Embarrassing questions these, but to hesitate was out of the question. That would at once point to necessity for concealment. She began, therefore, and told her story quite simply, and truly, only omitting mention of her work with Dangeau.
Mme de Matigny tapped her knee.
“But, enfin, I do not understand. What is all this? Why did you not appeal to your cousin’s friends, to Mme de St. Aignan, or Mme de Rabutin, for example?”
“I knew only the names, Madame,” said Aline, lifting her truthful eyes. “And at first I thought all had perished. I dared not ask, and there was no one to tell me.”
“Poor child,” the hand stopped tapping, and patted her shoulder kindly. “And this Rosalie you speak of, what was she?”
“Sometimes she was kind. I do not think she meant me any harm, and at least she saved my life once.”
When she came to the story of her arrest, she faltered a little. The old eyes were so keen.
“What do they accuse you of? You have done nothing?”
“Oh, chère Comtesse, is it then necessary that one should have done anything?” broke in Adèle de Créspigny, a little bitter colour in that faded voice of hers. “Have you done anything, or I, or little Marguerite here?”
Madame fanned herself, her manner slightly distant. She was not accustomed to be interrupted.
“They say I wrote letters to emigrés, to my son Charles, in fact. Marguerite also. It is a crime, it appears, to indulge in family feeling. But, you, you, Mademoiselle, did not even do that.”
“No,” said Aline, blushing. “It was … it was that the Citizen Hébert found out my real name—I do not know how—and denounced me.”
Her downcast looks filled in enough of the story for those penetrating eyes.
“Canaille!” said the old lady under her breath, and then aloud:
“You are better here, with us. It is more convenable,” and once more she patted the shoulder, and that odd sense of being at home brought sudden tears to Aline’s eyes.
A few days later a piece of news reached her. She and Marguerite de Matigny sat embroidering the same long strip of silk. They had become close friends in the enforced daily intimacy of prison life, and the luxury of possessing a friend with whom she could revive the old, innocent, free talk of convent times was delightful in the extreme to the lonely girl, forced too soon into a self-reliance beyond her years.
Mlle Marguerite looked up from the brilliant half-set stitch, and glanced warily round.
“Tiens, Aline,” she said, putting her small head on one side, “I heard something this morning, something that concerns you.”
Aline grew paler. That all news was bad news was one axiom which the events of the last few months had graved deeply on her heart. Marguerite saw the tremor that passed over her, and made haste to be reassuring.
“No, no, ma belle, it is nothing bad. Stupid that I am! It is that these wretches outside have been fighting amongst themselves, and your M. Hébert has been sent to prison. I hope he likes it,” and she took a little vicious stitch which knotted her yellow thread, and confused the symmetrical centre of a most gorgeous flower. “There, I have tangled my thread again, and grandmamma will scold me. I shall say it was the fault of your M. Hébert.”
“Please don’t call him my M. Hébert,” said Aline proudly. Marguerite laid down her needle.
“Aline, why did he denounce you?”
“Ah, Marguerite, don’t talk of him. You don’t know what a wretch—” and she broke off shuddering.
“No, but I should like to know. I can see you could tell tales—oh, but most exciting ones! Why did he do it? He must have had some reason; or did he just see you, and hate you, like love at first sight, only the other way round?”
Mlle de Rochambeau assumed an air of prudence and reproof.
“Fi donc, Mlle de Matigny, what would your grandmother say to such talk?”
Marguerite made a little, wicked moue.
“She would say—it was not convenable,” she mimicked, and laid a coaxing hand on her friend’s knee. “But tell me then, Aline, tell me what I want to know—tell me all about it, all there is to tell. I shall tease and tease until you do,” she declared.
“Oh, Marguerite, it is too dreadful to laugh about.”
“If one never laughed, because of dreadful things, why, then, we should all forget how to do it nowadays,” pouted Marguerite. “But, see then, already I cry—” and she lifted an infinitesimal scrap of cambric to her dancing eyes.
Mlle de Rochambeau laughed, but she shook her head, and Marguerite gave her a little pinch.
“Wicked one,” she said; “but I shall find out all the same. All my life I have found out what I wanted to, yes, even secrets of grandmamma’s,” and she nodded mischievously; but Aline turned back to the original subject of the conversation.
“Are you sure he is in prison?” she asked anxiously.
“Yes, yes, quite sure. The Abbé Loisel said so when he came this morning. I heard him say to grand-mamma, ‘The wolves begin to tear each other. It is a just retribution.’ And then he said, ‘Hébert, who edits that disgrace to the civilised world, the Père Duchesne, is in prison.’ Oh, Aline, would n’t it have been fun if he had been sent here?”
Aline’s hand went to her heart.
“Oh, mon Dieu!” she said quickly.
Marguerite made round baby eyes of wonder.
“You are frightened of him,” she cried. “He must have done, or said, something very bad to make you look like that. If you would tell me what it was, I should not have to go on worrying you about him, but as it is, I shall have to make you simply hate me. I know I shall,” she concluded mournfully.
“Oh, child, child, you don’t understand,” cried Mlle de Rochambeau, feeling suddenly that her two years of greater age were twenty of bitter experience. Her eyes filled as she bent her burning face over the embroidery, whilst two large tears fell from them and lay on the petals of her golden flower like points of glittering dew.
Marguerite coloured, and looked first down at the floor and then up at her friend’s flushed face.
“Oh, Aline!” she breathed, “was it really that? Oh, the wretch! And when you wouldn’t look at him he revenged himself? Ouf, it makes me creep. No wonder you feel badly about it. The villain!” she stamped a childish foot, and knotted her thread again.
“Oh dear, it will have to be cut,” she declared, “and what grandmamma will say, the saints alone know.”
Aline took the work out of the too vehement hands, and spent five minutes in bringing order out of a sad confusion. “Now it is better,” she said, handing it back again; “you are too impatient, little one.”
“Ah, ’twas not my fault, but that villain’s. How could I be calm when I thought of him? But you are an angel of patience, ma mie. How can you be so quiet and still when things go wrong?”
“Ah,” said Mademoiselle with half a sigh, “for eight months I earned my living by my work, you know, and if I had lost patience when my thread knotted I should have had nothing to eat next day, so you see I was obliged to learn.”
Mme de Matigny came by as she ended, and both girls rose and curtsied. She glanced at the work, nodded her head, and passed on, on M. de Lancy’s arm. For the moment chattering Marguerite became decorous Mlle de Matigny—a jeune fille, bien élevée. In her grandmother’s presence only the demurest of glances shot from the soft brown eyes, only the most dutiful and conventional remarks dropped from the pretty, prudish lips—but with Aline, what a difference! Now, the stately passage over, she leaned close again above the neglected needle.
“Dis donc, Aline! You were betrothed, were you not, to that poor M. de Sélincourt? Were you inconsolable when he was killed? Did you like him?”
The ambiguous “aimer” fell from her lips with a teasing inflection.
“He is dead,” reproved Mlle de Rochambeau.
“Tiens, I did not say he was alive! But did you; tell me? What did it feel like to be betrothed?”<
br />
“Ask Mme de Matigny what is the correct feeling for a young girl to have for her betrothed,” said Aline, a hint of bitterness behind her smile.
“De grêce!” and Marguerite’s plump hands went up in horror. “See then, Aline, I think it would be nice to love—really to love—do you not think so?”
Mlle de Rochambeau shook her head with decision. Something in the light words had stabbed her, and she felt an inward pain.
“I do not see why one should not love one’s husband,” pursued Marguerite reflectively. “If one has to live with some one always, it would be far more agreeable to love him. But it appears that that is a very bourgeoise idea, and that it is more convenable to love some one else.”
“Oh, Marguerite!”
“Yes, yes, I tell you it is so! Here one hears everything. They cannot send one out of the room when the conversation begins to grow interesting. There is Mme de Créspigny—she is in our room—she weeps much in the night, but it is not because of her husband, oh no; it is for M. le Chevalier de St. Armand, who was guillotined on the same day.”
“Hush, Marguerite, you should not say such things.”
“But if they are true, and this is really true, for when they brought her the news she cried out ‘Etienne’ very loud, and fainted. M. de Créspigny was our cousin, so I know all his names. There is no Etienne amongst them,” and she nodded wisely.
“Oh, Marguerite!”
“So you see it is true. I find that odious, for my part, though, to be sure, what could she do if she loved him? One cannot make oneself love or not love. It comes or it goes, and you can only weep like Mme de Créspigny, unless, to be sure, one could make shift to laugh, as I think I shall try to do when my time comes.”
Mlle de Rochambeau looked up with a sudden flame in her eyes.
“It is not true that one cannot help loving,” she said quickly. “One can—one can. If it is a wrong love it can be crushed, and one forgets. Oh, you do not know what you are talking about, Marguerite.”
Marguerite embraced her.
“And do you?” she whispered slyly.
Girls’ talk—strange talk for a prison, and one where Death stood by the entrance, beckoning one and another.
One day it was M. de Lancy who was called away in the midst of a compliment to his “Chère Comtesse,” called to appear at Fouquier Tinville’s bar, and later, at that of another and more merciful Judge.
The next, Mme de Créspigny’s tired eyes rested for the last time upon prison walls, and she went out smiling wistful good-byes, to follow husband and lover to a world where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.
As each departed, the groups would close their ranks, and after a moment’s pause would talk the faster and more lightly, until once more the summons came, and again one would be taken and one left.
This was one side of prison society. On the other a group of devout persons kept up the forms of convent life, just as the coterie of Mme de Matigny did those of the salon. The Abbé de Nérac, the Abbé Constantin, and half a dozen nuns were the nucleus of this second group, but not all were ecclesiastics or religious. M. de Maurepas, the young soldier, with the ugly rugged face and good brown eyes, was of their number, and devout ladies not a few, who spent their time between encouraging one another in the holy life, and hours of silent prayer for those in the peril of trial and the agony of death.
Their conversations may still be read, and breathe a piety as exquisite as it is natural and touching. To both these groups came daily the Abbé Loisel, bringing to the one news of the outside world, and to the other the consolations of religion. Mass was said furtively, the Host elevated, the faithful communicated, and Loisel would pass out again to his life of hourly peril, moving from hiding-place to hiding-place, and from plot to plot, risking his safety by day to comfort the prisoners, or to bless the condemned on their way to the scaffold, and by night to give encouragement to some little band of aristocrats who thought they could fight the Revolution.
Singular mixture of conspirator and saint, his courage was undoubted. The recorded heroisms of the times are many, those unrecorded more, and his strange adventures have never found an historian.
Outside the Gironde rocked, tottered, and fell. Imprisoned Hébert was loose again. Danton struck for the Mountain, and struck right home. First arrest, then prison, and lastly death came upon the men who had dreamed of ruling France. The strong man armed had kept the house, until there came one stronger than he.
So passed the Girondins, first of the Revolution’s children to fall beneath the Juggernaut car they had reared and set in motion.
CHAPTER XVI
AN UNWELCOME VISITOR
MLLE DE ROCHAMBEAU SHARED A SMALL, unwholesome cell with three other women. One of them, Mme de Coigny, a young widow, had lately given birth to a child, a poor, fretful little creature whose wailings added to the general discomfort.
Mme Renard, the linen draper’s wife, tossed her head, and complained volubly to whoever would listen, that she got no sleep at nights, since the brat came. She had been a great man’s mistress, and was under arrest because he had emigrated. Terrified to death, she bewailed her lot continually, was sometimes fawning, sometimes insolent to her aristocratic companions, and always very disdainful of the fourth inmate, a stout Breton peasant, with a wooden manner which concealed an enormous respect for the company in which she found herself. She told her rosary incessantly, when not occupied with the baby, who was less ill at ease in her accustomed arms than with its frail, young mother.
One night Mademoiselle awoke with a start. She thought she was being called, and listened intently. A little light came through the grated window—moonlight, but sallow, and impure, as if the rays were infected by the heaviness of the atmosphere. It served, however, to show the heavy immobility of Marie Kérac’s form as she lay, emitting unmistakable snores, the baby caught in her left arm and sleeping too. A dingy beam fell right across Mme Renard’s face. It had been pretty enough, in a round dimpled way, but now it looked heavy and leaden, showing lines of fretful fear, even in sleep.
Out of the darkness in the corner there came a long-drawn sigh, and then a very low voice just breathed the words, “Mademoiselle de Rochambeau, are you awake?” Aline sat up.
“Is it you, Madame de Coigny?” she asked, a little startled, for both sigh and voice had a vague unearthliness that seemed to make the night darker. The Bretonne’s honest breathing was a reassuring sound.
“Yes!” said the low voice.
“Are you ill—can I do anything for you?”
There was a rustling movement and a dim shape emerged from the shadow.
“If I might lie down beside you for a while. The little one went so peacefully to sleep with that good soul, that I had not the heart to take her back, and it is lonely—mon Dieu, it is lonely!”
Aline made room on the straw pallet, and put an arm round the cold, shrinking figure.
“Why, you are chilled,” she said gently, “and the night is quite warm.”
“To-morrow I shall be colder,” said Mme de Coigny in a strange whisper.
“My dear, what do you mean?”
Something like a shiver made the straw rustle.
“I am not afraid. It is only that I cannot get warm”; then turning her face to Aline she whispered, “they will come for me to-morrow.”
“No, no; why should you think so? How can you know?”
“Ah, I know—I know quite well—and I am glad, really. I should have been glad to die before the little one came, for then she would have been safe too. Now she has this business of life before her, and, see you, I find life too sad, at all events for us women.”
“Life is not always sad,” said Aline soothingly.
“Mine has been sad,” said Mme de Coigny. “May I talk to you a little? We are of the same age, and to-night—to-night I feel so strange, as if I were quite alone in some great empty place.”
“Yes, talk to me, and I will put my arms
round you. There! Now you will be warmer.”
Another shiver shook the bed, and then the low voice began again.
“I wanted to be a nun, you know. When I was a child they called me the little nun, and always I said I would be one. Then when I was eighteen, my elder sister died, and I was an heiress, and they married me to M. de Coigny.”
“Did you not want to marry him?”
“Nobody thought of asking me, and, mon Dieu, how I cried, and wept, and tortured myself. I thought I was a martyr, no less, and prayed that I might die. It was terrible! By the time the wedding-day came, M. de Coigny must have wondered at his bride, for my face was swollen with weeping, and my eyes red and sore,” and she gave a little ghost of a laugh.
“Was he kind to you?”
“Yes, he was kind”—there was a queer inflection in the low tone—“and almost at once he was called away for six months, and I went back to my prayers, and tried to fancy myself a nun again. Then he came back, and all at once, I don’t know how, something seemed to break in my heart, and I loved him. Mon Dieu, how I loved him! And he loved me,—that was what was so wonderful.”
“Then you were happy?”
“For a month—one little month—only one little month—” she broke off on a sob, and clung to Aline in the dark. “They arrested us, took us to prison, and when I would have gone to the scaffold with him, they tore me away, yes, though I went on my knees and prayed to them. ‘The Republic does not kill her unborn citizens,’ they said; and they sent me here to wait.”
“You will live for the poor little baby,” whispered Aline, her eyes full of tears, but Mme de Coigny shook her head.
“No,” she said quietly; “it is over now. To-morrow they will take me away.”
She lay a little longer, but did not talk much, and after a while she slipped away to her own mattress, and Aline, listening, could hear that she slept.
In the morning she made no reference to what had passed, but when Aline left the cell to go to Mme de Matigny’s room she thought as she passed out that she heard a whispered “Adieu,” though on looking round she saw that Mme de Coigny’s face was bent over the child, whom she was rocking on her knee.
A Marriage Under the Terror Page 16
