“Imbécile!” she screamed. “I? Do you hate him? Well, think how I must love him when he too goes after this girl—goes to her from me, from swearing I am his goddess, his inspiration? Ah!”—she caught at her throat,—“but at least I can give you his head. The fool—the fool to betray a woman who holds his life in her hands! Here is what the imbecile wrote me only a week ago. Read, and say if it’s not enough to give him to the embraces of the Guillotine?”
The paper she thrust at Hébert came from her bosom, and when he had read it his dull eyes glittered.
“‘The King’s death a crime—perhaps time not ripe for a Republic.’ Thérèse, you’re worth your weight in gold. I don’t think Edmond Cléry will write you any more love-letters.”
Thérèse drew gloomily away.
“And the girl?” she asked, with a shiver.
“That, my dear, was to depend on what you could find out about her,” Hébert reminded her.
His own fury had subsided, and he threw himself into a chair. Thérèse made an abrupt movement.
“There is nothing more to find out. I have it all.”
“You’ve been long enough getting it,” said Hébert, sitting up.
“Well, I have it now, and I told you all along that Rosalie was more obstinate than a mule. She has been in one of her silent moods; she would go to all the executions, and then, instead of being a pleasant companion, there she would sit quite mum, or muttering to herself. Yesterday, however, she seemed excited. There was a large batch told off, three women amongst them, and one of them shrieked when Sanson took her kerchief off. That seemed to wake Rosalie up. She got quite red, and began to talk as if she had a fever.”
“It is one you have caught from her, then,” said Hébert impatiently. “The news, my girl, the news! What do I care for your cousin and her tantrums?”
Thérèse looked dangerous.
“Am I your cat’s-paw, Hébert?” she said. “Pah! do your own dirty work—you’ll get no more from me.”
Hébert cursed his impatience—fool that he was not to remember Thérèse’s temper!
He forced an ugly smile.
“Oh, well, as you please,” he said. “Let the girl go. There are other fish in the sea. Best let Cléry go too, and then they can make a match of it, unless she should prefer Dangeau.”
His intent eyes saw the girl’s face change at that. “A thousand devils!” she burst out. “Why do you plague me, Hébert? Be civil and play fair, and you’ll get what you want.”
“Come, come, Thérèse,” he said soothingly. “We both want the same thing—to teach a stuck-up baggage of an aristocrat a lesson. Let’s be friends again, and give me the news. Is it any good?”
“Good enough,” said Thérèse, with a sulky look,—“good enough to take her out of my way, if I say the word. Why, she’s a cousin of the ci-devant Montargis, who got so prettily served on the third of September.”
“What?” exclaimed Hébert.
“Ah! you never guessed that, and you’d never have got it out of Rosalie; for she’s as close as the devil, and I believe has a sneaking fondness for the girl.”
“The Montargis!” repeated Hébert, rubbing his hands, slowly. This was better than he expected. No wonder the girl went in terror! He had heard the Paris mob howl for the blood of the Austrian spy, and he knew that a word now would seal her fate.
“Her name?” he demanded.
“Rochambeau—Aline de Rochambeau. She only clipped the tail off, you see, and with a taste that way, she should have no objection to a head clipping—eh, my friend?” said Thérèse, with a short laugh.
Hébert went off with his plans made ready to his hand. It pleased him to be able to ruin Cléry, since Cléry had crossed his path; and besides, it would terrify the girl, and annoy Dangeau, who had a liking for the boy. It was inconceivable that he should have been so imprudent as to trust a woman like Thérèse, but since he had been such a fool he must just pay for it with his head.
The truth was that Cléry during his service at the Temple had been strangely impressed, like many another, by the bearing of the unfortunate Royal Family, and had conceived a young, whole-hearted adoration for the Queen, which did not, unfortunately for himself, interfere with his wholly mundane passion for Thérèse Marcel. In a moment of extraordinary imprudence he made the latter his confidante, never doubting that her love for himself would make her a perfectly safe one. Poor lad! he was to pay a heavy price for his trust.
On the day following Hébert’s interview with Thérèse he was arrested, and after a short preliminary examination, which revealed to him her treachery and his dangerous position, he was lodged in the Abbaye.
His arrest made some little stir in his own small world. Thérèse herself brought the news of it to the rue des Lanternes. Her eyes were very bright and hard as she glanced round the shop, and she laughed louder than usual, as she threw out broad hints as to her own share in the matter, for she liked Rosalie to know her power.
“I think you are a devil, Thérèse,” said the fat woman gloomily.
“So others have said,” returned Thérèse, with a wicked smile.
Mlle de Rochambeau took the blow in deadly silence. Hope was dead in her heart, and she prayed earnestly that she alone might suffer, and not have the wretchedness of feeling she had drawn another into the net which was closing around her.
Hébert dallied yet a day or two, and then struck home. Aline was hurrying homewards, her ears strained for the step she had grown to expect, when all in a minute he was there by her side.
She turned on him with a sudden resolve.
“Citizen,” she said earnestly, “why do you persecute me? What have I done to you—to any one? Surely by now you realise that this pursuit is useless?”
“The day that I realise that will be a bad day for you,” said Hébert, with malignant emphasis.
The threat brought her head up, with one of those movements of mingled pride and grace which made him hate and covet her.
“I have done no wrong—what harm can you do me?” she said steadily.
“I have interest with the Revolutionary Tribunal—you may have heard of the arrest of our young friend Cléry? Ah! I thought so,”—as her colour faded under his cruel gaze.
She shrank a little, but forced her voice to composure. “And does the Revolutionary Tribunal concern itself with the affairs of a poor girl who only asks to be allowed to earn her living honestly?”
Hébert smiled—a smile so wicked that she realised an impending blow, and on the instant it fell.
“It would concern itself with the affairs of Mlle de Rochambeau, cousin of the ci-devant Marquise de Montargis, who, if my memory serves me right, was arrested on a charge of treasonable correspondence with Austria, and who met a well-deserved fate at the hands of an indignant people.” He leaned closer as he spoke, and marked the instant stiffening of each muscle in the white face.
For a moment her heart had stopped. Then it raced on again at a deadly speed. She turned her head away that he might not see the terror in her eyes, and a keen wind met her full, clearing the faintness from her brain.
She walked on as steadily as she might, but the smooth voice was still at her ear.
“You are in danger. My friendship alone can save you. What do you hope for? The return of your lover Dangeau? I don’t think I should count on that if I were you, my angel. Once upon a time there was a young man of the name of Cléry—Edmond Cléry to be quite correct—yes, I see you know the story. No, I don’t think your Dangeau will be of any assistance to you when I denounce you, and denounce you I most certainly shall, unless you ask me not to, prettily, with your arms round my neck, shall we say—eh, Citoyenne Marie?”
As he spoke there was a rumble of wheels, and a rough cart came round the corner towards them. He touched her arm, and she looked up mechanically, to see that it held from eight to ten persons, all pinioned, and through her own dull misery she was aware of pity stirring at her heart, for these were pr
isoners on their way to the Place de la Revolution.
One was an old man, very white and thin, his scanty hair straggling above a stained, uncared-for coat, his misty blue eyes looking out at the world with the unseeing stare of the blind or dying. Beside him leaned a youth of about fifteen, whose laboured breath spoke of the effort by which he preserved an appearance of calm. Beyond them was a woman, very handsome and upright. Her hair, just cut, floated in short, ragged wisps about her pale, set face. Her lips moved constantly, her eyes looked down. Hébert laughed and pointed as the cart went by.
“That is where you’ll be if I give the word,” he whispered. “Choose, then—a place there, or a place here,”—and he made as if to encircle her with his arm,—“choose, ma mie.”
Aline closed her eyes. All her young life ran hotly in her veins, but the force of its recoil from the man beside her was stronger than the force of its recoil from death.
“The Citizen insults me when he assumes there is a choice,” she said, with cold lips.
“The prison is so attractive then? The embraces of the Guillotine so preferable to mine—hein?”
“The Citizen has expressed my views.”
Hébert cursed and flung away, but as she moved on he was by her side again.
“After all,” he said, “you may change your mind again. Until to-morrow, I can save you.”
“Citizen, I shall never change my mind. There is no choice; it is simply that.”
An inexorable decision looked from her face, and carried conviction even to him.
“One cannot save imbeciles,” he muttered as he left her.
Mademoiselle walked home with an odd sense of relief. Now that the first shock was over, and the danger so long anticipated was actually upon her, she was calm. At least Hébert would be gone from her life. Death was clean and final; there would be no dishonour, no soiling of her ears by that sensual voice, nor of her eyes by those evil glances.
She knelt and prayed for a while, and sat down to her work with hands that moved as skilfully as before.
That night she slept more peacefully than she had done for weeks. In her dreams she walked along a green and leafy lane, birds sang, and the sky burned blue in the rising sun. She walked, and breathed blissful air, and was happy.
Out of such dreams one awakes with a sense of the unreality of everyday life. Some of the glamour clings about us, and we see a mirage of happiness instead of the sands of the Desert of Desolation. Is it only mirage, or some sense sealed, except at rarest intervals?—a sense before whose awakened exercise the veil wears thin, and from behind we catch the voices of the withdrawn, we feel the presence of peace, and garner a little of the light of Eternity to shed a glow on Time.
Aline woke happily to a soft May dawn. Her dream lay warm against her heart and cherished it.
In the evening she was arrested and taken to the prison of the Abbaye.
CHAPTER XV
SANS SOUCI
IN AFTER DAYS ALINE DE ROCHAMBEAU looked back upon her time in prison as a not unpeaceful interlude between two periods of stress and terror. After loneliness unspeakable, broken only by companionship with the coarse, the dull, the cruel, she found herself in the politest society of France, and in daily, hourly contact with all that was graceful, exquisite, and refined in her own sex,—gallant, witty, and courteous in the other.
When she joined the other prisoners on the morning after her arrest, the scene surprised her by its resemblance to that ill-fated reception which had witnessed at once her debut and her farewell to society. The dresses were a good deal shabbier, the ladies’ coiffures not quite so well arranged, but there was the same gay, light talk, the same bowing and curtsying, the same air of high-bred indifference to all that did not concern the polite arts.
All at once she became very acutely conscious of her bourgeoise dress and unpowdered hair. She felt the roughness of her pricked fingers, and experienced that painful sense of inferiority which sometimes afflicts young girls who are unaccustomed to the world. The sensation passed in a flash, but the memory of it stung her not a little, and she crossed the room with her head held high.
The old Comtesse de Matigny eyed her through a tortoise-shell lorgnette which bore a Queen’s cipher in brilliants, and had been a gift from Marie Antoinette.
“Who is that?” she demanded, in her deep, imperious tones.
“Some little bourgeoise, accused of Heaven knows what,” shrugged M. de Lancy.
The old lady allowed hazel eyes which were still piercing to rest for a moment longer on Aline. Then they flashed mockingly on M. le Marquis.
“My friend, you are not as intelligent as usual. Did you see the girl’s colour change when she came in? When a bourgeoise is embarrassed, she hangs her head and walks awkwardly. If she had an apron on, she would bite the corner. This girl looked round, and flushed,—it showed the fine grain of her skin,—then up went her head, and she walked like a princess. Besides, I know the face.”
A slight, fair woman, with tired eyes which looked as if the colour had been washed from them by much weeping, leaned forward. She was Mme de Créspigny, and her husband had been guillotined a fortnight before.
“I have seen her too, Madame,” she said in an uninterested sort of way, “but I cannot recall where it was.”
Mme la Comtesse rapped her knee impatiently with a much-beringed hand.
“It is some one she reminds me of,” she said at last—“some one long ago, when I was younger. I never forget a face, I always prided myself on that. It was at Court—long ago—those were gay days, my friends. Ah! I have it. La belle Irlandaise, Mlle Desmond, who married— Now, who did Mlle Desmond marry? It is I who am stupid to-day. It is the cold, I think.”
“Was it Henri de Rochambeau?” said De Lancy.
She nodded vivaciously.
“It was—yes, that was it, and I danced at their wedding, and dreamed on a piece of the wedding-cake. I shall not say of whom I dreamed, but it was not of feu M. le Comte, for I had never seen him then. Yes, yes, Henri de Rochambeau, and la belle Irlandaise. They were a very personable couple, and why they saw fit to go and exist in the country, Heaven alone knows—and perhaps his late Majesty, who did Mme de Rochambeau the honour of a very particular admiration.”
“And she objected, chère Comtesse?” De Lancy’s tone was one of pained incredulity.
Chère Comtesse shrugged her shoulders delicately.
“What would you?” she observed. “She was as beautiful as a picture, and as virtuous as if Our Lady had sat for it. It even fatigued one a little, her virtue.”
Her own had bored no one—she had not permitted it any such social solecism.
“I remember,” said De Lancy; “they went down to Rochambeau, and expired there of dulness and each other’s unrelieved society.”
Mme de Créspigny had been looking attentively at Aline. “Now I know who the girl is,” she said. “It is the girl who disappeared, who was supposed to have been massacred. I saw her at Laure de Montargis’ reception the day of the arrests, and I remember her now. Ah! that poor Laure——”
She shuddered faintly. De Lancy became interested.
“But she accompanied her cousin to La Force and perished there.”
“She must have escaped. I am sure it is she. She had that way of holding her head—like a stag—proud and timid.”
“It was one of her mother’s attractions,” said the Comtesse. “Mlle Desmond was, however, a great deal more beautiful. Her daughter, if this girl is her daughter, has only that trick, and the eyes—yes, she has the lovely eyes,” as Aline turned her head and looked in their direction. “M. de Lancy, do me the favour of conducting her here, and presenting her to me.”
The little old dandy clicked away on his high heels, and in a moment Mademoiselle was aware of a truly courtly bow, whilst a thin, shaky voice said gallantly:
“We rejoice to welcome Mademoiselle to our society.”
She curtsied—a graceful action—and Madame de Matig
ny watching, nodded twice complacently. “Bourgeoise indeed!” she murmured, and pressed her lips together.
“You are too good, Monsieur,” said Mademoiselle.
Only four words, but the voice—the composure.
“Madame la Comtesse is right, as always; she is certainly one of us,” thought De Lancy.
“Madame la Comtesse de Matigny begs the honour of your acquaintance,” he pursued; “she had the pleasure of knowing your parents.”
“Monsieur?”
“Do I not address Mlle de Rochambeau?”
Surprise, and a sense of terror at hearing her name, so long concealed, brought the colour to her face.
“That is my name,” she murmured.
“She is always right—she is wonderful,” repeated the Marquis to himself, as he piloted his charge across the room.
He made the presentation in form.
“Madame la Comtesse, permit that I present to you Mademoiselle de Rochambeau.”
Aline bent to the white, wrinkled hand, but was raised and embraced.
“You resemble your mother too closely to be mistaken by any one who had the happiness of her acquaintance,” said a gracious voice, and thereon ensued a whole series of introductions. “M. le Marquis de Lancy, who also knew your parents.”
“Mme de Créspigny, my granddaughter Mlle Marguerite de Matigny.”
A delightful sensation of having come home to a place of safety and shelter came over Aline as she smiled and curtsied, forgetting her poor dress and hard-worked fingers in the pleasure of being restored to the society of her equals.
“Sit down here, beside me,” commanded Mme de Matigny. She had been a great beauty as well as a great lady in her day, and she spoke with an imperious air that fitted either part. “Marguerite, give Mademoiselle your stool.”
Aline protested civilly, but Mlle Marguerite, a little dark-eyed creature, with a baby mouth, dropped a soft whisper in her ear as she rose:
“Grandmamma is always obeyed—but on the instant,” and Aline sat down submissively.
“And now, racontez donc, mon enfant, racontez,” said the old lady, “where have you been all these months, and how did you escape?”
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