So this was the husband? A strong man, not the type to be hoodwinked, best to let the girl go; but as the thoughts flashed on his mind, he was aware of her at his elbow.
“M. l’Abbé,” she said very low, “tell Marguerite—tell her—oh! ask her not to think hardly of me. I pray for her always, I hope to see her again, and I will do what I can.”
She ran back again, without waiting for a reply, and walked in silence by Dangeau’s side until they reached the house. He made no attempt to speak, but on the landing he hesitated a moment, and then followed her into her room.
“Danton spoke to me this morning,” he said, moving to the window, where he stood looking out. “They want me to go South again. Lyons is in revolt, and is to be reduced by arms. Dubois-Crancy commands, but Bonnet has fallen sick, and I am to take his place.”
Aline had seated herself, and picked up a strip of muslin. Under its cover her hands clasped each other very tightly. When he paused she said: “Yes, Monsieur.”
“I am to start immediately.”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
He swung round, looked at her angrily for a moment, and then stared again into the dirty street.
“It is a question of what you are to do,” he said impatiently.
“I? But I shall stay here. What else is there for me to do?”
“I cannot leave you alone in Paris again.”
“Monsieur?”
“What!” he cried. “Have you forgotten?” and she bent to hide her sudden pallor.
“What am I to do, then?” she asked very low. Her submission at once touched and angered him. It allured by its resemblance to a wife’s obedience, and repelled because the resemblance was only mirage, and not reality.
“I cannot have you here, I cannot take you with me, and there is only one place I can send you to—a little place called Rancy-les-Bois, about thirty miles from Paris. My mother’s sisters live there, and I should ask them to receive you.”
“I will do as you think best,” murmured Aline.
“They are unmarried, one is an invalid, and they are good women. It is some years since I have seen them, but I remember my Aunt Ange was greatly beloved in Rancy. I think you would be safe with her.”
A vision of safety and a woman’s protection rose persuasively before Aline, and she looked up with a quick, confiding glance that moved Dangeau strangely. She was at once so rigid and so soft, so made for love and trusting happiness, and yet so resolute to repel it. He bit his lip as he stood looking at her, and a sort of rage against life and fate rose hotly, unsubdued within him. He turned to leave her, but she called him back, in a soft, hesitating tone that brought back the days of their first intercourse. When he looked round he saw that she was pale and agitated.
“Monsieur!” she stammered, and seemed afraid of her own voice; and all at once a wild stirring of hope set his heart beating.
“What is it? Won’t you tell me?” he said; and again she tried to speak and broke off, then caught her courage and went on.
“Oh, Monsieur, if you would do something!”
“Why, what is it you want me to do, child?”
That was almost his old kind look, and it emboldened her. She rose and leaned towards him, clasping her hands.
“Oh, Monsieur, you have influence—” and at that his brow darkened.
“What is it?” he said.
“I heard—I heard—” She stopped in confusion. “Oh! it is my friend, Marguerite de Matigny. Her grandmother is dead, and she is alone. Monsieur, she is only seventeen, and such a pretty child, so gay, and she has done no harm to any one. It is impossible that she could do any harm.”
“I thought you had no friends?”
“No, I had none; but in the prison they were good to me—all of them. Old Madame de Matigny knew my parents, and welcomed me for their sakes; but Marguerite I loved. She was like a kitten, all soft and caressing. Monsieur, if you could see her, so little, and pretty—just a child!” Her eyes implored him, but his were shadowed by frowning brows.
“Is that what the priest told you to say?” he asked harshly.
“The priest——”
“You’d lie to me,” he broke out, and stopped himself. “Do you think I didn’t recognise the look, the tone? Did he put words into your mouth?”
Her eyes filled.
“He told me about Marguerite,” she said simply. “He told me she was alone, and it came into my heart to ask you to help her. I have no one to ask but you.”
The voice, the child’s look would have disarmed him, but the words he had overheard came back, and made his torment.
“If it came into your heart, I know who put it there,” he said. “And what else came with it? What else were you to do? Do you forget I overheard? If I thought you had lent yourself to be a tool, to influence, to bribe—mon Dieu, if I thought that——”
“Monsieur!” but the soft, agitated protest fell unheard.
“I should kill you—yes, I think that I should kill you,” he said in a cold, level voice.
She moved a step towards him then, and if her voice had trembled, her eyes were clear and untroubled as they met his full.
“You shall not need to,” she said quietly, and there was a long pause.
It was he who looked away at last, and then she spoke.
“I asked you at no one’s prompting,” she said softly. “See, Monsieur, let there be truth between us. That at least I can give, and will—yes, always. He, the man you saw, asked me to help him, to help others, and I told him no, my hands were tied. If he had asked for ever, I must still have said the same thing; and if it had cut my heart in two, I would still have said it. But about Marguerite, that was different. She knows nothing of any plots, she is no conspirator. I would not ask, if it touched your honour. I would not indeed.”
“Are you sure?” he asked in a strange voice, and she answered his question with another.
“Would you have pledged your honour if you had not been sure?”
He gave a short, hard laugh.
“Upon my soul, child, I think so,” he said, and the colour ran blazing to her face.
“Oh, Monsieur, I keep faith!” she cried in a voice that came from her heart.
Her outstretched hands came near to touching him, and he turned away with a sudden wrench of his whole body.
“And it is hard—yes, hard enough,” he said bitterly, and went out with a mist before his eyes.
CHAPTER XXI
A NEW ENVIRONMENT
MADELON PINEL STOOD BY THE WINDOW of the inn parlour, and looked out with round shining eyes. She was in a state of pleasing excitement, and her comely cheeks vied in colour with the carnation riband in her cap, for this was her first jaunt with her husband since their marriage, and an expedition from quiet Rancy to the eight-miles-distant market-town was a dissipation of the most agreeable nature. The inn looked out on the small, crowded Place, where a great traffic of buying and selling, of cheapening and haggling was in process, and she chafed with impatience for her husband to finish his wine, and take her out into the thick of it again. He, good man, miller by the flour on his broad shoulders, stood at his ease beside her, smiling broadly. No one, he considered, could behold him without envy; for Madelon was the acknowledged belle of the countryside, and well dowered into the bargain. Altogether, a man very pleased with life, and full of pride in his married state, as he lounged beside his pretty wife, and drank his wine, one arm round her neat waist.
With a roll and a flourish the diligence drew up, and Madelon’s excitement grew.
“Ah, my friend, look—look!” she cried. “There will be passengers from Paris. Oh! I hope it is full. No—what a pity! There are only four. See then, Jean Jacques, the fat old man with the nose. It is redder than Gargoulet’s and one would have said that was impossible. And the little man like a rat. Fie! he has a wicked eye, that one—I declare he winked at me”; and she drew back, darting a virtuously coquettish glance at the unperturbed Jean Jacques.
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br /> “Not he,” he observed with complete tranquillity. “Calm thyself, Madelon. Thou art no longer the prettiest girl in Rancy, but a sober matron. Thy winking days are over.”
“My winking days!” exclaimed Madelon,—“my winking days indeed!” She tossed her head with feigned displeasure and leaned out again, wide-eyed.
A third passenger had just alighted, and stood by the door of the diligence holding out a hand to some one yet unseen.
“Seigneur!” cried Madelon maliciously; “look there, Jean Jacques, if that is not a fine man!”
“What, the rat?” grinned the miller.
“No, stupid!—the handsome man by the door there, he with the tricolour sash. Ciel! what a sash! What can he be, then,—a Deputy, thinkest thou? Oh, I hope he is a Deputy. There, now there is a woman getting out—he helps her down, and now he turns this way. They are coming in. Eh! what blue eyes he has! Well, I would not have him angry with me, that one; I should think his eyes would scorch like lightning.”
“Eh, Madelon, how you talk!”
“There, they are on the step. Hold me then, Jean Jacques, or I shall fall. Do you think the woman is his wife? How white she is!—but quite young, not older than I. And her hair—oh, but that is pretty! I wish I had hair like that—all gold in the sun.”
“Thy hair is well enough,” said the enamoured Jean Jacques. “There, come back a little, Madelon, or thou wilt fall out. They are coming in.”
Madelon turned from the window to watch the door, and in a minute Dangeau and Aline came in. For a moment Aline looked timidly round, then seeing the pleasant face and shining brown eyes of the miller’s wife, she made her way gratefully towards her, and sat down on the rough bench which ran along the wall. Madelon disengaged herself from her husband’s arm, gave him a little push in Dangeau’s direction, and sat down too, asking at once, with a stare of frank curiosity:
“You are from Paris? All the way from Paris?”
“Yes, from Paris,” said Aline rather wearily.
“Ciel! That is a distance to come. Are you not tired?”
“Just a little, perhaps.”
“Paris is a big place, is it not? I have never been there, but my father has. He left the inn for a month last year, and went to Paris, and saw all the sights. Yes, he went to the Convention Hall, and heard the Deputies speak. Would any one believe there were so many of them? Four hundred and more, he said. Every one did not believe him,—Gargoulet even laughed, and spat on the floor,—but my father is a very truthful man, and not at all boastful. He would not say such a thing unless he had seen it, for he does not believe everything that he is told—oh no! For my part, I believed him, and Jean Jacques too. But imagine then, four hundred Deputies all making speeches!”
Aline could not help laughing.
“Yes, I believe there are quite as many as that. My husband is one of them, you know.”
“Seigneur!” exclaimed Madelon. “I said so. Where is that great stupid of mine? I said the Citizen was a Deputy—at once I said it!”
“Why, how did you guess?”
“Oh, by the fine tricolour sash,” said Madelon naively; “and then there is a look about him, is there not? Do you not think he has the air of being a Deputy?”
“I do not know,” said Aline, smiling.
“Well, I think so. And now I will tell you another thing I said. I said that he could be angry, and that then I should not like to meet his eyes, they would be like blue fire. Is that true too?”
Aline was amused by the girl’s confiding chatter.
“I do not think he is often angry,” she said.
“Ah, but when he is,” and Madelon nodded airily. “Those that are angry often—oh, well, one gets used to it, and in the end one takes no notice. It is like a kettle that goes on boiling until at last the water is all boiled away. But when one is like the Citizen Deputy, not angry often—oh, then that can be terrible, when it comes! I should think he was like that.”
“Perhaps,” said Aline, still smiling, but with a little contraction of the heart, as she remembered anger she had roused and faced. It did not frighten her, but it made her heart beat fast, and had a strange fascination for her now. Sometimes she even surprised a longing to heap fuel on the fire, to make it blaze high—high enough to melt the ice in which she had encased herself.
Then her own thought startled her, and she turned quickly to her companion.
“Is that your husband?” she asked, for the sake of saying something.
“Yes, indeed,” said Madelon. “He is a fine man, is he not? He and the Citizen Deputy are talking together. They seem to have plenty to say—one would say they were old friends. Yes, that is my Jean Jacques; he is the miller of Rancy-les-Bois. We have travelled too, for Rancy is eight miles from here, and a road to break your heart.”
“From Rancy—you come from Rancy?” said Aline, with a little, soft, surprised sound.
“Yes, from Rancy. Did I not say my father kept the inn there? But I have been married two months now”; and she twisted her wedding ring proudly.
“I am going to Rancy,” said Aline on the impulse.
“You, Citoyenne?” and Madelon’s brown eyes became completely round with surprise.
Aline nodded. She liked this girl with the light tongue and honest red cheeks. It was pleasant to talk to her after four hours of tense silence, during the most part of which she had feigned sleep, and even then had been aware of Dangeau’s eyes upon her face.
“Yes,” she said. “Does that surprise you so much? My husband goes South on mission, and I am to stay with his aunts at Rancy. They have written to say that I am welcome.”
“Oh!” cried Madelon quickly. “Then I know who you are. Stupid that I am, not to have guessed before! All the world knows that the Citoyennes Desaix have a nephew who is a Deputy, and you must be his wife—you must be the Citoyenne Dangeau.”
“Yes,” said Aline.
“To be sure, if I had seen the Citoyenne Ange, she would have told me you were coming; but it is ten days since I saw her to speak to—there has been so much to do in the house. She will be pleased to have you. Both of them will be pleased. If they are proud of the nephew who is a Deputy—Seigneur!” and Madelon’s plump brown hands were waved high and wide to express the pride of Dangeau’s aunts.
“Yes?” said Aline again.
“But of course. It is a fine thing nowadays, a very fine thing indeed. All the world would turn out to look at him if he came to Rancy. What a pity he must go South! Have you been married long?”
Aline was vexed to feel the colour rise to her cheeks as she answered:
“No—not long.”
“And already he must leave you! That is hard—yes, I find that very hard. If Jean Jacques were to go away, I should certainly be inconsolable. Before one is married it is different; one has a light heart, one is quick to forget. If a man goes, one does not care—there are always plenty more. But when one is married, then it is another story; then there is something that hurts one at the heart when they are not there—n’est-ce pas?”
Aline turned a tell-tale face away, and Madelon edged a little nearer.
“Later on, again, they say one does not mind so much. There are the children, you see, and that makes all the difference. For me, I hope for a boy—a strong, fat boy like Marie my sister-in-law had last year. Ah! that was a boy! and I hope mine will be just such another. If one has a girl, one feels as if one had committed a bêtise, do you not think so?—or”—with a polite glance at the averted face—“perhaps you desire a girl, Citoyenne?”
Aline felt an unbearable heat assail her, for suddenly her old dream flashed into her mind, and she saw herself with a child in her arms—a wailing, starving child with sad blue eyes. With an indistinct murmur she started up and moved a step or two towards the door, and as she did so, Dangeau nodded briefly to the miller, and came to meet her.
“We are fortunate,” he said,—“really very fortunate. These worthy people are the miller of Ra
ncy and his wife, as no doubt she has told you. I saw you were talking together.”
“Yes, it is strange,” said Aline.
“Nothing could have been more convenient, since they will be able to take you to my aunt’s very door. I have spoken to the miller, and he is very willing. Nothing could have fallen out better.”
“And you?” faltered Aline, her eyes on the ground.
“I go on at once. You know my orders—‘to lose no time.’ If it had been necessary, I should have taken you to Rancy, but as it turns out I have no excuse for not going on at once.”
“At once?” she repeated in a little voice like a child’s.
He nodded, and walked to the window, where he stood looking out for a moment.
“The horses are in,” he said, turning again. “It is time I took my seat.”
He passed out, saluting Pinel and Madelon, who was much elated by his bow.
Aline followed him into the square, and saw that the other two passengers were in their places. Her heart had begun to beat so violently that she thought it impossible that he should not hear it, but he only threw her a grave, cold look.
“You will like perhaps to know that your friend’s case came on yesterday and that she was set free. There was nothing against her,” he said, with some constraint.
“Marguerite?”
“Yes, the Citoyenne Matigny. She is free. I thought you would be glad to know.”
“Yes—yes—oh, thank you! I am glad!”
“You will tell my aunts that my business was pressing, or I should have visited them. Give them my greetings. They will be good to you.”
“Yes—the letter was kind.”
“They are good women.” He handed her a folded paper. “This is my direction. Keep it carefully, and if you need anything, or are in any trouble, you will write.” His voice made it an order, not a request, and she winced.
“Yes,” she said, with stiff lips.
Dangeau’s face grew harder. If it were only over, this parting! He craved for action—longed to be away—to be quit of this intolerable strain. He had kept his word, he had assured her safety, let him be gone out of her life, into such a life as a man might make for himself, in the tumult and flame of war.
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