputy's temples were swollen.
“I warned you,” said he, in a dull voice. Then to the soldiers standing on either side of Ombreval—“Take him out,” he said, “mount him on horseback. Let him ride with his hands pinioned behind his back, and his feet lashed together under the horse's belly. Attend to it!”
“Monsieur,” cried the young man, in an appealing voice, “I will give you my word of honour not to escape. I will—”
“Take him out,” La Boulaye repeated, with a dull bark of contempt. “You had your chance, Citizen-aristocrat.”
Ombreval set his teeth and clenched his hands.
“Canaille!” he snarled, in his fury.
“Hold!” Caron called after the departing men.
They obeyed, and now this wretched Vicomte, of such unstable spirit dropped all his anger again, as suddenly as he had caught it up. Fear paled his cheek and palsied his limbs once more, for La Boulaye's expression was very terrible.
“You know what I said that I would have done to you if you used that word again?” La Boulaye questioned him coldly.
“I—I was beside myself, Monsieur,” the other gasped, in the intensity of his fear. And at the sight of his pitiable condition the anger fell away from La Boulaye, and he smiled scornfully.
“My faith,” he sneered. “You are hot one moment and cold the next. Citizen, I am afraid that you are no better than a vulgar coward. Take him away,” he ended, waving his hand towards the door, and as he watched them leading him out he reflected bitterly that this was the man to whom Suzanne was betrothed—the man whom, not a doubt of it, she loved, since for him she had stooped so low. This miserable craven she preferred to him, because the man, so ignoble of nature, was noble by the accident of birth.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,And men below and saints above,For love is Heaven and Heaven is love.—The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
In his lodgings at the corner of the Rue-St. Honore and the Rue de la Republique—lately changed, in the all-encompassing metamorphosis, from “Rue Royale” sat the Deputy Caron La Boulaye at his writing-table.
There was a flush on his face and a sparkle in the eyes that looked pensively before him what time he gnawed the feathered end of his quill. In his ears still rang the acclamations that had greeted his brilliant speech in the Assembly that day. He was of the party of the Mountain—as was but natural in a protege of the Seagreen Robespierre—a party more famed for its directness of purpose than elegance of expression, and in its ranks there was room and to spare for such orators as he. The season was March of '93—a season marked by the deadly feud raging 'twixt the Girondins and the Mountain, and in that battle of tongues La Boulaye was covering himself with glory and doing credit to his patron, the Incorruptible. He was of a rhetoric not inferior to Vergniaud's—that most eloquent Girondon—and of a quickness of wit and honesty of aim unrivalled in the whole body of the Convention, and with these gifts he harassed to no little purpose those smooth-tongued legislators of the Gironde, whom Dumouriez called the Jesuits of the Revolution. His popularity with the men of the Mountain and with the masses of Paris was growing daily, and the crushing reply he had that day delivered to the charges preferred by Vergniaud was likely to increase his fame.
Well, therefore, might he sit with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes chewing the butt of his pen and smiling to himself at the memory of the enthusiasm of which he had been the centre a half-hour ago. Here, indeed, was something that a man might live for, something that a man might take pride in, and something that might console a man for a woman's treachery. What, indeed, could woman's love give him that might compare with this? Was it not more glorious far to make himself the admired, the revered, the very idol of those stern men, than the beloved of a simpering girl? The latter any coxcomb with a well-cut coat might encompass, but the former achievement was a man's work.
And yet, for all that he reasoned thus speciously and philosophically, there was a moment when his brow grew clouded and his eyes lost their sparkle. He was thinking of that night in the inn at Boisvert, when he had knelt beside her and she had lied to him. He was thinking of the happiness, that for a few brief hours had been his, until he discovered how basely she had deceived him, and for all the full-flavour of his present elation it seemed to him that in that other happiness which he now affected to despise by contrast, there had dwelt a greater, a more contenting sweetness.
Would she come to Paris? He had asked himself that question every day of the twenty that were spent since his return. And in the meantime the Vicomte d'Ombreval lay in the prison of the Luxembourg awaiting trial. That he had not yet been arraigned he had to thank the efforts of La Boulaye. The young Deputy had informed Robespierre that for reasons of his own he wished the ci-devant Vicomte, to be kept in prison some little time, and the Incorruptible, peering at him over his horn-rimmed spectacles, had shrugged his shoulders and answered:
“But certainly, cher Caron, since it is your wish. He will be safe in the Luxembourg.”
He had pressed his protege for a reason, but La Boulaye had evaded the question, promising to enlighten him later.
Since then Caron had waited, and now it was more than time that Mademoiselle made some sign. Or was it that neither Ombreval's craven entreaties nor his own short message had affected her? Was she wholly heartless and likely to prove as faithless to the Vicomte in his hour of need as she had proved to him?
With a toss of the head he dismissed her from his thoughts, and dipping his quill, he began to write.
From the street came the dull roll of beaten drums and the rhythmical fall of marching feet. But the sound was too common in revolutionary Paris to arrest attention, and he wrote on, heeding it as little as he did the gruff voice of a pastry-cook crying his wares, the shriller call of a milkman, or the occasional rumblings of passing vehicles. But of a sudden one of those rumblings ceased abruptly at his door. He heard the rattle of hoofs and the grind of the wheel against the pavement, and looking up, he glanced across at the ormolu timepiece on his overmantel. It was not yet four o'clock.
Wondering whether the visitor might be for him or for the tenant of the floor above, he sat listening until his door opened and his official—the euphemism of “servant” in the revolutionary lexicon—came to announce that a woman was below, asking to see him.
Now for all that he believed himself to have become above emotions where Mademoiselle de Bellecour was concerned, he felt his pulses quicken at the very thought that this might be she at last.
“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked.
“A pretty woman, Citizen,” answered Brutus, with a grin. “It is the Citoyenne Deshaix.”
La Boulaye made an impatient gesture.
“Fool, why did you not say so,” he cried sharply.
“Fool, you did not ask me,” answered the servant, with that touching, fraternal frankness adopted by all true patriots. He was a thin, under-sized man of perhaps thirty years of age, and dressed in black, with a decency—under La Boulaye's suasion—that was rather at variance with his extreme democracy. His real name was Ferdinand, but, following a fashion prevailing among the ultra-republicans, he had renamed himself after the famous Roman patriot.
La Boulaye toyed a moment with his pen, a frown darkening his brow. Then:
“Admit her,” he sighed wearily.
And presently she came, a pretty woman, as Brutus had declared, very fair, and with the innocent eyes of a baby. She was small of stature, and by the egregious height of her plume-crowned head-dress it would seem as if she sought by art to add to the inches she had received from Nature. For the rest she wore a pink petticoat, very extravagantly beflounced, and a pink corsage cut extravagantly low. In one hand she carried a fan—hardly as a weapon against heat, seeing that the winter was not yet out—in the other a huge bunch of early roses.
“Te voile!” was her greeting, merrily—roguishly—delivered, and if the Revolution had done nothing else for her, it had, at least, enabled her to address La Boulaye by the “Thou” of intimacy which the new vocabulary prescribed.
La Boulaye rose, laid aside his pen, and politely, if coolly, returned her greeting and set a chair for her.
“You are,” said he, “a very harbinger of Spring, Citoyenne, with your flowers and your ravishing toilette.”
“Ah! I please you, then, for once,” said she without the least embarrassment. “Tell me—how do you find me?” And, laughing, she turned about that he might admire her from all points of view.
He looked at her gravely for a moment, so gravely that the laughter began to fade from her eyes.
“I find you charming, Citoyenne,” he answered at last. “You remind me of Diana.”
“Compliments?” quoth she, her eyebrows going up and her eyes beaming with surprise and delight. “Compliments from La Boulaye! But surely it is the end of the world. Tell me, mon ami,” she begged, greedily angling for more, “in what do I remind you of the sylvan goddess?”
“In the scantiness of your raiment, Citoyenne,” he answered acidly. “It sorts better with Arcadia than with Paris.”
Her eyebrows came down, her cheeks flushed with resentment and discomfiture. To cover this she flung her roses among the papers of his writing-table, and dropping into a chair she fanned herself vigorously.
“Citoyenne, you relieve my anxieties,” said he. “I feared that you stood in danger of freezing.”
“To freeze is no more than one might expect in your company,” she answered, stifling her anger.
He made no reply. He moved to the window, and stood drumming absently on the panes. He was inured to these invasions on the part of Cecile Deshaix and to the bold, unwomanly advances that repelled him. To-day his patience with her was even shorter than its wont, haply because when his official had announced a woman he had for a moment permitted himself to think that it might be Suzanne. The silence grew awkward, and at last he broke it.
“The Citizen Robespierre is well?” he asked, without turning.
“Yes,” said she, and for all that there was chagrin to spare in the glance with which she admired the back of his straight and shapely figure, she contrived to render her voice airily indifferent. “We were at the play last night.”
“Ah!” he murmured politely. “And was Talma in veine?”
“More brilliant than ever,” answered she.
“He is a great actor, Citoyenne.”
A shade of annoyance crossed her face.
“Why do you always address me as Citoyenne?” she asked, with some testiness.
He turned at last and looked at her a moment.
“We live in a censorious world, Citoyenne,” he answered gravely.
She tossed her head with an exclamation of impatience.
“We live in a free world, Citizen. Freedom is our motto. Is it for nothing that we are Republicans?”
“Freedom of action begets freedom of words,” said he, “and freedom of words leads to freedom of criticism—and that is a thing to which no wise woman will expose herself, no matter under what regime we live. You would be well-advised, Citoyenne, in thinking of that when you come here.”
“But you never come to us, Caron,” she returned, in a voice of mild complaint. “You have not been once to Duplay's since your return from Belgium. And you seem different, too, since your journey to the army.” She rose now and approached him. “What is it, cher Caron?” she asked, her voice a very caress of seductiveness, her eyes looking up into his. “Is something troubling you?”
“Troubling me?” he echoed, musingly. “No. But then I am a busy man, Citoyenne.”
A wave of red seemed to sweep across her face, and her heel beat the parquet floor.
“If you call me Citoyenne again I shall strike you,” she threatened him.
He looked down at her, and she had the feeling that behind the inscrutable mask of his countenance he was laughing at her.
“It would sort well with your audacity,” he made answer coolly.
She felt in that moment that she hated him, and it was a miracle that she did not do as she had threatened, for with all her meek looks she owned a very fiercest of tempers. She drew back a pace or two, and her glance fell.
“I shall not trouble you in future,” she vowed. “I shall not come here again.”
He bowed slightly.
“I applaud the wisdom of your resolve—Cit—Cecile. The world, as I have said, is censorious.”
She looked at him a second, then she laughed, but it was laughter of the lips only; the eyes looked steely as daggers and as capable of mischief.
“Adieu, Citizen La Boulaye,” she murmured mockingly.
“Au revoir, Citoyenne Deshaix,” he replied urbanely.
“Ough!” she gasped, and with that sudden exclamation of pent-up wrath, she whisked about and went rustling to the door.
“Citoyenne,” he called after her, “you are forgetting your flowers.”
She halted, and seemed for a second to hesitate, looking at him oddly. Then she came back to the table and took up her roses. Again she looked at him, and let the bouquet fall back among the papers.
“I brought them for you, Caron,” she said, “and I'll leave them with you. We can at least be friends, can we not?”
“Friends? But were we ever aught else?” he asked.
“Alas! no,” she said to herself, whilst aloud she murmured: “I thought that you would like them. Your room has such a gloomy, sombre air, and a few roses seem to diffuse some of the sunshine on which they have been nurtured.”
“You are too good, Cecile” he answered, and, for all his coldness, he was touched a little by this thoughtfulness.
She looked up at the altered tone, and the expression of her face seemed to soften. But before she could make answer there was a rap at the door. It opened, and Brutus stood in the doorway.
“Citizen,” he announced, in his sour tones, “there is another woman below asking to see you.”
La Boulaye started, as again his thoughts flew to Suzanne, and a dull flush crept into his pale cheeks and mounted to his brow. Cecile's eyes were upon him, her glance hardening as she observed these signs. Bitter enough had it been to endure his coldness whilst she had imagined that it sprang from the austerity of his nature and the absorption of his soul in matters political. But now that it seemed she might have cause to temper her bitterness with jealousy her soul was turned to gall.
“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked after a second's pause.
“Tall, pale, straight, black hair, black eyes, silk gown—and savours the aristocrat a league off,” answered Brutus.
“Your official seems gifted with a very comprehensive eye,” said Cecile tartly.
But La Boulaye paid no heed to her. The flush deepened on his face, then faded again, and he grew oddly pale. His official's inventory of her characteristics fitted Mademoiselle de Bellecour in every detail.
“Admit her, Brutus,” he commanded, and his voice had a husky sound. Then, turning to Cecile, “You will give me leave?” he said, cloaking rude dismissal in its politest form.
“Assuredly,” she answered bitterly, making shift to go. “Your visitor is no doubt political?” she half-asked half-asserted.
But he made no answer as he held the door for her, and bowed low as she passed out. With a white face and lips tightly compressed she went, and half-way on the stairs she met a handsome woman, tall and of queenly bearing, who ascended. Her toilette lacked the elaborateness of Cecile's, but she carried it with an air which not all the modistes of France could have succeeded in imparting to the Citoyenne Deshaix.
So dead was Robespierre's niece to every sense of fitness that, having drawn aside to let the woman pass, she stood gazing after her until she disappeared round the angle of the landing. Then, in a fury, she swept from the house and into her waiting coach, and as she drove back to Duplay's in the Rue St. Honore she was weeping bitterly in her jealous rage.