CHAPTER V
A day in the woods.
But whilst men and women set to work to make the towns of France hideouswith their shrieks and their hootings, their mock-trials and bloodyguillotines, they could not quite prevent Nature from working her sweetwill with the country.
June, July, and August had received new names--they were now calledMessidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor, but under these new names theycontinued to pour forth upon the earth the same old fruits, the sameflowers, the same grass in the meadows and leaves upon the trees.
Messidor brought its quota of wild roses in the hedgerows, just asarchaic June had done. Thermidor covered the barren cornfields with itsflaming mantle of scarlet poppies, and Fructidor, though now calledAugust, still tipped the wild sorrel with dots of crimson, and laid thefirst wash of tender colour on the pale cheeks of the ripening peaches.
And Juliette--young, girlish, feminine and inconsequent--had sighed forcountry and sunshine, had longed for a ramble in the woods, the music ofthe birds, the sight of the meadows sugared with marguerites.
She had left the house early: accompanied by Petronelle, she had beenrowed along the river as far as Suresnes. They had brought some breadand fresh butter, a little wine and fruit in a basket, and from here shemeant to wander homewards through the woods.
It was all so peaceful, so remote: even the noise of shrieking, howlingParis did not reach the leafy thickets of Suresnes.
It almost seemed as if this little old-world village had been forgottenby the destroyers of France. It had never been a royal residence, thewoods had never been preserved for royal sport: there was no vengeanceto be wreaked upon its peaceful glades and sleepy, fragrant meadows.
Juliette spent a happy day; she loved the flowers, the trees, the birds,and Petronelle was silent and sympathetic. As the afternoon wore on, andit was time to go home, Juliette turned townwards with a sigh.
You all know that road through the woods, which lies to the north-westof Paris: so leafy, so secluded. No large, hundred-year-old trees, nofine oaks or antique elms, but numberless delicate stems of hazel-nutand young ash, covered with honeysuckle at this time of year,sweet-smelling and so peaceful after that awful turmoil of the town.
Obedient to Madame Deroulede's suggestion, Juliette had tied a tricolourscarf round her waist, and a Phrygian cap of crimson cloth, with theinevitable rosette on one side, adorned her curly head.
She had gathered a huge bouquet of poppies, marguerites and blue lupin--Nature's tribute to the national colours--and as she wandered throughthe sylvan glades she looked like some quaint dweller of the woods--asprite, mayhap--with old mother Petronelle trotting behind her, like anattendant witch.
Suddenly she paused, for in the near distance she had perceived thesound of footsteps upon the leafy turf, and the next moment PaulDeroulede emerged from out the thicket and came rapidly towards her.
"We were so anxious about you at home!" he said, almost by way of anapology. "My mother became so restless ..."
"That to quiet her fears you came in search of me!" she retorted with agay little laugh, the laugh of a young girl, scarce a woman as yet, whofeels that she is good to look at, good to talk to, who feels her wingsfor the first time, the wings with which to soar into that mad, merry,elusive and called Romance. Ay, her wings! but her power also! thatsweet, subtle power of the woman: the yoke which men love, rail at, andlove again, the yoke that enslaves them and gives them the joy of kings.
How happy the day had been! Yet it had been incomplete!
Petronelle was somewhat dull, and Juliette was too young to enjoy longcompanionship with her own thoughts. Now suddenly the day seemed to havebecome perfect. There was someone there to appreciate the charm of thewoods, the beauty of that blue sky peeping though the tangled foliage ofthe honeysuckle-covered trees. There was some one to talk to, someone toadmire the fresh white frock Juliette had put on that morning.
"But how did you know where to find me?" she asked with a quaint touchof immature coquetry.
"I didn't know," he replied quietly. "They told me you had gone toSuresness, and meant to wander homewards through the woods. Itfrightened me, for you will have to go through the north-west barrier,and ..."
"Well?"
He smiled, and looked earnestly for a moment at the dainty apparitionbefore him.
"Well, you know!" he said gaily, "that tricolour scarf and the red capare not quite sufficient as a disguise: you look anything but a staunchfriend of the people. I guessed that your muslin frock would be clean,and that there would still be some tell-tale lace upon it."
She laughed again, and with delicate fingers lifted her pretty muslinfrock, displaying a white frou-frou of flounces beneath the hem.
"How careless and childish!" he said, almost roughly.
"Would you have me coarse and grimy to be a fitting match for yourpartisans?" she retorted.
His tone of mentor nettled her, his attitude seemed to her priggish anddictatorial, and as the sun disappearing behind a sudden cloud, so herchildish merriment quickly gave place to a feeling of unexplainabledisappointment.
"I humbly beg your pardon," he said quietly, "And must crave your kindindulgence for my mood: but I have been so anxious ..."
"Why should you be anxious about me?"
She had meant to say this indifferently, as if caring little what thereply might be: but in her effort to seem indifferent her voice becamehaughty, a reminiscence of the days when she still was the daughter ofthe Duc de Marny, the richest and most high-born heiress in France.
"Was that presumptuous?" he asked, with a slight touch of irony, inresponse to her own hauteur.
"It was merely unnecessary," she replied. "I have already laid too manyburdens on your shoulders, without wishing to add that of anxiety."
"You have laid no burden on me," he said quietly, "save one ofgratitude."
"Gratitude? What have I done?"
"You committed a foolish, thoughtless act outside my door, and gave methe chance of easing my conscience of a heavy load."
"In what way?"
"I had never hoped that the Fates would be so kind as to allow me torender a member of your family a slight service."
"I understand that you saved my life the other day, Monsieur Deroulede.I know that I am still in peril and that I owe my safety to you ..."
"Do you also know that your brother owed his death to me?"
She closed her lips firmly, unable to reply, wrathful with him, forhaving suddenly and without any warning, placed a clumsy hand upon thathidden sore.
"I always meant to tell you," he continued somewhat hurriedly; "for italmost seemed to me that I have been cheating you, these last few days.I don't suppose that you can quite realise what it means to me to tellyou this just now; but I owe it to you, I think. In later years youmight find out, and then regret the days you spent under my roof. Icalled you childish a moment ago, you must forgive me; I know that youare a woman, and hope therefore that you will understand me. I killedyour brother in fair fight. He provoked me as no man was ever provokedbefore ..."
"Is it necessary, M. Deroulede, that you should tell me all this?" sheinterrupted him with some impatience.
"I thought you ought to know."
"You must know, on the other hand, that I have no means of hearing thehistory of the quarrel from my brother's point of view now."
The moment the words were out of her lips she had realised how cruellyshe had spoken. He did not reply; he was too chivalrous, too gentle, toreproach her. Perhaps he understood for the first time how bitterly shehad felt her brother's death, and how deeply she must be suffering, nowthat she knew herself to be face to face with his murderer.
She stole a quick glance at him, through her tears. She was deeplypenitent for what she had said. It almost seemed to her as if a dualnature was at war within her.
The mention of her brother's name, the recollection of that awful nightbeside his dead body, of those four years whilst she watched herfather's moribund r
eason slowly wandering towards the grave, seemed torouse in her a spirit of rebellion, and of evil, which she felt was notentirely of herself.
The woods had become quite silent. It was late afternoon, and they hadgradually wandered farther and farther away from pretty sylvanSuresness, towards great, anarchic, deathdealing Paris. In this part ofthe woods the birds had left their homes; the trees, shorn of theirlower branches looked like gaunt spectres, raising melancholy headstowards the relentless, silent sky.
In the distance, from behind the barriers, a couple of miles away, theboom of a gun was heard.
"They are closing the barriers," he said quietly after a long pause. "Iam glad I was fortunate enough to meet you."
"It was kind of you to seek for me," she said meekly. "I didn't meanwhat I said just now ..."
"I pray you, say no more about it. I can so well understand. I only wish..."
"It would be best I should leave your house," she said gently; "I haveso ill repaid your hospitality. Petronelle and I can easily go back toour lodgings."
"You would break my mother's heart if you left her now," he said, almostroughly. "She has become very fond of you, and knows, just as well as Ido, the dangers that would beset you outside my house. My coarse andgrimy partisans," he added, with a bitter touch of sarcasm, "have thatadvantage, that they are loyal to me, and would not harm you while undermy roof."
"But you ..." she murmured.
She felt somehow that she had wounded him very deeply, and was halfangry with herself for her seeming ingratitude, and yet childishly gladto have suppressed in him that attitude of mentorship, which he wasbeginning to assume over her.
"You need not fear that my presence will offend you much longer,mademoiselle," he said coldly. "I can quite understand how hateful itmust be to you, though I would have wished that you could believe atleast in my sincerity."
"Are you going away then?"
"Not out of Paris altogether. I have accepted the post of Governor ofthe Conciergerie."
"Ah!--where the poor Queen ..."
She checked herself suddenly. Those words would have been calledtreasonable to the people of France.
Instinctively and furtively, as everyone did in these days, she cast arapid glance behind her.
"You need not be afraid," he said; "there is no one here butPetronelle."
"And you."
"Oh! I echo your words. Poor Marie Antoinette!"
"You pity her?"
"How can I help it?"
"But your are that horrible National Convention, who will try her,condemn her, execute her as they did the King."
"I am of the National Convention. But I will not condemn her, nor be aparty to another crime. I go as Governor of the Conciergerie, to helpher, if I can."
"But your popularity--your life--if you befriend her?"
"As you say, mademoiselle, my life, if I befriend her," he said simply.
She looked at him with renewed curiosity in her gaze.
How strange were men in these days! Paul Deroulede, the republican, therecognised idol of the lawless people of France, was about to risk hislife for the woman he had helped to dethrone.
Pity with him did not end with the rabble of Paris; it had reachedCharlotte Corday, though it failed to save her, and now it extended tothe poor dispossessed Queen. Somehow, in his face this time, she saweither success or death.
"When do you leave?" she asked.
"To-morrow night."
She said nothing more. Strangely enough, a tinge of melancholy hadsettled over her spirits. No doubt the proximity of the town was thecause of this. She could already hear the familiar noise of muffleddrums, the loud, excited shrieking of the mob, who stood round the gatesof Paris, at this time of the evening, waiting to witness some importantcapture, perhaps that of a hated aristocrat striving to escape from thepeople's revenge.
They had reached the edge of the wood, and gradually, as she walked, theflowers she had gathered fell unheeded out of her listless hands one byone.
First the blue lupins: their bud-laden heads were heavy and they droppedto the ground, followed by the white marguerites, that lay thick behindher now on the grass like a shroud. The red poppies were the lightest,their thin gummy stalks clung to her hands longer than the rest. At lastshe let them fall too, singly, like great drops of blood, that glistenedas her long white gown swept them aside.
Deroulede was absorbed in his thoughts, and seemed not to heed her. Atthe barrier, however, he roused himself and took out the passes whichalone enabled Juliette and Petronelle to re-enter the town unchallenged.He himself as Citizen-Deputy could come and go as he wished.
Juliette shuddered as the great gates closed behind her with a heavyclank. It seemed to shut out even the memory of this happy day, whichfor a brief space had been quite perfect.
She did not know Paris very well, and wondered where lay that gloomyConciergerie, where a dethroned queen was living her last days, in anagonised memory of the past. But as they crossed the bridge sherecognised all round her the massive towers of the great city: NotreDame, the grateful spire of La Sainte Chapelle, the sombre outline ofSt. Gervais, and behind her the Louvre with its great history andirreclaimable grandeur. How small her own tragedy seemed in the midst ofthis great sanguinary drama, the last act of which had not yet evenbegun. Her own revenge, her oath, her tribulations, what were they incomparison with that great flaming Nemesis which had swept away athrone, that vow of retaliation carried out by thousands against otherthousands, that long story of degradation, of regicide, of fratricide,the awesome chapters of which were still being unfolded one by one?
She felt small and petty: ashamed of the pleasure she had felt in thewoods, ashamed of her high spirits and light-heartedness, ashamed ofthat feeling of sudden pity and admiration for the man who had done herand her family so deep an injury, which she was too feeble, toovacillating to avenge.
The majestic outline of the Louvre seemed to frown sarcastically on herweakness, the silent river to mock her and her wavering purpose. The manbeside her had wronged her and hers far more deeply than the Bourbonshad wronged their people. The people of France were taking theirrevenge, and God had at the close of this last happy day of her lifepointed once more to the means for her great end.
I Will Repay Page 6
