Ange laughed a little.
“Well, well, dearest, perhaps I shall guess. Good-night, and sleep well.”
“As if I ever slept well!”
“Poor darling! Poor dearest! Is it so bad to-night? Let me turn the pillow. Is it a little better so?”
“Perhaps.” Then as Ange reached the door:
“Angel!”
“What is it then, chérie?”
Mlle Marthe put a thin arm about her sister’s neck and drew her close.
“After all, I will tell you.”
“Though I did not beg it on my knees?”
“Chut!”
“Or with my last breath?”
“Very well, then; if you do not wish to hear——”
“No, no; tell me.”
“Well then, Ange, she is noble—that girl.”
“Oh no!”
“I am sure of it. The mystery, her coming here. Why has she no relations, no friends? And then her look, her manner. Why, the first tone of her voice made me start.”
“Oh no, he would not——”
“Would not?” scoffed Marthe. “He’s a fool in love, and I suppose she was in danger. I tell you, I suspected it at once when his letter came. There, go to bed, and dream of our connection with the aristocracy. My faith, how times change! It is an edifying world.”
She pushed Ange away, and lay a long time watching the stars.
CHAPTER XXII
AT HOME AND AFIELD
ALINE SLEPT LATE IN THE MORNING after her arrival. Everything was so fresh, and sweet, and clean that it was a pleasure just to lie between the lavender-scented sheets, and smell the softness of the summer air which came in at the open casement. She had meant to rise early, but whilst she thought of it, she slept again, drawn into the pleasant peace of the hour.
When she did awake the sun was quite high, and she dressed hastily and went down into the garden. Here she was aware of Mlle Ange, basket on arm, busily snipping, cutting, and choosing amongst the low herbs which filled this part of the enclosure. She straightened herself, and turned with a kind smile and kiss, which called about her the atmosphere of home. The look and touch seemed things at once familiar and comfortable, found again after many days of loss.
“Are you rested then, my dear?” asked the pleasant voice. “Yesterday you looked so tired, and pale. We must bring some roses into those cheeks, or Jacques will surely chide us when he comes.”
On the instant the roses were there, and Aline stood transfigured; but they faded almost at once, and left her paler than before.
Mlle Ange opened her basket, and showed neat bunches of green herbs disposed within.
“I make ointments and tinctures,” she said, “and to-day I must be busy, for some of the herbs I use are at their best just now, and if they are not picked, will spoil. All the village comes to me for simples and salves, so that between them, and the children, and my poor Marthe, I am not idle.”
“May I help?” asked Aline eagerly; and Mlle Ange nodded a pleased “Yes, yes.”
That was a pleasant morning. The buzz of the bees, the scent of the flowers, the warm freshness of the day—all were delightful; and presently, to watch Ange boiling one mysterious compound, straining another, distilling a third, had all the charm of a child’s new game. Life’s complications fell back, leaving a little space of peace like a fairy ring amongst new-dried grass. Mlle Marthe lay on her couch knitting, and watching. Every now and again she flashed a remark into the breathless silence, on which Ange would look up with her sweet smile, and then turn absently to her work again.
“There is then to be no food to-day?” said Marthe at last, her voice calmly sarcastic.
Ange finished counting the drops she was transferring from one mysterious vessel to another.
“Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—what was that you said, chérie?”
“Nothing, my dear. Angels, of course, are not dependent on food, and Jacques is too far away to prosecute us if we starve his wife.”
“Oh, tres chère, is it so late? Why did you not say? And after such a night, too—my poor dearest. See, I fly. Oh, I am vexed, and to-day too, when I told Jeanne I would make the omelette.”
Marthe’s eyebrows went up, and Ange turned in smiling distress to Aline.
“She will be so cross, our old Jeanne! She loves punctuality, and she adores making omelettes; but then, see you, she has no gift for making an omelette—it is just sheer waste of my good eggs—so to-day I said I would do it myself, in your honour.”
“And mine,” observed Marthe, with a click of the needles. “Jeanne’s omelettes I will not eat.”
“Oh, tres chère, be careful. She has such ears, she heard what you said about the last one, and she was so angry. Aline must come with me now, or I dare not face her.”
They went down together and into the immaculate kitchen, where Jeanne, busily compounding a pie, turned a little cross, sallow face upon them, and rose, grumbling audibly, to fetch eggs and the pan.
“That good Jeanne,” said Ange in an undertone, “she has all the virtues except a good temper. Marthe says she is like food without salt—all very good and wholesome, but so nasty; but she is really attached to us and after twenty years thinks she has a right to her temper.”
Here, the returning Jeanne banged down a dish, and clattered with a small pile of spoons and forks.
Ange Desaix broke an egg delicately, and watched the white drip from the splintered shell.
“Things are beautiful, are they not, little niece? Just see this gold and white, and the speckled shell of this one, and the pink glow shining here. One could swear one saw the life brooding within, and here I break it, and its little embryo miracle, in order to please a taste which Jeanne considers the direct temptation of some imp who delights to plague her.”
She laughed softly, and putting the egg-shells on one side, began to chop up a little bunch of herbs.
“An omelette is very much like a life, I think,” she said after a moment. “No two are alike, though all are made with eggs. One puts in too many herbs, and the dish is bitter; another too few, and it is tasteless. Or we are impatient, and snatch at life in the raw; or idle, and burn our mixture. It is only one here and there who gets both matter and circumstance right.”
Jeanne was hovering like an angry bird, and as Mlle Desaix’ voice became more dreamy, and her eyes looked farther and farther away into space, she twitched out a small, vicious claw of a hand, and stealthily drew away the bowl that held the eggs.
“One must just make the most of what one has,” Ange was saying. Was she thinking of that sudden blush and pallor of a few hours back, or of her sister’s words the night before?
“If one’s lot is tasteless, one must flavour it with cheerfulness; and if it is bitter, drink clear water after it, and forget.”
Aline shivered a little, and then, in spite of herself, she smiled. Jeanne had her pan on the fire, and a sudden raw smell of burning rose up, almost palpably. The mistress of the house came back from her dreams with a start, looked wildly round, and missed her eggs, her herbs, her every ingredient. “Jeanne! but truly, Jeanne!” she cried hotly; and as she spoke the little figure at the fire whisked round and precipitated a burnt, sodden substance on to the waiting dish.
“Ma’mselle is served,” she said snappishly, but there was a glint of triumph in her eye.
“No, Jeanne, it is too much,” said Ange, flushing; whereat Jeanne merely picked up the dish and observed:
“If Ma’mselle will proceed into the other room, I will serve the dejeuner. Ma’mselle has perhaps not remarked that it grows late.”
After which speech Mlle Desaix walked out of the room with a fine dignity, and the smell of the burnt omelette followed her.
Then began a time of household peace and quiet healing, in which at first Aline rested happily. In this small backwater, life went on very uneventfully,—birth and death in the village being the only happenings of note,—the state of Jeanne’s temper the most pressin
g anxiety, since Mlle Marthe’s suffering condition was a thing of such long standing as to be accepted as a matter of course, even by her devoted sister.
Of France beyond the hills—of Paris, only thirty miles away—they heard very little. The news of the Queen’s trial and death did penetrate, and fell into the quiet like a stone into a sleeping pond. All the village rippled with it—broke into waves of discussion, splashes of lamentation, froth of approval, and then settled again into its wonted placidity.
Aline felt a pang of awakening. Whilst she was dreaming here amongst the peace of herby scents and the drowse of harvesting bees, tragedy still moved on Fate’s highways, and she felt sudden terror and the sting of a sharp self-reproach. She shrank from Mlle Ange’s kind eyes of pity, touched—just touched—with an unfaltering faith in the necessity for the appalling judgment. The misty hazel eyes wept bitterly, but the will behind them bowed loyally to the decrees of the Revolution.
“There’s no great cause without its victim, no new faith without bloodshed,” she said to Marthe, with a kindling glance.
“I said nothing, my dear,” was the dry reply.
Ange paced the room, brushing away hot tears.
“It is for the future, for the new generations, that we make these sacrifices, these terrible sacrifices,” she cried.
“Oh, my dear!” said Marthe quickly, and then added with a shrug: “For me, I never felt any vocation for reforming the world; and if I were you, my Angel, I would let it alone. The devil has too much to do with things in general, that is my opinion.”
“There is nothing I can do,” said Ange, at her saddest.
“Thank Heaven for that!” observed her sister piously. “But I will tell you one thing—you need not talk of noble sacrifices and such-like toys in front of Jacques’s wife.”
“I would not hurt her,” said Ange; “but, chérie, she is a Republican’s wife—she must know his views, his aims. Why, he voted for the King’s death!”
“Just so,” nodded Marthe: “he voted for the King’s death. I should keep a still tongue, if I were you.”
“You still think——?”
“Think?” with scorn. “I am sure.”
A few days later there was a letter from Dangeau, just a few lines. He was well. Lyons still held out, but they hoped that any day might end the siege. He begged to be commended to his aunts. Aline read the letter aloud, in a faltering voice, then laid it in her lap, and sat staring at it with eyes that suddenly filled, and saw the letters now blurred, now unnaturally black and large. Mlle Ange went out of the room, leaving her alone under Marthe’s intent regard; but for once she was too absorbed to heed it, and sat there looking into her lap and twisting her wedding-ring round and round. Marthe’s voice broke crisply in upon her thoughts.
“So he married you with his mother’s ring?”
She started, covering it quickly with her other hand.
“Is it? No, I didn’t know,” she murmured confusedly. Then, with an effort at defence: “How do you know, Mademoiselle Marthe?”
“How does one know anything, child? By using one’s eyes, and putting two and two together. Sometimes they make four, and sometimes they don’t, but it’s worth trying. The ring is plainly old, and my sister wore just such another; and after her death Jacques wore it too, on his little finger. He adored his mother.”
The scene of her wedding flashed before Aline. At the time she had not seemed to be aware of anything, but now she distinctly saw the priest’s hand stretched out for the ring, and Dangeau’s little pause of hesitation before he took it off and gave it.
Marthe’s brows were drawn together.
“Now, did he give it her for love, or because there was need for haste?” she was thinking, and decided: “No, not for love, or he would have told her it was his mother’s.” And aloud she said calmly: “You see, you were married in such a hurry that there was no time to get a new one.”
Aline looked up and spoke on impulse.
“What did he tell you about our marriage?” she asked.
“My dear, what was there to tell? He wrote a few lines—he does not love writing letters, it appears—he had married a young girl. Her name was Marie Aline Roche, and he commended her to our protection.”
“Was that all?”
“Certainly.”
“Then do you think I had better tell you more?” said Aline unsteadily.
Marthe looked at her with a certain pity in her glance.
“You did not learn prudence in an easy school,” she said slowly, and then added: “No, better not; and besides, there’s not much need—it’s all plain enough to any one who has eyes.”
Dangeau’s letter of about this date to Danton contained a little more information than that he sent his wife.
“The scoundrels have thrown off the mask at last,” he wrote in a vigorous hand, which showed anger. “Yesterday Précy fought under the fleur-de-lys. Well, better an open enemy, an avowed Royalist, than a Girondist aping of Republican principles, and treachery under the surface. France may now guess at what she has been saved by the fall of the Gironde. They hope for reinforcements here. Our latest advices are that Sardinia will not move. As to Autichamp, he promises help, and instigates plots from a judicious distance; but he and his master, Artois, feel safer on any soil but that of France, and I gather that he will not leave Switzerland at present. Losses on both sides are considerable. To give the devil his due, Précy has the courage of ten, and we never know when he will be at our throats. Very brilliant work, those sallies of his. I wish we had half a dozen like him.”
On the ninth of October Lyons fell, and the fiat of the Republic went forth. “Lyons has no longer a name among cities. Down with her to the dust from which she rose, and on the bloodstained site let build a pillar bearing these warning words: ‘Lyons rebelled against the Republic: Lyons is no more.’”
Forthwith terror was let loose, and the town ran blood, till the shriek of its torment went up night and day unceasingly, and things were done which may not be written.
At this time Dangeau’s letters ceased, and it was not until Christmas that news of him came again to Rancy. Then he wrote shortly, saying he had been wounded on the last day of the siege, and had lain ill for weeks, but was now recovered, and had received orders to join Dugommier, the Victor of Toulon, on his march against Spain. The letter was short enough, but something of the writer’s longing to be up and away from reeking Lyons was discernible in the stiff, curt sentences.
In truth the tide of disgust rose high about him, and raise what barriers he would, it threatened to break in upon his convictions and drown them. News from Paris was worse and worse. The Queen’s trial sickened, the Feast of Reason revolted him.
Down with tyrants, but for liberty’s sake with decency! Away with superstition and all the network of priests’ intrigues; but, in the outraged name of reason, no more of these drunken orgies, these feasts which defied public morality, whilst a light woman postured half naked on the altar where his mother had worshipped. This nauseated him, and drew from his pen an imprudently indignant letter, which Danton frowned over and consigned to the flames. He wrote back, however, scarcely less emphatically, though he recommended prudence and a still tongue.
“Mad times these, my friend, but decency I will have, though all Paris runs raving. It’s a fool business, but you’d best not say so. Take my advice and hold your tongue, though I’ve not held mine.”
Dangeau made haste to be gone from blood-drenched Lyons, and to wipe out his recollections of her punishment in the success which from the first attended Dugommier’s arms.
Spain receded to the Pyrenees; and over the passes in wild wet weather, stung by the cold, and tormented by a wind that cut like a sword of ice, the French army followed.
Here, heroism was the order of the day. If in Paris, where Terror stalked, men were less than men and worse than brutes, because possessed by some devil soul, damned, and dancing, here they were more than men, animated by a su
perhuman courage and persistence. Yet, terrible puzzle of human life, the men were of the same breed, the same stuff, the same kin.
Antoine, shouting lewd songs about a desecrated altar, or watching with red, cruel eyes the death-agony of innocent women and young boys, was own brother to Jean, whose straw-shod feet carried his brave, starving body over the blood-stained Pyrenean passes, and who shared his last crust cheerfully with an unprovided comrade. One mother bore and nursed them both, and both were the spiritual children of that great Revolution who bore twin sons to France—Licence and Liberty. Nothing gives one so vivid a picture of France under the Terror as the realisation that to find relief from the prevailing horror and inhumanity one must turn to the battlefields.
The army fought with an empty stomach, bare back, and bleeding feet, and Dangeau found enough work to his hand to occupy the energies of ten men. The commissariat was disgraceful, supplies scant, and the men lacking of every necessary.
Having made inquiries, he turned back to France, and ranged the South like a flame, gathering stores, ammunition, arms, shoes—everything, in fact, of which that famished but indomitable army stood in such dire need. Summary enough the methods of those days, and Dangeau’s way was as short a one as most, and more successful than many.
He would ride into a town, establish himself at the inn, and send for the Mayor, who, according as his nature were bold or timid, came blustering or trembling. France had no king, but the tricoloured feathers on her Commissioner’s hat were a sign of power quite as autocratic as the obsolete fleur-de-lys.
Dangeau sat at a table spread with papers, wrote on for a space, and then—
“Citizen Mayor, I require, on behalf of the National Army, five hundred (or it might be a thousand) pairs of boots, so many beds, such and such provisions.”
“But, Citizen Commissioner, we have them not.”
Dangeau consulted a notebook.
“I can give you twenty-four hours to produce them, not more.”
“But, Citizen, these are impossibilities. We cannot produce what we have not got.”
“And neither can our armies save your throats from being cut if they are unprovided. Twenty-four hours, Citizen Mayor.”
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