I Will Repay
Page 9
CHAPTER VIII
Anne Mie.
That night, when Blakeney, wrapped in his cloak, was walking down theRue Ecole de Medecine towards his own lodgings, he suddenly felt a timidhand upon his sleeve.
Anne Mie stood beside him, her pale, melancholy face peeping up at thetall Englishman, through the folds of a dark hood closely tied under herchin.
"Monsieur," she said timidly, "do not think me very presumptuous. I--Iwould wish to have five minutes' talk with you--may I?"
He looked down with great kindness at the quaint, wizened little figure,and the strong face softened at the sight of the poor, deformedshoulder, the hard, pinched look of the young mouth, the general look ofpathetic helplessness which appeals so strongly to the chivalrous.
"Indeed, mademoiselle," he said gently, "you make me very proud; and Ican serve you in any way, I pray you command me. But," he added, seeingAnne Mie's somewhat scared look, "this street is scarce fit for privateconversation. Shall we try and find a better spot?"
Paris had not yet gone to bed. In these times it was really safest to beout in the open streets. There, everybody was more busy, more on themove, on the lookout for suspected houses, leaving the wanderer alone.
Blakeney led Anne Mie towards the Luxembourg Gardens, the greatdevastated pleasure-ground of the ci-devant tyrants of the people. Thebeautiful Anne of Austria, and the Medici before her, Louis XIII, andhis gallant musketeers--all have given place to the great cannon-forgingindustry of this besieged Republic. France, attacked on every side, isforcing her sons to defend her: persecuted, martyrised, done to death byher, she is still their Mother: La Patrie, who needs their arms againstthe foreign foe. England is threatening the north, Prussia and Austriathe east. Admiral Hood's flag is flying on Toulon Arsenal.
The siege of the Republic!
And the Republic is fighting for dear life. The Tuileries and LuxembourgGardens are transformed into a township of gigantic smithies; and AnneMie, with scared eyes, and clinging to Blakeney's arm, cast furtive,terrified glances at the huge furnaces and the begrimed, darkly scowlingfaces of the workers within.
"The people of France in arms against tyranny!" Great placards, bearingthese inspiriting words, are affixed to gallows-shaped posts, andflutter in the evening breeze, rendered scorching by the heat of thefurnaces all around.
Farther on, a group of older men, squatting on the ground, are busymaking tents, and some women--the same Megaeras who daily shriek roundthe guillotine--are plying their needles and scissors for the purpose ofmaking clothes for the soldiers.
The soldiers are the entire able-bodied male population of France.
"The people of France in arms against tyranny!"
That is their sign, their trade-mark; one of these placards, fitfullyillumined by a torch of resin, towers above a group of children busytearing up scraps of old linen--their mothers', their sisters' linen--in order to make lint for the wounded.
Loud curses and suppressed mutterings fill the smoke-laden air.
The people of France, in arms against tyranny, is bending its broad backbefore the most cruel, the most absolute and brutish slave-driving everexercised over mankind.
Not even mediaeval Christianity has ever dared such wholesaleenforcements of its doctrines, as this constitution of Liberty andFraternity.
Merlin's "Law of the Suspect" has just been formulated. From now onwardeach and every citizen of France must watch his words, his looks, hisgestures, lest they be suspect. Of what--of treason to the Republic, tothe people? Nay, worse! lest they be suspect of being suspect to thegreat era of Liberty.
Therefore in the smithies and among the groups of tent-makers a moment'snegligence, a careless attention to the work, might lead to a brieftrial on the morrow and the inevitable guillotine. Negligence is treasonto the higher interests of the Republic.
Blakeney dragged Anne Mie away from the sight. These roaring furnacesfrightened her; he took her down the Place St Michel, towards the river.It was quieter here.
"What dreadful people they have become," she said, shuddering; "even Ican remember how different they used to be."
The houses on the banks of the river were mostly converted intohospitals, preparatory for the great siege. Some hundred metres lowerdown, the new children's hospital, endowed by Citizen-Deputy Deroulede,loomed, white, clean, and comfortable-looking, amidst its more squalidfellows.
"I think it would be best not to sit down," suggested Blakeney, "andwiser for you to throw your hood away from your face."
He seemed to have no fears for himself; many had said that he bore acharmed life; and yet ever since Admiral Hood had planted his flag onToulon Arsenal, the English were more feared than ever, and The ScarletPimpernel more hated than most.
"You wished to speak to me about Paul Deroulede," he said kindly, seeingthat the young girl was making desperate efforts to say what lay on hermind. "He is my friend, you know."
"Yes; that is why I wished to ask you a question," she replied.
"What is it?"
"Who is Juliette de Marny, and why did she seek an entrance into Paul'shouse?"
"Did she seek it, then?"
"Yes; I saw the scene from the balcony. At the time it did not strike meas a farce. I merely thought that she had been stupid and foolhardy. Butsince then I have reflected. She provoked the mob of the street,wilfully, just at the very moment when she reached M. Deroulede's door.She meant to appeal to his chivalry, and called for help, well knowingthat he would respond."
She spoke rapidly and excitedly now, throwing off all shyness andreserve. Blakeney was forced to check her vehemence, which might havebeen thought "suspicious" by some idle citizen unpleasantly inclined.
"Well? And now?" he asked, for the young girl had paused, as if ashamedof her excitement.
"And now she stays in the house, on and on, day after day," continuedAnne Mie, speaking more quietly, though with no less intensity. "Whydoes she not go? She is not safe in France. She belongs to the mosthated of all the classes--the idle, rich aristocrats of the old regime.Paul has several times suggested plans for her emigration to England.Madame Deroulede, who is an angel, loves her, and would not like to partfrom her, but it would be obviously wiser for her to go, and yet shestays. Why?"
"Presumably because ..."
"Because she is in love with Paul?" interrupted Anne Mie vehemently."No, no; she does not love him--at least--Oh! sometimes I don't know.Her eyes light up when he comes, and she is listless when he goes. Shealways spends a longer time over her toilet, when we expect him home todinner," she added, with a touch of naive femininity. "But--if it belove, then that love is strange and unwomanly; it is a love that willnot be for his good ..."
"Why should you think that?"
"I don't know," said the girl simply. "Isn't it an instinct?"
"Not a very unerring one in this case, I fear."
"Why?"
"Because your own love for Paul Deroulede has blinded you--- Ah! youmust pardon me, mademoiselle; you sought this conversation and not I,and I fear me I have wounded you. Yet I would wish you to know how deepis my sympathy with you, and how great my desire to render you a serviceif I could."
"I was about to ask a service of you, monsieur."
"Then command me, I beg of you."
"You are Paul's friend--persuade him that that woman in his house is astanding danger to his life and liberty."
"He would not listen to me."
"Oh! a man always listens to another."
"Except on one subject--the woman he loves."
He had said the last words very gently but very firmly. He was deeply,tenderly sorry for the poor, deformed, fragile girl, doomed to be awitness of that most heartrending of human tragedies, the passing awayof her own scarce-hoped-for happiness. But he felt that at this momentthe kindest act would be one of complete truth. He knew that PaulDeroulede's heart was completely given to Juliette de Marny; he too,like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted the beautiful girl and herstrange, silent ways,
but, unlike the poor hunchback, he knew that nosin which Juliette might commit would henceforth tear her from out theheart of his friend; that if, indeed, she turned out to be false, oreven treacherous, she would, nevertheless, still hold a place inDeroulede's very soul, which no one else would ever fill.
"You think he loves her?" asked Anne Mie at last.
"I am sure of it."
"And she?"
"Ah! I do not know. I would trust your instinct--a woman's--sooner thanmy own."
"She is false, I tell you, and is hatching treason against Paul."
"Then all we can do is to wait."
"Wait?"
"And watch carefully, earnestly, all the time. There! shall I pledge youmy word that Deroulede shall come to no harm?"
"Pledge me your word that you'll part him from that woman."
"Nay; that is beyond my power. A man like Paul Deroulede only loves oncein life, but when he does, it is for always."
Once more she was silent, pressing her lips closely together, as ifafraid of what she might say.
He saw that she was bitterly disappointed, and sought for a means oftempering the cruelty of the blow.
"It will be your task to watch over Paul," he said; "with yourfriendship to guard and protect him, we need have no fear for hissafety, I think."
"I will watch," she replied quietly.
Gradually he had led her steps back towards the Rue Ecole de Medecine.
A great melancholy had fallen over his bold, adventurous spirit. Howfull of tragedies was this great city, in the last throes of its insaneand cruel struggle for an unattainable goal. And yet, despite itsguillotine and mock trials, its tyrannical laws and overfilled prisons,its very sorrows paled before the dead, dull misery of this deformedgirl's heart.
A wild exaltation, a fever of enthusiasm lent glamour to the sceneswhich were daily enacted on the Place de la Revolution, turning thefinal acts of the tragedies into glaring, lurid melodrama, almost unrealin its poignant appeal to the sensibilities.
But here there was only this dead, dull misery, an aching heart, a poor,fragile creature in the throes of an agonised struggle for afast-disappearing happiness.
Anne Mie hardly knew now what she had hoped, when she sought thisinterview with Sir Percy Blakeney. Drowning in a sea of hopelessness,she had clutched at what might prove a chance of safety. Her reason toldher that Paul's friend was right. Deroulede was a man who would love butonce in his life. He had never loved--for he had too much pitied--poor,pathetic little Anne Mie.
Nay; why should we say that love and pity are akin?
Love, the great, the strong, the conquering god--Love that subdues aworld, and rides roughshod over principle, virtue, tradition, over home,kindred, and religion--what cares he for the easy conquest of thepathetic being, who appeals to his sympathy?
Love means equality--the same height of heroism or of sin. When Lovestoops to pity, he has ceased to soar in the boundless space, thatrarefied atmosphere wherein man feels himself made at last truly in theimage of God.