Her patience was not greatly taxed. Within ten minutes Vidal himself arrived. He was short and brisk in manner, aye, sharp, like one with whom time presses.
“Come,” he said. “Since the berlin is here let us be gone at once.”
“A moment,” she answered him, “A moment, Jerome. There is something I must tell you. We — we cannot go.”
“Cannot? Name of a name!” he snapped. “There is no time to lose; not a minute.”
He caught up his haversack which stood ready, unmoved from where he had left it.
“Where is the rest of the baggage?” he inquired.
“In there,” she answered mechanically. “But—”
“And Seyrac? What has become of him?” His impatience was almost feverish.
“That’s it.” she said. “Seyrac has gone — in your coat and with our passport.”
She saw him stiffen suddenly, and for all that it was become too dark to make out his expression she saw the stare of his eyes, and conceived him angry with herself.
“I did what I could to prevent it,” she made haste to explain. “That I might recover it. I even pretended to go with him. Oh. Jerome, Jerome! We are ruined! You are lost!”
“Tell me what happened.” he bade her, his voice very subdued and quiet. “But tell me quickly — in a word, if you can.”
She told him of the manner of Seyrac’s arrest in his stead. For a moment he was silent when he had heard, then he laughed, quite mirthlessly, grimly, an echo of the irony of fate that had been at work in this.
“Did I not say that God does not sleep?” quoth he. “Did not I remind the ci-devant chevalier that we are in Fructidor — the month of fruition? His deeds have borne him their natural fruit, I hope he will relish them.”
She clung to him in fear and grief.
“But now, Jerome?” she asked him breathlessly. “What are we to do now? Your papers remained in the hands of the agent.”
“He is very welcome to them, since as you see they were but a passport to the guillotine. At every barrier in Paris by now an agent will have been posted to look out for Colonel Vidal, and — in case those sent hither should have arrived too late — to effect his arrest should he attempt to leave. It was to warn me of this that Danton sent for me.”
“But—” She paused, not understanding,
“He informed me that St. Just had moved sooner than was expected. Supported by the Robespierres and their following, he had decreed my arrest this very night, to make quite sure of my silence. His agents were on their way here when they met Seyrac.
“And but for his notion to impersonate me they must have come here to await my return and to arrest me the moment I appeared. Seyrac has served the turn for which fate used him when she despatched him hither. We are safe at least until they discover their mistake, and that should give us all the time we need to get out of Paris.”
“But how can we leave, since we have no papers?” she cried.
“Be easy. Danton supplied me with another passport in which I go under another name.”
When Vidal had bestowed their luggage at last in the berlin, and had handed up Angèle, he bade the driver to proceed by way of the Barriere d’Enfer.
It was not until they reached the barrier that the full irony of the evening’s events was revealed to Angèle. When the carriage drew up there in the flare of the lights a cockaded officer of the guard rolled up to the door of the berlin.
“Who goes there?” he challenged.
“The citizen Dunoyer on urgent mission,” replied Vidal,
“Your papers, citizen-traveler?” was the officer’s curt demand.
Vidal thrust forth a document. The officer conned it a moment. Then read aloud— “Pass citizen Dunoyer on urgent mission, on behalf of the national convention, accompanied by his wife and secretary.’ He considered the appended detailed description of the traveler, and scanned Vidal briefly to confirm them. Then he peered into the body of the carriage.
“Your secretary, citizen?” he inquired.
“He discovered at the last moment that his presence is required in Paris by the republic.” said Vidal “And as my business is urgent, as you may readily see, I could not wait to fill his place.”
“Very well,” said the officer, and he handed back the passport. “Pass,” he shouted to the driver. And then saluting one in whom he beheld a representative of the nation, “Bon voyage, citoyen.” he said, and stepped back as the carriage rolled on and out of Paris.
“Your secretary?” said Angèle. “What did that mean?”
“Why, Seyrac, of course. Since matters had fallen out in this way it was an easy matter to obtain his inclusion in this document. Having befriended him. I thought it was our duty to complete the deed since it was placed within my power to do so without hurting you. It was my intention that he should be riding to Holland with us now. But since he has chosen instead to ride to the Greve in a tumbrel, there is no occasion to waste regrets upon him.”
The driver of the berlin, profoundly intrigued hitherto by the evening’s events, conceived that at last he had discovered the solution of them. He looked up at the stars as he flicked his whip. One of them seemed to wink at him, and he winked back quite solemnly.
“Now here,” said he, “is a likely republican widow who is soon consoled.”
THE END
THE NUPTIALS OF CORBIGNY
SHADOWS moved behind the broad lattice that formed the upper part of the heavy wooden doors at the gallery’s end. Those nearest, observing this and knowing what it portended, caught their breath. From these, apprehension rippled over the groups assembled in that long narrow avenue of doom, striking them into silence.
Upon that silence the rasping of a key in its lock rang like a pistol shot. One of the wings of the great heavy door swung inwards, and the turnkey entered, brawny and swarthy, his blue shirt gaping away from a broad hairy chest, a fur bonnet on his cropped head, a yellow bloodhound at his heels. He stood aside on the platform at the head of the steps, to give passage to a slim young gentleman in a tight black frock and a round black hat adorned by a buckle in front and a cockade at the side. A paper in his hand drew the eyes — some scared, some apathetic, some proudly indifferent, and some defiantly scornful — of the hundred men and women assembled there for the daily purpose of hearing that paper’s contents. For this slim young gentleman, Robert Wolf, clerk of the Revolutionary Tribunal, was the adjutant of the Public Accuser. His paper bore the list over whose preparation Fouquier-Tinville had laboured half the night.
The Citizen Wolf stepped briskly to the edge of the platform, to read the names of those whom Fouquier-Tinville summoned that morning to judgment: “the baker’s batch,” as it was called in the cynical jargon of the day!
Having chosen his position, the clerk waited until three men who followed him should have come to a standstill. Not on that account did they hurry themselves. Two of them, men of middle age, both dressed in black, one tall and portly the other short and wizened, took their time deferentially from another who, walking a little in advance, appeared to conduct them.
This was Chauvinière, the Nivernais deputy, tall, slim, not over thirty, of a certain vigorous elegance. He wore a riding-coat with broad lapels and silver buttons, the tails of which reached almost to the heels of his Hessian boots. Spotless buckskins cased his long, lean legs so closely that every muscle was defined, and a cravat of spotless white clothed his neck to the chin. He was girt by a tricolour sash, and a tricolour cockade adorned his grey hat, which was cocked in front, à la Henri IV, and surmounted by a panache of black plumes. Thus were advertised his office and his sansculottism which latter stood too high, had been too fully proven, to be shaken by any gibes at his apparel, whilst his arrogance, audacity and self-assurance were proof against vulgar criticism. Those qualities were to be read in his lean, sallow countenance with its high-bridged nose, its curled upper lip and its keen light eyes under their level black brows. There was a certain raffishness in hi
s air that proclaimed him half-gentleman, half-valet; half-wolf, half-fox.
With a leisureliness that took no account either of the waiting clerk or of the agonized suspense and the pounding of a hundred hearts in that assembly, Chauvinière selected his point of vantage, at a little distance from Robert Wolf, and descended the first step, so that his two companions in black immediately behind him obtained, from the summit of the platform, a clear view over his head.
His keen eyes raked the gallery and the men and women in that throng, most of whom were so scrupulously dressed that, saving for the absence of powder from their heads, they might have been gathered together for a lévee. This was a daily miracle performed upon slender enough resources by the prisoners in the Conciergerie.
The deputy’s questing glance came at last to rest upon Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, standing slim and straight, beside the chair into which her mother had nervelessly collapsed. Incredibly fearless and resolute she stood, with scarcely loss of colour to her lovely face. But the blue-green eyes dilated a little and flickered as they met the deputy’s. Her slight bosom moved perceptibly under its crossed muslin fichu, to betray a sudden agitation which not even the advent of the list had been able to arouse.
Chauvinière half-turned to the men in black behind him. He said something in a low voice into an obsequiously lowered ear, and with his silver-mounted cane he deliberately pointed. Three pairs of eyes followed the direction of the pointing, and Mademoiselle de Montsorbier stiffened under that volley of glances whose purport she was far from guessing but which instinctively she felt to bode no good.
Then the pointing cane was lowered, and the three men ranged themselves decorously, as Robert Wolf began to call the names of the doomed. His voice droned emotionlessly. Like Fouquier-Tinville himself, he was simply a part of the great revolutionary machine. There was no personal responsibility in what he did, and it was not for him to indulge feelings and emotions over actions that were not his own. To answer each summons there would be now a gasp, now a sob of terror, occasionally an outcry of hysterical panic quickly sinking into shuddering sobs from the victim chosen.
The voice droned on implacably, but as sweetly as if it had been the hum of bees making honey:
“The ci-devant Marquis de La Tourette.”
The Marquis, middle-aged, exquisite in a blue coat with silver lace, threw up his head — the handsome head that so soon would leave his shoulders — and sharply caught his breath. In an instant he recovered. He remembered what was due to his blood and his self-respect. He shrugged and smiled in deprecation, for all that his face was the colour of chalk.
“It will break the monotony,” he said softly to a neighbour, as the next name was being called.
“The ci-devant Comtesse de Montsorbier.”
Madame de Montsorbier, a slender little woman of fifty, half-rose from her chair, beginning an inarticulate cry on which she seemed to choke. But her knees were loosened, and she sank down again, leaning sideways against her daughter. Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, rigid now and piteously white, set protecting arms about her half-swooning mother, and waited to hear her own name, almost hoped to hear it, in her selfless anxiety. All that she realized was that in her agony, the frail woman who had borne her would require her as she had never required her yet. Solicitude for her mother effaced all consideration of her own fate. That was the mettle of Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, and her deepest dismay was not reached until the list had come to an end without her own name having been pronounced by that monotonous voice.
Two gendarmes, coming she knew not whence, surged suddenly before her.
“The ci-devant Montsorbier,” said one of them, and set a hand upon the drooping shoulder of Madame.
Mademoiselle de Montsorbier turned to him, unable to marshal her tumultuous thoughts into coherent expression. “But it is my mother! There is some error. She cannot go without me. You see how feeble she is. My name has not been called. It is an omission. You see that it is an omission. You will tell them that it is an omission. You will let me go with her.”
Thus, in a confused torrent, the phrases tumbled from her lips.
The man looked at her sullenly, dubiously, his nether lip projected. He shook his head. “Not our affair.” He shook the Countess who was not more than half-conscious. “You are to come along, citoyenne.”
“But I may go with her? I may go with her?”
“Ah, bah! What’s your hurry to sneeze into the basket? Your turn will come soon enough, citoyenne. Lend a hand, Gaston.”
Between them, the two men dragged the Countess to her feet, and half-carried, half-led her away. The girl sprang after them.
“I may come, too; may I not? I may...”
A blow from the elbow of one of the guards cut short her breath, and sent her hurtling backwards. “Faith! You make yourself a nuisance, my girl!”
She reeled to the wooden chair the Countess had vacated.
“Mother!” she gasped aloud, “Mother!”
White-faced she sat, in stony tearless grief, her long fine hands clutched between her knees.
Just so, a month ago, had her father been rent from them, to take his trial; and hers it had been since then to comfort and sustain her mother. Now her mother, too, was gone!
Why had she been left? A voice was speaking at her elbow, a crisp, level voice, not unpleasant, although pitched in a tone almost ironical.
“This is the young woman who claims your attention, citizens. You observe her listlessness, her unnatural pallor, the vacancy of her stare. Perform your office. It is not for me to direct you, or even to suggest; but for you to judge.”
She swung half-round, looking up, challenge, defiance, alarm all blending in her glance, like some trapped wild creature. She met the light eyes of Chauvinière, piercing, mocking eyes which she had grown to hate, and even to fear, she who had never feared anything in all her proud young life. A half-dozen times in the last three weeks had she found those eyes upon her in a questing, measuring, soullessly appraising glance, which had scorched her from head to foot. Twice already had he found occasion to speak to her as he passed through the prisoners’ gallery on a visit which appeared to have no other object but that of addressing her. Each time she had commanded herself so as to dissemble from him her resentment at the insult which his look and word conveyed. She would command herself now. He should never guess her fear of him, this dishonouring fear for which she loathed herself.
The two men in black were gravely considering her, the taller one extended a plump hand, and took her wrist.
“Your pulse, citoyenne.”
“My pulse?” she heard herself questioning in a distant voice, and knew by the drumming of her temples that her pulses galloped in that moment. Then above considerations of herself rose the momentarily whelmed memory of her bereavement. “You, Monsieur...Citizen, Citizen-deputy! They have taken Madame my mother, and by an omission I have been left. Give orders, monsieur, I implore you, that my name be added to the list of the day...”
“Ah!” said Chauvinière, with so singular an emphasis that it arrested her intercession. He looked at the men in black with a significant lift of his black brows. “You hear her, citizen-doctors! Is that the request of a young woman who is sane? To desire — to implore — death at that age, when life unfolds itself like a perfumed rose, when the blood runs warm and clear, is a sufficient confirmation of what already I suspected. But” — and again there was that flash of mockery from those light eyes— “it is not for me to influence your decision. You must form judgment for yourselves. Proceed!” He waved a hand, a hand that was long and slender as an aristocrat’s and as graceful in its gesture which subtly blended invitation with command.
The doctors sighed and grunted. “For my own part,” said the shorter one, “I do not like her eyes. That wild, hunted look, that expression of distraction...hem! Hem!”
“And then her pallor,” put in the other. “Most unnatural! And this pulse!”
“Of course,
of course,” said the deputy’s voice, and it was cold as ice, or — thought the little doctor — cold as the knife of the guillotine: “It is for you to form the opinion. But you will remember that I brought you here because I have upon other occasions witnessed these same traits in the citoyenne, when no external cause could be discerned such as may have arisen now.”
The little doctor clutched at salvation. “Ah, but that is decisive,” he exclaimed with complete conviction of tone. “If these symptoms — this pulse, this pallor, these twitchings, this glassy stare and...and the rest — have been manifest constantly and without adequate cause, one conclusion only is possible. At least,” he added with a glance at his colleague, “that is my opinion.”
“And mine,” said the other sharply. “Emphatically, mine!”
Chauvinière’s lips twitched. “It is gratifying, citizen-doctors, for a layman to find his scientific suspicions confirmed by men of science. You will, then, certify the citoyenne, so that the Public Accuser may authorize her removal say to the madhouse in the Rue du Bac.”
He inclined his head in dismissal, haughty as a prince of the old régime. The deputy’s commanding hand waved them away. Then his eyes swung to the girl’s face. She was on her feet confronting him, appearing to be entirely fearless.
“Is it pretended that I am mad?” Her question was a challenge.
He smiled a little. “Must you quarrel with a pretence which will give you life, which will snatch you from under the knife of the guillotine? If you do, and at your age, then you are as mad as they who are about to certify you.”
“But why,” she asked quietly, “should you desire to serve me?”
A smile momentarily softened his saturnine countenance. “I do not believe a man has lived since the world began who did not at some time desire to serve one woman,” he said meaningly.
The traditions in which she had been reared rendered this an insult in her eyes. She let him perceive it in her sudden stiffening, the up-tilting of her chin, the frown above her blue-green eyes and the angry flush that stained her delicately tinted face.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 566
