“He smiled.” Her eyes glared under the close-drawn brows, but Rosalie laughed.
“Not if you looked at him like that, I’ll warrant; but as to smiling—he smiles at me too, dear cousin.”
Thérèse flung herself into a chair, with a sharp-caught breath.
“And at whom else? Tell me that, tell me that, for there is some one—some one. He thinks of her, he dreams of her, and pushes past other people as if they were posts. If I knew, if I only knew who it was——”
“Well?” said Rosalie curiously.
“I’d twist her neck for her, or get Mme Guillotine to save me the trouble,” said Thérèse viciously.
As she spoke, the door swung open, and Mlle de Rochambeau came in. She had been out to make some trifling purchase, and, nervous of the streets, she had hurried a good deal. Haste and the cold air had brought a bright colour to her cheeks, her eyes shone, and her breath came more quickly than usual.
Thérèse started rudely, and seeing her pass through the shop with the air of one at home, she started up, and with a quick spring placed herself between Mademoiselle and the inner door.
For a moment Aline hesitated, and then, with a murmured “Pardon,” advanced a step.
“Who are you?” demanded Thérèse, in her roughest voice.
Rosalie looked up with an expression of annoyance. Really Thérèse and her scenes were past bearing, though they were amusing, for a little.
“I am Marie Roche,” said Mademoiselle quietly. “I lodge here, and work for my living. Is there anything else you would like to ask me?”
Thérèse’s eyes flashed, and she gave a loud, angry laugh.
“Eh—listen to her,” she cried, “only listen. Yes, there is a good deal I should like to ask—amongst other things, where you got that face, and those hands, if your name is Marie Roche. Aristocrat, that is what you are—aristocrat!” and she pushed her flushed face close to Mademoiselle’s rapidly paling one.
“Chut, Thérèse!” commanded Rosalie angrily.
“I say she is an aristocrat,” shouted Thérèse, swinging round upon her cousin.
“Fiddlesticks,” said Rosalie; “the girl’s harmless, and her name’s her own, right enough.”
“With that face, those hands? Am I an imbecile?”
“Do I know, I?” and Rosalie shrugged her mountainous shoulders. “Bah, Thérèse, what a fuss about nothing. Is it the girl’s fault if her mother was pretty enough to take the seigneur’s fancy?”
The scarlet colour leapt into Mademoiselle’s face. The rough tones, the coarse laugh with which Rosalie ended, and which Thérèse echoed, offended her immeasurably, and she was far from feeling grateful for the former’s interference. She pushed past her opponent, and ran up the stairs without pausing to take breath.
Meanwhile Thérèse turned violently upon her cousin.
“Aristocrat or not, she has taken Dangeau from me,” she screamed, with the sudden passion which makes her type so dangerous. “Why did you not tell me you had a girl in the house?—though what he can see in such a pinched, mincing creature passes me. Why did you not tell me, I say? Why? Why?”
“Eh, ma foi! because you fatigue me, you and your tempers,” said Rosalie crossly. “Is this your house, par exemple, that I must ask you before I take any one to live in it? If the man likes you, take him, and welcome. I am not preventing you. And if he does n’t like you, what can I do, I? Am I to say to him, ‘Pray, Citizen Dangeau, be careful you do not speak to any girl, except my cousin Thérèse?’ It is your own fault, not mine. Why did n’t you marry like a respectable girl, instead of taking Heaven knows how many lovers? Is it a secret? Bah! all Paris knows it; and do you think Dangeau is ignorant? There was Bonnet, and Hébert, and young Cléry, and who knows how many since. Ciel! you tire me,” and Rosalie bent over her knitting, muttering to herself, and picking fiercely at dropped stitches.
Thérèse picked up an apple and swung it from one hand to another, her brows level, the eyes beneath them dangerously veiled. Some day she would give herself the pleasure of paying her cousin Rosalie out for that little speech. Some day, but not to-day, she would tear those fat, creased cheeks with her nails, wrench out a few of the sleek black braids above, sink strangling fingers into the soft, fleshy rolls below. She gritted her teeth, and slipped the apple deftly to and fro. Presently she spoke in a tolerably natural voice:
“It is not every one who is so blind, voyez-vous, ma cousine.”
As she spoke, Dangeau came through the shop door. He was in a hurry—these were days of hurry—and he hardly noticed that Rosalie was not alone, until he found Thérèse in his path. She was all bold smiles, and a glitter of black eyes, in a moment.
“The Citizen forgets an old friend.”
“But no,” he returned, smiling.
“It is so long since we met, that I thought the Citizen might have forgotten me.”
“Is it so long?” asked Dangeau innocently; “surely I saw you somewhere lately. Ah, I have it—at the trial?”
“Ah, then you remember,” cried Thérèse, clapping her hands.
Dangeau nodded, rather puzzled by her manner, and Rosalie permitted herself an audible chuckle. Thérèse turned on her with a flash, and as she did so Dangeau bowed, murmured an excuse, and passed on. This time Rosalie laughed outright, and the sound was like a spark in a powder-magazine. Red rage, violent, uncontrollable, flared in Thérèse’s brain, and, all considerations of prudence forgotten, she launched herself with a tigress’s bound straight at her cousin’s ponderous form.
She had reckoned without her host.
Inside those fat arms reposed muscles of steel, behind those small pig’s eyes lay a very cool, ruthless, and determined brain, and Thérèse felt herself caught, held, propelled across the floor, and launched into the street, all before she could send a second rending shriek after her first scream of fury.
Rosalie closed and latched the door, and sank panting, perspiring, but triumphant, into her seat again.
“Be calm,” she observed, between her gasps; “be wise, and go home. For me, I bear no malice, but for you, my poor Thérèse, you will certainly die in an apoplexy some fine day if you excite yourself so much. Ouf—how out of breath I am!”
Thérèse stood rigid, her face convulsed with fury, her heart a black whirlpool of all the passions; but when Rosalie looked up again, after a vigorous bout of fanning, she was gone, and, with a sigh of relief, the widow Leboeuf settled once more to her placid morning’s work.
The past fortnight had gone heavily for Mlle de Rochambeau. Since the days of the votings she had not seen Dangeau, for he had only returned late at night to snatch a few hours’ sleep before the earliest daylight called him to his work again. She heard his step upon the stair, and turned from it, with something like a shudder. What times! what times! For the inconceivable was happening—the impossible had come to pass. What, was the King to die, and no one lift a hand to help? In open day, in his own capital? Surely there would be a sign, a wonder, and God would save the King. But now—God had not saved him—he was dead. All the previous day she had knelt, fasting, praying, and weeping, one of many hundreds who did likewise; but the knife had fallen, the blood royal was no longer inviolate—it flowed like common water, and was swallowed by the common earth. A sort of numb terror possessed Aline’s very soul, and the little encounter with Thérèse gave it a personal edge.
As she sat, late into the evening, making good her yesterday’s stint of embroidery, there came a footstep and a knocking at her door, and she rose to open it, trembling a little, and yet not knowing why she trembled since the step was a familiar one.
Dangeau stood without, his face worn and tired, but an eager light in his eyes.
“Will you spare me a moment?” he asked, motioning to his open door.
“Is it about the copying?” she said, hesitating.
“The copying, and another matter,” he replied, and stood aside, holding the door for her to pass. She folded her work neatly, laid it down, and
came silently into his room, where she remained standing, and close to the door.
Dangeau crossed to his table, asked her a trifling question or two about the numbering of the thickly written pages before him, and then paused for so long a space that the constraint which lay on Mademoiselle extended itself to him also, and rested heavily upon them both.
“I am going away to-morrow,” he said at last.
“Yes, Citizen.” It was her first word to him for many days, and he was struck by the altered quality of the soft tones.
They seemed to set him infinitely far away from her and her concerns, and it was surprising how much that hurt him.
Nevertheless he stumbled on:
“I am obliged to go; you believe that, do you not?”
“But, yes, Citizen.” More distant still the voice that had rung friendly once, but behind the distance a weariness that spurred him.
“You are very friendless,” he said abruptly. “You said that I might be your friend, and the first thing that I do is to desert you. If I had been given a choice—but one has obligations—it is a trust I cannot shirk.”
“Monsieur is very good to trouble himself about me,” said Mademoiselle softly. “I shall be safe. I am not afraid. See then, Citizen, who would hurt me? I live quietly, I earn my bread, I harm no one. What has any one so insignificant and poor as I to be afraid of? Would any one trouble to harm me?”
“God forbid!” said Dangeau earnestly. “Indeed, I think you are safe, or I would not go. In a month or six weeks, I shall hope to be back again. I do not know why I should be uneasy.” He hesitated. “If there were a woman you could turn to, but there—my mother died ten years ago, and I know of no one else. But if a man’s help would be of any use to you, you could rely on Edmond Cléry—see, I will give you his direction. He is young, but very much my friend, and you could trust him. Show him this”—he held out a small, folded note—“and I know he will do what he can.”
Mademoiselle’s colour was a little tremulous. His manner had taken suddenly so intimate, so possessive, a shade. Only half-conscious that she had grown to depend on him for companionship and safety, she was alarmed at discovering that his talk of her being alone, and friendless, could bring a lump into her throat, and set her heart beating.
“Indeed, Monsieur, there is no need,” she protested, answering her own misgivings as much as his words. “I shall be safe. There is no one to harm me.”
He put the note into her hand, and returned to the table, where he paused, looking strangely at her.
“So young, so friendless,” beat his heart, “so alone, so unprotected. If I spoke now, should I lose all? Is she old enough to have learned their accursed lesson of the gulf between man and man—between loving man and the woman beloved? Surely she is too lonely not to yearn towards shelter.” He made a half step towards her, and then checked himself, turning his head aside.
“Mademoiselle,” he said earnestly, “you are very much alone in the world. Your order is doomed—it passes unregretted, for it was an evil thing. I do not say that every noble was bad, but every noble was nourished in a system that set hatred between class and class, and the outcome of that antagonism has been hundreds of years’ oppression, lust, starvation, a peasantry crushed into bestiality by iniquitous taxes, and an aristocracy, relieved of responsibility, grown callous to suffering, sunk in effeteness and vice. There is a future now for the peasant, since the weight is off his back, and his children can walk erect, but what future is there for the aristocrat? I can see none. Those who would survive, must out from their camp, and set themselves to other ways of thought, and other modes of life.” He paused, and glanced at her with a dawning hope in his eyes.
Mademoiselle de Rochambeau raised her head a little, proudly.
“Monsieur, I am of this order of which you speak,” she said, and her voice was cold and still.
“You were of them, but now, where are they? The links that held you to them have been wrenched away. All is changed and you are free—the daughter of the new day of Liberty.”
“Monsieur, one cannot change one’s blood, one’s race. I am of them.”
“But one can change one’s heart, one’s faith,” he cried hotly; and at that Mademoiselle’s hand went to her bosom, as if the pressure of it could check the quick fluttering within.
“Not if one is Rochambeau,” she said very low.
There was an instant’s pause, whilst she drew a long breath, and then words came to her.
“Do you know, Monsieur, that for seven hundred years my people have kept their faith, and served the King and their order? In all those years there have been many men whom you would call bad men—I do not defend them—there have been cruel deeds done, and I shudder at them, but the worst man of them all would have died in torments before he would have accepted life at the price of honour, or come out from his order because it was doomed. That I think is what you ask me to do. I am a Rochambeau, Monsieur.”
Her voice was icy with pride, and behind its soft curves, and the delicate colour excitement painted there, her face was inexorably set. The individuality of it became as it were a transparent veil, through which stared the inevitable attributes of the race, the hoarded instinct of centuries.
Dangeau’s heart beat heavily. For a moment passion flared hot within him, only to fall again before her defenceless youth. But the breath of it beat upon her soul, and troubled it to the depths. She stood waiting, not knowing how to break the spell that held her motionless. Something warned her that a touch, a movement, might unchain some force unknown, but dreadful. It was as if she watched a rising sea—the long, long heaving stretch, as yet unflecked with foam, where wave after wave towered up as if about to break, yet fell again unbroken. The room was gone in a mist—there was neither past nor future. Only an eternal moment, and that steadily rising sea.
Suddenly broke the seventh wave, the wave of Fate.
In the mist Dangeau made an abrupt movement.
“Aline!” he said, lifting his eyes to her white face. “Aline!”
Mademoiselle de Rochambeau felt a tremor pass over her; she was conscious of a mastering, overwhelming fear. Like something outside herself, it caught her heart, and wrung it.
“No, no,” said her trembling lips; “no, no.”
With that he was beside her, catching her unresisting hand. Cold as ice it lay in his, and he felt it quiver.
“Oh, mon Dieu, are you afraid of me—of me?” he cried, in a hoarse whisper.
She tried to speak, but could not; something choked the sound, and she only stood there, mechanically focussing all her energies in an effort to stop the shivering, which threatened to become unbearable.
“Aline,” he said again, “Aline, look at me.”
He bent above her, nearer, till his face was on a level with her own, and his eyes drew hers to meet them. And his were full of all sweet and poignant things—love and home, and trust, and protection—they were warm and kind, and she so cold, and so afraid. It seemed as if her soul must go out to him, or be torn in two. Suddenly her fear of him had changed into fear of her own self. Did a Rochambeau mate thus? She saw the red steel, wet with the King’s life, the steel weighted by the word of this man, and his fellows. She saw the blood gush out and flow between them in a river of separation. To pass it she must stain her feet—must stain her soul, with an uncleansable rust. It could not be—Noblesse oblige.
She caught her hand from his and put it quickly over her eyes.
“No, no, no—oh no, Monsieur,” she cried, in a trembling whisper.
He recoiled at once, the light in his face dying out.
“It is no, for always?” he asked slowly.
She bent her head.
“For always, and always, and always?” he said again. “All the years, all the ways wanting you—never reaching you? Think again, Aline.”
She rested her hand against the door and took a step away. It was more than she could bear, and a blind instinct of escape was upon
her, but he was beside her before she could pass out.
“Is it because I am what I am, Jacques Dangeau, and not of your order?” he asked, in a sharp voice.
The change helped her, and she looked up steadily.
“Monsieur, one has obligations—you said it just now.”
“Obligations?”
“And loyalties—to one’s order, to one’s King.”
“Louis Capet is dead,” he said heavily.
“And you voted for his death,” she flashed at him, voice and eye like a rapier thrust.
He raised his head with pride.
“Yes, Mademoiselle, I voted for his death.”
“That is a chasm no human power can bridge,” she said, in a level voice. “It lies between us—the King’s death, the King’s blood. You cannot pass to come to me—I may not pass to come to you.”
There was an infinite troubled loneliness behind the pride in her eyes, and it smote him through his anger.
“Adieu, Mademoiselle,” he said in a low, constrained voice. He neither touched her hand, nor kissed it, but he bowed with as much proud courtesy as if he had been her equal in pride of race. “Adieu, Mademoiselle.”
“Adieu, Monsieur.”
She passed out, and heard the door close harshly behind her. It shut away—ah, what? The Might-have-been—the Forbidden—Eden perhaps? She could not tell. Bewildered, and exhausted, she fell on her knees in the dark by her narrow bed, and sobbed out all the wild confusion of her heart.
CHAPTER XIII
DISTURBING INSINUATIONS
FEBRUARY CAME IN DREARY, and bleak, and went out in torrents of rain. For Aline de Rochambeau a time of dull loneliness, and reaction, of hard grinding work, and insufficient food. She had to rise early, and stand in a line with other women, before she could receive the meagre dole of bread, which was all that the Republic One and Indivisible would guarantee its starving citizens. Then home again, faint and weary, to sit long hours, bent to catch the last, ultimate ray of dreary light, working fingers sore, and tired eyes red, over the fine embroidery for which she was so thankful still to find a sale.
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