A Marriage Under the Terror

by Patricia Wentworth

  She went on her way, walking fast, and lifting her skirts carefully, for the passages of the Abbaye were places of indescribable noisomeness. About half-way down, the open door of an empty cell let a little light in upon the filth and confusion, and showed the bestial, empurpled face of a drunken turnkey, who lay all along a bench, sleeping off the previous night’s excesses. As Aline hastened, she saw a man come down the corridor, holding feebly to the wall. Opposite the empty cell he paused, catching at the jamb with shaking fingers, and lifting a face which Mademoiselle de Rochambeau recognised with a little cry of shocked surprise.

  “M. Cléry!” she exclaimed.

  Edmond Cléry could hardly stand, but he forced a pitiful parody of his old, gay laugh and bow.

  “Myself,” he said, “or at least as much of me as the ague has left.”

  Just inside the cell was a rough stool, and Aline drew it quickly forward. He sank down gratefully, leaning against the door-post, and closing his eyes for a moment.

  “Oh,” said Mademoiselle, “how ill you look; you are not fit to walk alone.”

  He gave her a whimsical glance.

  “So it appears,” he murmured, “since De Maurepas, you, and my own legs are all of the same story. Well, he will be after me in a few moments, that good Maurepas, and then I shall get to my room again.”

  “I think I know M. de Maurepas a little,” said Aline; “he is very religious.”

  Cléry gave a faint laugh.

  “Yes, we are strange room-mates, he and I. He prays all the time and I not at all, since I never could imagine that le bon Dieu could possibly be interested in my banal conversation; but he is a good comrade, that Maurepas, in spite of his prayers.”

  “But, Monsieur, how come you to be so ill? If you knew how I have reproached myself, and now to see you like this—oh, you cannot tell how I feel.”

  Cléry found the pity in her eyes very agreeable.

  “And why reproach yourself, Citoyenne; it is not your fault that my cell is damp.”

  “No, no, but your arrest; to think that I should have brought that upon you. Had I known, I would have done anything rather than ask your help.”

  “Ah, then you would have deprived me of a pleasure. Indeed, Citoyenne, my arrest need not trouble you; it was due, not to your affairs, but my own.”

  “Ah, M. Cléry, is that true?” and her voice spoke her relief.

  “I should be able to think better of myself if it were not,” said Cléry a little bitterly. “I was a fool, and I am being punished for my folly. Dangeau warned me too. When you see him again, Citoyenne, you may tell him that he was right about Thérèse.”

  “Thérèse—Thérèse Marcel?” asked Aline, shrinking a little.

  “Ah—you know her! Well, I trusted her, and she betrayed me, and here I am. Dangeau always said that she was dangerous—the devil’s imitation of a woman, he called her once, and you can tell him that he was quite right.”

  Aline averted her eyes, and her colour rose a shade. For a moment her heart felt warm. Then she looked back at Cléry, and fell quickly upon her knees beside him, for he was gasping for breath, and falling sideways from the stool. She managed to support him for the moment, but her heart beat violently, and at the sound of footsteps she called out. To her relief, M. de Maurepas came up quickly. If he felt any surprise at finding her in such a situation, he was too well-bred to show it.

  “Do not be alarmed,” he said hastily. “He has been very ill, but this is only a swoon; he should not have walked.” Then, “Mademoiselle, move your arm, and let me put mine around him, so—now I can manage.”

  He lifted Cléry as he spoke, and carried him the length of the corridor.

  “Now, if Mademoiselle will have the goodness to push the door a little wider,” and he passed in and laid Cléry gently down.

  Mademoiselle hesitated by the door for a minute.

  “He looks so ill, will he die?” she said.

  “Not of this,” returned M. de Maurepas; then, after a moment’s pause, and with a grave smile, “Nor at all till it is God’s will, Mademoiselle.”

  Mlle de Rochambeau spent the morning with Marguerite. On her return to her own cell she found an empty place. Mme de Coigny was gone, and the little infant wailed on the peasant woman’s lap.

  Cléry was better next day. On the third Aline met M. de Maurepas in the corridor. He was accompanied by a rough-looking turnkey, and she was about to pass without speaking, but their eyes met, and on the impulse she stopped and asked:

  “How is M. Cléry to-day?”

  The young soldier looked at her steadily.

  “He has—he has moved on, Mademoiselle,” he returned, something of distress in his tone.

  The turnkey burst into a loud, brutal laugh.

  “Eh, that was the citizen with the ague? At the last he shook and shook so much that he shook his head off—yes—right out of the little window, where his friend is now going to look for it,” and he clapped De Maurepas on the shoulder with a dingy, jocular hand.

  Aline drew a sharp breath.

  “Oh, no,” she said involuntarily, but De Maurepas bent his head in grave assent.

  “Is this so pleasant a camp that you grudge me my marching orders?” he asked; and as they passed he looked back a moment and said, “Adieu, Mademoiselle.”

  She gave him back the word very low, and he smiled again, a smile that irradiated his rough features and steady brown eyes. “Indeed, I think I go to ‘Him,’” he said, and was gone.

  Aline steadied herself against the wall, and closed her eyes for a moment. She had conceived a sincere liking for the young soldier; Cléry had done her a service, and now both were gone, and she still left. And yet she knew that Hébert was loose again. When she had first heard of his release she spent days of shuddering apprehension, but as the time went on she began to entertain a trembling hope that she was forgotten, as happened to more than one prisoner in those days.

  Hébert was loose again, but, for a time at least, with hands too full of public matters, and brain too occupied with the struggle for existence, to concern himself with matters of private pleasure or revenge.

  It was the middle of June before he thought seriously of Mlle de Rochambeau.

  “Dangeau is returning,” said Danton one morning, and Hébert’s dormant spite woke again into full activity.

  At the Abbaye, the hot afternoon waned; a drowsy stillness fell upon its inmates. Mme de Matigny dozed a little. She had grown older in the past few weeks, but her glance was still piercing, and she woke at intervals with a start, and let it rest sharply upon her little circle, as if forbidding them to be aware of Juno nodding.

  Marguerite and Aline sat together: Aline half asleep with her head in her friend’s lap, for Mme de Coigny’s baby had died at dawn, and she had been up all night tending it, and now fatigue had its way with her.

  Suddenly a turnkey stumbled in. He had been drinking, and stood blinking a moment as, coming from the dark corridor, he met the level sunlight full. Then he called Mlle de Rochambeau’s name, and as she awoke with a sense of startled amazement Marguerite flung soft arms about her.

  “Ah, ma mie, ma belle, ma bien aimée!” she cried, sobbing.

  “Chut!” said the man, with a leer. “She’d rather hear that from some one else, I take it, my little Citoyenne. If I’m not mistaken there’s some one ready enough. There’s no need to cry this time, since it is only to see a visitor that I want the Citoyenne. There’s a Citizen Deputy below with an order to see her, so less noise, please, and march.”

  The blood ran back to Aline’s cheek. Only two days back the Abbé had mentioned Dangeau’s name, and had said he was returning. If it should be he? The thought flashed, and was checked even as it flashed, but she followed the man with a step that was buoyant in spite of her fatigue. Then in the gaoler’s room—Hébert!

  Just a moment’s pause, and she came forward with a composure that hid God knows what of shrinking, maidenly disgust.

 
Hébert was not attractive to look at. His garments were dusty and wine-stained, his creased, yellow linen revealing a frowsy and unshaven chin, where the reddish hair showed unpleasantly upon the fat, unwholesome flesh. He laughed, disclosing broken teeth.

  “It was not I whom you expected, hein Citoyenne,” he said, with diabolical intuition. “He gets tired easily, you see, our good Jacques Dangeau, and lips that have been kissed too often don’t tempt him any more.”

  His leer pointed the insult, and an intolerable burning invaded every limb, but she steadied herself against the wall, and leaned there, her head still up, facing him.

  “Did you think I had forgotten you too?” he pursued, smiling odiously. “Ah! I see you did me that injustice, but you do not know me, ma belle. Mine is such a faithful heart. It never forgets, never; and it always gets what it wants in the end. I have been in prison too, as you may have heard—yes, you did? And grieved for me, pretty one, that I am sure of. A few rascals crossed my path and annoyed me for the moment. Where are they now? Trembling under arrest. Had they not detained me, I should have flown to you long ago; but I trust that now you acquit me of the discourtesy of keeping a lady waiting. I am really the soul of politeness.”

  There was a pause. Mademoiselle held to the wall, and kept her eyes away from his face.

  “Your affair comes on to-morrow,” he said, with a brisk change of tone.

  For the moment she really felt a sense of thankfulness. So she was delivered from the unbearable affront of this man’s presence what did death matter?

  Hébert guessed her thoughts.

  “Rather death than me, hein?” he said, leaning closer. “Is that what you are thinking, Ma’mselle White-face?”

  Her eyes spoke for her.

  “I can save you yet,” he cried, angered by her silence. “A word from me and your patriotism is above reproach. Come, you’ve made a good fight, and I won’t say that has n’t made me like you all the better. I always admire spirit; but now it’s time the play was over. Down with the curtain, and let’s kiss and make friends behind it.”

  Mademoiselle stood silent, a helpless thing at bay.

  “You won’t, eh?” and his tone changed suddenly. “Very well, my pretty piece of innocence; it’s Fouquier Tinville to-morrow, and then the guillotine,—but”—his voice sank savagely—“my turn first.”

  She quivered in a sick horror. “What did he mean; what could he do? Oh, Mary Virgin!”

  His face came very close with its pale, hideous smile.

  “Come to me willingly, and I’ll save your life and set you free when I’ve had enough of you. Remain the obstinate pig you are, and you shall come all the same, but the guillotine shall have you next day.”

  Her white lips moved.

  “You cannot—” she breathed almost inaudibly. Her senses were clouding and reeling, but she clutched desperately at that one thought. Some things were impossible. This was one of them. Death—yes, and oh, quickly, quickly; no more of this torture. But this new, monstrous threat—no, no, dear God! no, such a thing could not, could not happen!

  The room was all mist, swirling, rolling mist out of which looked Hébert’s eyes. Through it sounded his voice, his laugh.

  “Cannot, cannot—fine words, my pretty, fine words. When one has friends, good friends, one can do a good deal more than you think, and instead of finding yourself in the Conciergerie between sentence and execution, I can arrange quite nicely that you should be in these loving arms of mine. Aha, my dear! What do you say now? Will you hear reason, or no?”

  The mist covered everything now, and the wall she leaned against seemed to rock and give. She spread out her hands, and with a gasp fell waveringly, first to her knees, and then sideways upon the stones in a dead faint.

  CHAPTER XVII

  DISTRESSING NEWS

  DANGEAU ENTERED PARIS NEXT MORNING. His mission had dragged itself out to an interminable length. Even now he returned alone, his colleague, Bonnet, having been ordered to remain at Lyons for the present, whilst Dangeau made report at headquarters. The cities of the South smouldered ominously, and were ready at a breath to break into roaring flame. Even as Dangeau rode the first tongues of fire ran up, and a general conflagration threatened. Of this he rode to give earnest warning, and his face was troubled and anxious, though the outdoor life had given it a brown vigour which had been lacking before.

  He put up his horse at an inn and walked to his old quarters with a warm glow rising in his breast; a glow before which all misgivings and preoccupations grew faint.

  He had not been able to forget the pale, proud aristocrat, who had claimed his love so much against his will and hers; but in his days of absence he had set her image as far apart as might be, involving himself in the press of public business, to the exclusion of his thoughts of her. But now—now that he was about to see her again, the curtain at the back of his mind lifted, and showed her standing—an image in a shrine—unapproachably radiant, unforgettably enchanting, unalterably dear, and all the love in him fell on its knees and adored with hidden face.

  He passed up the Rue des Lanternes and beheld its familiar features transfigured. Here she had walked all the months of his absence, and here perhaps she had thought of him; there in the little room had mingled his name with her sweet prayers. He remembered hotly the night he had asked her if she prayed for him, and her low, exquisitely tremulous, “Yes, Citizen.”

  He drew a long, deep breath and entered the small shop.

  It was dark coming in from the glare, but he made out Rosalie in her accustomed seat, only it seemed to him that she was huddled forward in an unusual manner.

  “Why, Citoyenne!” he cried cheerfully, “I am back, you see.”

  Rosalie raised her head and stared at him, and she seemed to be coming back with difficulty from a great distance. As his eyes grew used to the change from the outer day he looked curiously at her face. There was something strange, it seemed to him, about the sunken eyes; they had lost the old shrewd look, and were dull and wavering. For a moment it occurred to him that she had been drinking; then the heavy glance changed, brightening into recognition.

  “You, Citizen?” she said, with a sort of dull surprise.

  “Myself, and very glad to be back.”

  “You are well, Citizen?”

  “And you, I fear, suffering?”

  Rosalie pulled herself together.

  “No, no,” she protested, “I am well too, quite well. It is only that the days are dull when there is no spectacle, and I sit there and think, and count the heads, and wonder if it hurt them much; and then it makes my own head ache, and I become stupid.”

  Dangeau shuddered lightly. A gruesome welcome this.

  “I would not go and see such things,” he said.

  “Sometimes I wish—” began Rosalie, and then paused; a red patch came on either sallow cheek. “It is too ennuyant when there is nothing to excite one, voyez-vous? Yesterday there were five, and one of them struggled. Ah, that gave me a palpitation! They say it was n’t an aristocrat. They all die alike, with a little stretched smile and steady eyes—no crying out—I find that tiresome at the last.”

  “Why, Rosalie,” said Dangeau, “you should stay at home as you used to. Since when have you become a gadabout? You will finish by having bad dreams and losing your appetite.”

  Rosalie looked up with a sort of horrid animation.

  “Ah, j’y suis déjà,” she said quickly. “Already I see them in the night. A week ago I wake, cold, wet—and there stands the Citizen Cléry with his head under his arm like any St. Denis. Could I eat next day?—Ma foi, no! And why should he come to me, that Cléry? Was it I who had a hand in his death? These revenants have not common-sense. It is my cousin Thérèse whose nights should be disturbed, not mine.”

  Dangeau looked at her steadily.

  “Come, come, Rosalie,” he said, “enough of this—Edmond Cléry’s head is safe enough.”

  “Yes, yes,” nodded Rosalie, “safe enough
in the great trench. Safe enough till Judgment day, and then it is Thérèse who must answer, and not I. It was none of my doing.”

  “But, Rosalie—mon Dieu! what are you saying—Edmond——?”

  “Why, did you not know?”

  “Woman!—what?”

  “Ask Thérèse,” said Rosalie with a sullen look, and fell to plaiting the border of her coarse apron.

  “Rosalie!”

  His voice startled her, and her mood shifted.

  “Yes, to be sure, he was a friend of yours, and it is bad news. Ah, he’s dead, there’s no doubt of that. I saw it with my own eyes. He had been ill, and could hardly mount the steps; but in the end he smiled and waved his hand, and went off as bravely as the best of them. It is a pity, but he offended Thérèse, and she is a devil. I told her so; I said to her, ‘Thérèse, I think you are a devil,’ and she only laughed.”

  Dangeau could see that laugh,—red, red lips, and white, even teeth, and all the while lips that had kissed hers livid, dabbled with blood. Oh, horrible! Poor Cléry, poor Edmond!

  He gave a great shudder and forced his thoughts away from the vision they had evoked, but he sought voice twice before he could say:

  “All else are well?”

  She looked sullen again, and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Ma foi, Citizen, Paris does not stand still.”

  He bit his lip.

  “But here, in this house?”

  “I am well, I have said so before.”

  He turned as if to go.

  “And the Citoyenne Roche?” He had his voice in hand now, and the question had a careless ring.

  “Gone,” said Rosalie curtly.

  In a flash that veil of carelessness had dropped. His hand fell heavily upon her shoulder.

  “Gone—where?” he asked tensely.

  “Where every one goes these days, these fine days. To prison, to the guillotine. They all go there.”

  For a moment Dangeau’s heart stood still, then laboured so that his voice was beyond control. It came in husky gasps. “Dead—she is dead. Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!”