“Yes, yes!” shouted a big brewer who had swung himself to the edge of the platform, and sat there kicking his heels noisily. “Yes, yes! It’s all very well to say ‘I vouch for her,’ but there’s only one woman any man can vouch for, and that’s his wife.”
“What, Robinot, can you vouch for yours?” screamed Louison; and a roar of laughter went up, spiced by the brewer’s very evident discomfort.
“Yes, what’s she to you after all?” said another woman.
“A hussy!” shrieked a third.
“An aristocrat!”
“What do you know of her, and how do you know it?”
“Explain, explain!”
“Death, death to the aristocrat!”
Dangeau sent his voice ringing through the hall:
“She is my betrothed!”
A momentary hush fell upon the assembly. Hébert sprang forward with a curse, but Tinville plucked him back, whispering, “Let him go on; that’ll damn him, and is n’t that what you want?”
Again Aline’s lips moved, but instead of speaking she put both hands to her heart, and stood pressing them there silently. In the strength of that silence Dangeau turned upon the murmuring crowd.
“She is my betrothed, and I answer for her. You all know me. She is an aristocrat no longer, but the Daughter of the Revolution, for it has borne her into a new life. All the years before she has discarded. From its mighty heart she has drawn the principles of freedom, and at its guiding hand learned her first trembling steps towards Liberty. In trial of poverty, loneliness, and hunger she has proved her loyalty to the other children of our great Mother. Sons and Daughters of the Republic, protect this child who claims to be of your line, who holds out her hands to you and cries: ‘Am I not one of you? Will you not acknowledge me? brothers before whom I have walked blamelessly, sisters amongst whom I have lived in poverty and humility.’”
He caught Mademoiselle’s hand, and held it up.
“See the fingers pricked and worn, as many of yours are pricked and worn. See the thin face—thin as your daughters’ faces are thin when there is not food for all, and the elder must go without that the younger may have more. Look at her. Look well, and remember she comes to you for justice. Citizens, will you kill your converts? She gives her life and all its hopes to the Republic, and will the Republic destroy the gift? Keep the knife to cut away the alien and the enemy. Is my betrothed an alien? Shall my wife be an enemy? I swear to you that, if I believed it, my own hand would strike her down! If there is a citizen here who does not believe that I would shed the last drop of my heart’s blood before I would connive at the danger of the Republic, let him come forward and accuse me!”
“Stop him!” gasped Hébert.
Fouquier Tinville shrugged his shoulders, as he and Herman exchanged glances.
“No, thanks, Hébert,” he said coolly. “He’s got them now, and I’ve no fancy for a snug position between the upper and the nether millstone. After all, what does it matter? There are a hundred other girls” and he spat on the dirty floor.
Undoubtedly Dangeau had them, for in that pause no one spoke, and his voice rang out again at its full strength:
“Come forward then. Do any accuse me?”
There was a prolonged hush. The jury growled amongst themselves, but no one coveted the part of spokesman.
Once Hébert started forward, cleared his throat, then reflected for a moment on Danton and his ways—reflected, too, that this transaction would hardly bear the light of day, cursed the universe at large, and fell back into his chair choking with rage.
It appeared that no one accused Dangeau. Far in the crowd a pretty gipsy of a girl laughed loudly.
“Handsome Dangeau for me!” she cried. “Vive Dangeau!”
In a minute the whole hall took it up, and the roof rang with the shouting. The girl who had laughed had been lifted to her lover’s shoulders, and stood there, flushed and exuberant, leading the cheers with her wild, shrill voice.
When the noise fell a little, she waved her arms, crying, with a peal of laughter:
“Let’s have a wedding, a wedding, mes amis! If she’s the Daughter of the Revolution, let the Revolution give away the bride, and we’ll all say Amen!”
The crowd’s changed mood tossed the new suggestion into instant popularity. The girl’s cry was taken up on all sides, there was bustling to and fro, laughter, gossip, whispering, shouting, and general jubilation. A fête, a spectacle—something new—oh, but quite new. A trial that ended in the bridal of the victim, to be sure one did not see that every day. That was romantic. That made one’s heart beat. Well, well, she was in luck to get a handsome lover instead of having her head sliced off.
“Vive Dangeau! Vive Dangeau and the Daughter of the Revolution!”
Up on to the platform swarmed the crowd, laughing, gesticulating, pressing upon the jury, and even jostling Fouquier Tinville himself.
Hébert bent to his ear in a last effort, but got only a curse and a shrug for his pains.
“I tell you, he’s got them, and no human power can thwart them now.”
“You should have shut his mouth! Why in the devil’s name did you let him speak?”
“You wanted him to compromise himself, and it seemed the easiest way. He has the devil’s own luck. Hark to the fools with their ‘Vive Dangeau!’ A while ago it was ‘Death to the aristocrat!’ and now it’s ‘Dangeau and the Daughter of the Revolution!’”
“Speak to them,—do something,” insisted Hébert.
“Try it yourself, and get torn to pieces,” retorted the other. “The girl’s not my fancy. Burn your own fingers if you want to.”
Dangeau was at the table now.
“We await the decision of the Tribunal,” he said, with a hint of sarcasm in the quiet tones.
Fouquier Tinville’s eyes rested insolently upon him.
“Our Sovereign has decided, it seems,” he said. “For me—I throw up the prosecution.”
Hébert flung away with an oath, and Herman bent stolidly and wrote against the interrogatory the one word, “Acquitted.”
It stood out black and bold in his gross scrawl, and as he threw the sand on it, Dangeau turned away with a bow.
Some one was being pushed through the crowd—a dark man in civil dress, but with the priest’s look on his sallow, nervous face. Dangeau recognised the odd, cleft chin and restless eyes of Latour, the Constitutional curé of St. Jean.
“A wedding, a wedding!” shouted the whole assembly, those at the back crying the more loudly, as if to make up by their own noise for not being able to hear what was passing on the platform.
“A wedding, a wedding!” shrieked the same women who, not half an hour ago, had raised the howl for the aristocrat’s blood.
“Bride, bridegroom, and priest,” laughed the gipsy-eyed girl. “What more do we want? The Citizen President can give away the bride, and I’ll be brides-maid. Set me down then, Réné, and let’s to work.”
Her lover pushed a way to the front and lifted her on to the stage. She ran to Mademoiselle and began to touch her hair and settle the kerchief at her throat, whilst Aline stood quite, quite still, and let her do what she would.
She had not stirred since Dangeau had released her hand, and within her every feeling and emotion lay swooning. It was as if a black tide had risen, covering all within. Upon its dark mirror floated the reflection of Hébert’s cruel eyes, and loose lips that smiled upon a girl’s shamed agony. If those waters rose any higher they would flood her brain and send her mad with horror, Dangeau’s voice seemed to arrest the tide, and whilst he spoke the reflection wavered and grew faint. She listened, knowing what he said, as one knows the contents of a book read long ago; but it was the voice itself, not the words carried on it, that reached her reeling brain and steadied it.
All at once a hand on her hair, at her breast; a girl’s eyes shining with excitement, whilst a shrill voice whispered, “Saints! how pale you are! What! not a blush for the bridegroom?” Then
loud laughter all around, and she felt herself pushed forward into an open space.
A ring had been formed around one of the tables; men and women jostled at its outskirts, pushed one another aside, and stood on tiptoe, peeping and applauding. In the centre, Dangeau with his tricolour sash; Mademoiselle, upon whose head some one had thrust the scarlet cap of Liberty; and the priest, whose eyes looked back and forth like those of a nervous horse. He cleared his throat, moistened his dry lips, and began the Office. After a second’s pause, Dangeau took the bride’s hand and did his part. Cold as no living thing should be, it lay in his, unresisting and unresponsive, whilst his was like his mood—hotly masterful. After one glance he dared not trust himself to look at her. Her white features showed no trace of emotion, her eyes looked straight before her in a calm stare, her voice made due response without tremor or hesitation. “Ego conjugo vos,” rang the tremendous words, and they rose from their knees before that strange assembly, man and wife in the sight of God and the Republic.
“Kiss her then, Citizen,” laughed the bridesmaid, slipping her arm through Dangeau’s, and he touched the marble forehead with his lips. The first kiss of his strong love, and given and taken so. Fire and ice met, thrust into contact of all contacts the most intimate. How strange, how unbearable! Fraught with what presage of disaster.
“Now you may kiss me,” said the bridesmaid, pouting. “Réné isn’t looking; but be quick, Citizen, for he’s jealous, and a broken head wouldn’t be a pleasant marriage gift.”
Like a man in a dream he brushed the glowing cheek, and felt its warmth.
Yes, so the living felt; but his bride was cold, as the week-old dead are cold.
CHAPTER XIX
THE BARRIER
AFTER THE WEDDING, WHAT A HOME-COMING! Dangeau had led his pale bride through the cheering, applauding crowd, which followed them to their very door, and on the threshold horror met them—for the floor was dabbled with blood. Thérèse’s corpse lay yet in the house, and a voluble neighbour told how Rosalie had murdered her cousin, and had been taken, raving, to the cells of the Salpêtrière. The crowd was all agog for details, and, taking advantage of the diversion, Dangeau cleared a path for himself and Aline. He took her to her old room and closed the door. The silence fell strangely.
“My dearest, you are safe. Thank God you are safe,” he said in broken tones.
She looked straight before her with an expression deeper than that which is usually called unconscious, her eyes wide and piteous, like those of a child too badly frightened to cry out. He took her cold hands and held them to his breast, chafing them gently, trying to revive their warmth, and she let him do it, still with that far-away, unreal look.
“My dear, I must go,” he said after a moment. “For both our sakes I must see Danton at once, before any garbled tale reaches his ear. I will see that there is some one in the house. Louison Michel would come I think. There is my report to make, letters of the first importance to be delivered; a good deal of work before me, in fact. But you will not be afraid now? You are safer than any woman in Paris to-day. You will not be nervous?”
She shook her head slightly, and drew one hand away in order to push the hair from her forehead. The gesture was a very weary one, and Dangeau would have given the world to catch her in his arms.
“So tired, my heart,” he said in a low voice; and as a little quiver took her, he continued quickly: “I will find Louison; she came here with us, and is sure not to be far away. She will look after you, and bring you food, and then you should sleep. I dare not stay.”
He kissed the hand which still lay passively in his and went out hurriedly, not trusting himself to turn and look at her again lest he should lose his careful self-control and startle her by some wild outpouring of love, triumph, and thankfulness.
Aline heard his footsteps die away, listening with strained attention until the last sound melted into a tense silence. Then she looked wildly round, her breast heaved distressfully, and tottering to the bed she fell on it face downwards, and lay there in a stunned fatigue of mind and body that left no place for thought or tears. Presently came Louison, all voluble eagerness to talk of the wedding and the murder, especially the latter.
“And to think that it was Jean’s knife! Holy Virgin, if I had known what she came for! There she sat, and stared, and stared, until I told her she had best be going, since I, at least, had no time to waste. Yesterday, that was; and this morning when Jean seeks his knife it is gone,—and the noise, and the fuss. ‘My friend,’ I said, ‘do I eat knives?’ and with that I turned him out, and all the while Rosalie had it. Ugh! that makes one shudder. Not that that baggage Thérèse was any loss, but it might as well have been you, or me. When one is mad they do not distinguish. For me, I have said for a long time that Rosalie’s mind was going, and now it is seen who is right. Well, well, now Charlotte will come round. Mark my words, Charlotte will be here bright and early to-morrow, if not to-night. It will be the first time she has set foot here in ten years. She hated Rosalie like poison,—a stepmother, only a dozen years older than herself, and when the old man died she cleared out, and has never spoken to Rosalie since the funeral. But she’ll be round now, mark my words.”
Aline lay quite still. She was just conscious that Louison was there, talking a great deal, and that presently she brought her some hot soup, which it was strangely comfortable to swallow. The little woman was not ungentle with her, and did not leave her until the half-swoon of fatigue had passed into deep sleep. She herself was to sleep in the house. Dangeau had asked her to, saying he might be late, and she had promised, pleased to be on the spot where such exciting events had taken place, and convinced that it would be for the health of her husband’s soul to have the charge of the children for once.
It was very late before Dangeau came home. If the French language holds no such word, his heart supplied it, for the first time in all the long years during which there had been no one to miss him going, or look for him returning. Now the little room under the roof held the long-loved, the despaired-of, the unattainably-distant,—and she was his, his wife, caught by his hands from insult and from death. Outside her door he hesitated a moment, then lifted the latch with a gentle touch, and went in reverently. The moon was shining into the room, and one long beam trembled mistily just above the bed, throwing upon the motionless form below a light like that of the land wherein we walk in dreams. Aline was asleep. She lay on her side, with one hand under her cheek, and her loosened hair in a great swathe across the bosom that scarcely seemed to lift beneath it, so deep the tranced fatigue that held her.
The moon was still rising, and the beam slid lower, lower; now it silvered her brow,—now showed the dark, curled lashes lying upon a cheek white with that translucent pallor—sleep’s gift to youth. Her chin was a little lifted, the soft mouth relaxed, and its tender curve had taken a look at once pitiful and pure, like that of a child drowsing after pain. Her eyelids were only half-closed, and he was aware of the sleeping blue within, of the deeper stain below; and all his heart went out to her in a tremulous rapture of adoration which caught his breath, and ran in fire through every vein. How tired she was, and how deeply asleep,—how young, and pure.
A thought of Hébert rose upon his shuddering mind, and involuntarily words broke from him—“Ah, mon Dieu!” he said, with heaving chest.
Aline stirred a little; a slow, fluttering sigh interrupted her breathing, as she withdrew the hand beneath her cheek and put it out gropingly. Then she sighed again and turned from the light, nestling into the pillow with a movement that hid her face. If Dangeau had gone to her then, knelt by the bed, and put his arms about her, she might have turned to his protecting love as instinctively as ever child to its mother. But that very love withheld him. That, and the thought of Hébert. If she should think him such another! Oh, God forbid!
He looked once more, blessed her in his soul, and turned away.
In the morning he was afoot betimes. Danton had set an early hour for
the conclusion of the business between them, and it was noon past before he returned.
In the shop he found a pale, dark, thin-lipped woman, engaged in an extremely thorough scrubbing and tidying of the premises. She stopped him at once, with a grin—
“I’ll have no loafing or gossiping here, Citizen”; and received his explanation with perfect indifference.
“I am Charlotte Leboeuf. I take everything over. Bah! the state the house is in! Fitter for pigs than Christians. For the time you may stay on. You have two rooms, you say?”
“Yes, two, Citoyenne.”
“And you wish to keep them? Well, I have no objection. Later on I shall dispose of the business, but these are bad times for selling; and now, if the Citizen will kindly not hinder me at my work any more for the present.” She shrugged her shoulders expressively, adding, as she seized the broom again, “Half the quarter has been here already, but they got nothing out of me.”
Aline had risen and dressed herself. Rosalie had left her room just as it was on the day of her arrest, and the dust stood thick on table, floor, and window-sill. Mechanically she began to set things straight; to dust and arrange her few possessions, which lay just as they had been left after the usual rummage for treasonable papers.
Presently she found the work she had been doing, a stitch half taken, the needle rusty. She cleaned it carefully, running it backwards and forwards through the stuff of her skirt, and taking the work, she began to sew, quickly, and without thought of anything except the neat, fine stitches.
At Dangeau’s knock, followed almost immediately by his entrance, her hands dropped into her lap, and she looked up in a scared panic of realisation. All that she had kept at bay rushed in upon her; the little tasks which she had set as barriers between her and thought fell away into the past, leaving her face to face with her husband and the future.
He crossed the floor to her quickly, and took her hands. He felt them tremble, and put them to his lips.
A Marriage Under the Terror Page 19
