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Title: The Red Mass
Date of first publication: 1925
Author: Valentine Williams (1883-1946)
Date first posted: October 22 2012
Date last updated: October 22 2012
Faded Page eBook #20121035

This eBook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                            THE RED MASS

                       BY VALENTINE WILLIAMS

    _Author of "The Man with the Club Foot," "The Orange Divan,"
                     "The Three of Clubs," etc._


    BOSTON AND NEW YORK
    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
    The Riverside Press Cambridge
    1925

    COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY VALENTINE WILLIAMS

    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    The Riverside Press
    CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
    PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.


         TO
    THE MEMORY OF
     A. R. G. T.


     _On the day of the execution, Voulland ... saw the tumbrils
     approaching. 'Come,' said he to those who were at his side, 'let us
     go to the high altar and see them celebrate the Red Mass.'_

     (Mémoires de Sénar)




CONTENTS


        I. THE PORTRAIT OF A SPOILED YOUNG MAN                      3

       II. MR. GRAY                                                12

      III. THE MAN ON THE SOFA                                     19

       IV. AFTERMATH                                               30

        V. AN INTERVIEW, AND WHAT CAME OF IT                       38

       VI. THE EVENING BATCH                                       45

      VII. AT ENGSTROM'S                                           57

     VIII. LOISON                                                  66

       IX. THE OWL                                                 72

        X. THE FRIEND OF CITIZEN CHARPENTIER                       83

       XI. COUTHON                                                 92

      XII. THE TIGER AWAKES                                       101

     XIII. GRAND-DUC LAUGHS                                       114

      XIV. THE IMPASS DU PARADIS                                  126

       XV. ON THE STAIRCASE                                       136

      XVI. THE CONVOY OF LA SALPÊTRIÈRE                           151

     XVII. A MISHAP, AND WHAT FOLLOWED                            161

    XVIII. JUNO OUT OF THE MACHINE                                172

      XIX. CYTHEREA                                               180

       XX. A FACE IN THE CROWD                                    192

      XXI. THE SUMMONS                                            201

     XXII. THE GATHERING OF THE STORM                             211

    XXIII. IN THE REGISTRAR'S OFFICE                              218

     XXIV. IN WHICH TWO YOUNG PEOPLE MAKE AN OLD DISCOVERY        227

      XXV. THE DRAUGHT-PLAYERS                                    236

     XXVI. IN WHICH HECTOR SENDS A MESSAGE AND RECEIVES ONE       248

    XXVII. THE FORTY-EIGHTH                                       256

   XXVIII. THE LAST TUMBRIL                                       266

     XXIX. THE MOUSE-TRAP                                         281

      XXX. IN WHICH, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS CAREER,
           MR. GRAY, OF THE TREASURY, IS STARTLED                 292

     XXXI. INTO THE LIGHT                                         302




THE RED MASS




CHAPTER I

THE PORTRAIT OF A SPOILED YOUNG MAN

    _These have not known the sting of rain_
        _Nor sweet storm waters, heavy falling;_
    _And they have never felt the pain_
            _Of burning sun;_
            _And in the stillness never one_
    _Has heard a wild bird calling._

    _The loud east wind may call and shout_
        _Among the trees and sing and cry_
    _Against the window panes, 'Come out!'_
            _But they are still,_
            _And, heedless of the east wind's will,_
    _They live their lives and die._

    From _In a Conservatory_, by Bernice Kenyon


The drum of the King's Guard was beating a ruffle.

Harshly the roll awoke the echoes of the Palace as the guard turned out
to the huge lumbering coach that was bearing His Majesty from Saint
James's to his castle of Windsor. The pigeons flew whirring up; and the
old courtyard, its windows flashing in the morning sun, reverberated to
the din as the drummer, horridly mindful of the drum-major's curling
cane, chin up, arms stiff, wrists flexible as tempered steel, briskly
plied his sticks.

Stirringly the roll rang out over the placid morning air. It swelled
forth into Saint James's Street. The ragged beggars caught the sound as
they clamoured miserably for alms from the great gilt coaches that went
lurching by. There were some, in tattered uniforms, whose dull eyes it
fired with the light of brave old memories of the days when to them the
drum was the very voice of war, the herald of victory and defeat, when
the tall round case, with its emblazoned coat of arms and white
leathers, was their familiar, constant companion, table for food and
dicing, seat and pillow--pillow in sleep and death.

The drums of '94! The flames of war reddened the horizon of Europe, and
amid clouds of drifting powder smoke, black against the blood-red sky,
the eighteenth century was passing away. From one end of the Continent
to the other the brazen-throated roll rang loud in men's ears as the
drummers of Santerre, of Dumouriez and Pichegru, drummed a sad
procession of periwigged, beribboned spectres to the grave. The sky-line
was a mass of jostling figures, above which the shot-torn standards
tossed while the blood-stirring, maddening, irresistible music of the
drum roused the faubourgs, drowned the unheeded voice of majesty on the
scaffold, and swept the barefoot republicans to victory....

       *       *       *       *       *

The drum of the King's Guard beat a ruffle.

In his lodging in Saint James's Street, Hector Fotheringay, Lieutenant
and Captain of His Majesty's Third Foot Guards, heard it as, clad in a
frilled cambric shirt and white breeches, he sat before the mirror at
his dressing-table. His stiff, tight scarlet coat with its heavy gold
braid and epaulettes, his sword and sash and three-cornered hat, were
lying on the bed where he had thrown them when, just now, he had come
off King's Guard.

May was approaching its close. Though the hour was early, the Colour
Court had been unpleasantly warm at guard-mounting. The sun had beat
down fiercely upon the enclosed yard and he had seen the sweat glisten
even upon the dusky face of Hassan, the negro cymbalist, as he marched
by with the band in all the glory of his tall turban, with its red and
white plume springing from the glittering crescent, and his silver chain
and neck-plate.

The heat made the men slack, and Ashdown, the Captain of the Old Guard,
had been sadly short of temper. He had found fault with everything and
kept the drill-sergeant running up and down the ranks striking at the
men with his heavy cane. He had even checked Fotheringay, his
Lieutenant, because, forsooth, he found that his hair was not
sufficiently powdered.

The mirror was a relic of the Court of Anne and the grandsires of his
reigning majesty, mysteriously acquired on retirement by Buttrell,
Fotheringay's landlord, for many years footman in the Royal service.
Among the patches and powder, the eager glances and pouting lips of
those artificial days, it must have reflected often the fretful,
discontented expression that now disfigured the handsome features of the
young Guardsman.

He held a letter open in his hand. With a scowl on his face he referred
from the letter to the glass. The letter was from his cousin Betty and
marked a stage in one of their periodical tiffs.

     _You are not ill-looking really_, she wrote. _Your face is well
     enough, your sun-browned tint (which shows, at least, that the
     whole of your day is not spent at the gaming-table) is Vastly
     Becoming to your powdered hair, your blue eyes are Attractive, your
     nose has Distinction. But any pretence you may have to Good Looks
     is destroyed quite by the Overweening Arrogance of your
     expression. At the age of twenty-five, my dear Hector, you wear the
     Disillusioned Air of the Finished Courtier, not realising that you
     are too Young to appear Spoiled and too Old to appear Sulky._

To his impatient scrutiny the old mirror disclosed an oval, sunburnt
face, the white powdered hair emphasising the tan, bold, haughty,
courageous eyes, in colour the deepest blue, an aquiline nose, a firm
and well-shaped mouth, the upper lip decorated with a small and elegant
black mustache, such as, in this year of grace 1794, officers of the
Household Brigade, almost alone of the Army, wore. It was an arrogant, a
discontented face, the face of a spoiled young man with a faint air of
dissipation, which, but for a magnificent constitution and a natural
love of fresh air and hard exercise, would ere this have marred features
of unusual attractiveness and beauty.

With a muttered exclamation Fotheringay turned from the mirror to the
table in the centre of his bedroom. On the tray with his chocolate a
pile of letters stood. He opened one or two, then flung the whole packet
to the floor in a rage. They were all the same, bills, reminders,
dunning letters. With a pang they recalled to him the unpleasant fact
that, at the Thatched House Tavern on the previous evening, he had lost
nine hundred guineas to Maxeter, of the Blues.

He was in a vile mood. He had returned to find his servant absent and no
one to help him change his clothes. O'Dare was becoming intolerable, the
idlest fellow in the whole Brigade of Guards. And yet the rascal was, in
a way, indispensable. Never had he had a servant with such a way with
duns. His Irish plausibility was never at a loss: his genial
persuasiveness mollified in the most extraordinary fashion these
thieving tradesmen, and had hitherto miraculously averted the supreme
catastrophe, an appeal to the Commanding Officer.

He stood up and threw back one of the casement windows, letting into the
room the sounds and smells of the London morning, the crash of heavy
wheels over the cobbled street, the crack of whips, the raucous,
discordant cries, the faint scent of wood fires, the stale odour of the
open kennels....

Another day begun, another day of aimless idleness, the same unchanging
round--a call at the Saint James's Coffee-House to read the papers, a
stroll in the Mall, dinner at White's ... no, he had promised
Montgomerie, a brother officer, to dine with him at the Cocoa Tree ...
then Vauxhall or Ranelagh, and, inevitably and ultimately, an
adjournment to the Thatched House or White's or to one of the foreign
gambling-dens in Soho. The round scarcely varied from day to day.

A Brigade of Guards was with the Duke of York in Flanders, regiments of
the line garrisoned the coast towns, there was a great camp at Warley,
and, in obedience to the clarion call of Mr. Pitt, volunteers were
springing to arms against the threat of invasion. Yet London held
Fotheringay. London with its life of parade and pipeclay, of tiresome
levées and dull social functions, unchanging, endless, unbearable.

Unbearable but for Betty. It was she, he realised, not the town that
fettered him to London. He might have managed a transfer to the first
battalion in Flanders; for the Duke of Argyll, the Colonel of the
Regiment, had been his dead father's friend and patron. But when he had
consulted Betty on the project, his cousin, in one of her rare kind
moods, had cried out she could not spare him. And so he had let the
chance go by nor had of Betty any thanks for so doing.

For a whole week, he reflected, he had not seen her, the divine, the
incomparable, the quick-tempered, the nimble-witted Lady Betty
Marchmont. On his last visit her wilful elusiveness, her aloofness, her
capricious refusal to read what was in his mind, had exasperated him.
But he felt himself drawn to her again. He would call on her that very
afternoon: an hour with Betty would, he decided, pleasantly bridge that
gaping void between the intolerable dullness of the Saint James's
Coffee-House and 'Monty's' dinner at the Cocoa Tree.

There was a brisk tap at the folding doors between his bedroom and
sitting-room, and O'Dare appeared, a pair of boots in his hand.

'Curse you for an idle rascal!' exclaimed Fotheringay, springing up from
his chocolate. 'Od rot you, where have you been?'

'I stepped out to Mr. Hoby's in Piccadilly to fetch your boots, sir,'
said the man sullenly. 'They kept me waiting by rayson of th' account,
sir ...'

'Damn that for an idle excuse! You were at the King's Head swilling ale,
I'll warrant. Curse me if I don't send you up for a couple of dozen if I
have any more of your idle ways! Come! Dress my hair again and be quick
about it! Only this morning I received "goose" from Lord Ashdown about
it. And, blast your eyes, don't breathe down my neck!'

A silken wrapper cast about the front of his fine linen shirt, he seated
himself again before the mirror while O'Dare, his face set and sulky,
busied himself with his duties.

His toilet completed, Fotheringay changed into undress uniform and
prepared to sally forth.

'Tell my groom to bring my horse round to the Saint James's
Coffee-House,' he said to O'Dare from the top of the stairs. 'And see
that he doesn't keep me waiting, you idle ruffian! Well, Buttrell!'

The landlord, a fat man of fifty-odd, sleek as a firkin of butter, in a
snuff-coloured suit and white cotton stockings, who was descending from
the upper storey, bowed low.

'Your servant, Mr. Fotheringay, sir!'

'The chocolate was not hot this morning, Buttrell!' Fotheringay rapped
out. 'See that it's properly warm another time--you charge enough for
it, God knows! And, hark'ee, you needn't send in your bill again. When
it pleases me, I'll pay it....'

'Begging your pardon, Mr. Fotheringay,' the landlord interposed,
cringing and fawning, 'if so be as you could make it convenient to allow
me a little something on account ...'

But the young man waved him aside. Insolent, proud, handsome, and
beautifully dressed, he strode down the stairs.

Turning, the landlord found himself face to face with O'Dare.

'Treats us like dogs!' muttered the Irishman. 'There's no way of plazin'
him at all, at all. He's the proud divil, so he is, bad luck to him!'

''Ush, O'Dare, 'ush, I beg!'--Mr. Buttrell raised in deprecation a fat
red hand--'for shame, man, to say sich wicked things about your good
kind master what 'as condescended to pick you up out of the gutter, as
one might say ...'

'"Out of the gutter" is it, you fat, pork-fed flunky?' exclaimed the
Irishman indignantly. 'The gutter be damned! There's no better name than
O'Dare in the whole of Ireland. An', lavin' that on one side, is it the
Brigade of Guards you're callin' the gutter? 'Tis a gintleman's life,
I'd have ye know, Mr. Buttrell, forby 'tis rough awhiles, and I wouldn't
have left the company but that I felt meself was a power too good for
thim hulkin' black Prasbyterians in the Third Guards. I declare to God,
an' I don't care who hears me say it, that life in barracks was heaven
compared to what I have to put up with from _him_! Tyranny, that's what
it is, Mr. Buttrell. He's a tyrant, and he trates the pair of us like
what we were his naygur slaves!'

'My goodness!' exclaimed the landlord, his fat face trembling like a
jelly. 'I declare I don't know what's come over you. And 'im such a fine
gen'elman and _h_eir to one of the finest properties in the country.
'E's 'aving 'is fling now and 'oo shall gainsay 'im, fine rich young
gen'elman that 'e is, with 'is uncle, Sir John, at 'is back to pay 'is
debts ...'

'Is ut his wealth that gives him lave to insult me?' demanded the
Irishman fiercely. 'Thim days is passing, landlord. The toime is come
for tyrants to trimble before ... before the thramp of pathriots. The
suv'rin people is roisin' up to cast off its fetters ...'

'For the love of God, O'Dare,' cried Buttrell, and clapped a hand over
the soldier's mouth. ''Tis rank treason you speak. 'Tis all very well
for Dr. Priestley and ruffians like 'im to praise up the murderin'
Frenchies at their meetings, but I'll have no talk like this in my
house. Patriots, indeed! I'd like to get at 'em with my old besom, the
infernal massacring scoundrels! Nothing would please me better than to
see their Mossoo de Robespierre strapped up at the triangles, by Gad,
with a couple of your drummers warming 'is back. There's treason in the
air, O'Dare! You watch out you're not infected by it!'

And with stately tread Mr. Buttrell descended to the kitchen to read in
the morning paper the latest news out of the Low Countries.

O'Dare looked after him contemptuously. He shrugged his shoulders, and
then, taking from his pocket a thin brochure, opened it where a page was
turned down, and, immersed in his reading, returned to the bedroom.

On the outer cover of the pamphlet was printed in heavy black type: 'The
Rights of Man. By Thomas Paine.'




CHAPTER II

MR. GRAY


In years to come, Hector Fotheringay was wont to look back upon that
glittering May morning as the virtual beginning of his life. As he
strolled forth into the sunshine, despite the brave weather, he was
conscious of a quick feeling of unrest. It was as though the imminent
change that, before another day should dawn, was to overtake his
fortunes, had cast its lengthening shadow across his mind.

In truth, the times were unsettled enough. Great events were stirring.
England was at death grips with an ancient foe in new and terrifying
shape, and, only three days from London, the deadly machine of the
regicides day by day in Paris was swamping history in seas of blood. And
he was out of all these historic doings, Fotheringay reflected,
condemned of his own volition to be a mere pawn in a red coat and march
behind a band or drink and lounge and gamble through the long summer
nights which, in Flanders and in Paris, were witness to such deeds of
high adventure.

At the door of his lodging he stopped and surveyed Saint James's Street.
From the windows of the clubs and coffee-houses, thronged with rich and
well-fed loungers, his gaze descended to the filthy beggars that swarmed
over the pavement. How their numbers had increased since the war with
France and how many old soldiers and sailors trailed their ragged
uniforms in the mire of the kennels! Even as he stood a grotesque figure
in stained and faded scarlet, who, with dog and bell, tapped his way
along the pavement rolling his sightless eyeballs and screaming, 'Pray
remember the blind man!' sought to clutch his fine lace coat with grimy
hand, while an old sailor with tarry pigtail and face the colour of
mahogany, who wheeled himself along in a little carriage, clasped him
about the legs. When Fotheringay shook him roughly off and bade him
begone, the fellow cursed him roundly for an 'aristocrat.'

A new spirit was abroad in the land, infection spread like a murrain
from France, the young Guardsman angrily reflected. Even his own servant
was not free from it. He noted the dense crowd that, as every day,
thronged the pavement before Humphrey's shop where Mr. Gillray's
disgraceful caricatures were exposed for sale. The fellow spared no one
with his pencil and the common people made a god of him. Mr. Pitt who,
thank Heaven, and none too soon, was taking action against the
agitators, should lay an information against the ruffian. The filthy
doctrines of the regicides were poisoning old England. One could
scarcely contemplate the old Palace at the foot of the street without
wondering whether it, like the monarchy it stood for, was as solid as it
looked.

As he descended the street, the tap of a drum from the interior of the
Palace again came to his ears. The brassy roll stirred him strangely.
The sound of the drum always carried his thoughts to Paris. His mother
had been French--he was glad now that she had not lived to see disaster
overwhelm her beloved France--and her brother, the Marquis de
Sainte-Valentine had perished, but eight months before, on the scaffold,
the last of his line. To tap of drum the tumbril had borne him to the
Place de la Révolution, and, as he and his companions met their death,
the letter from Coblence had told him, the drums had beaten again lest
the victims should have been tempted to address the mob.

Fotheringay crossed the street in front of the Palace, past the Yeomen
of the Guard, resting on their halberds, to the Saint James's
Coffee-House. A prodigious buzz of conversation greeted his ears as he
entered. The ground-floor room was densely crowded and every newspaper
was the centre of an eager and animated group.

A big man in the undress uniform of the Horse Guards, who was
breakfasting at a table against the wall, beckoned Hector over.

'Good-morning, Maxeter!' said Hector, stopping at the table.

'Join us, Fotheringay,' invited the big man, his mouth full. 'Let me
present you to my friend, Mr. Gray.'

He indicated a natty little ant of a man of middle-age, very neatly
dressed in sober brown with spotless linen of the finest texture at neck
and wrists. He was clean-shaven and wore a brown wig.

'I am honoured, Mr. Fotheringay,' said Mr. Gray, rising and bowing.

Hector saluted him punctiliously. He remembered having seen him at odd
times at the coffee-house.

'The luck was against you at the Thatched House last night,
Fotheringay,' observed Maxeter.

'Yes, curse it,' Fotheringay agreed. 'Nine hundred guineas, wasn't it?
You'll have to wait a day or two for your money, Max. I've got to
journey down to Somersetshire to that old skinflint, my uncle, and see
if I can raise the wind!'

Maxeter laughed.

'There's no hurry about it,' he said. 'But why don't you marry, man, and
get rid of the leading-strings? Mr. Fotheringay here,' he explained to
Mr. Gray, 'is, under his late father's will, deprived of the full
control of his fortune until such time as he marries. Sir John
Fotheringay, his uncle, is his guardian and controller of the purse ...'

'Sir John Fotheringay?' said Mr. Gray. 'He was with the Army in America,
I think? Aye, I know him!'

'Then you number among your acquaintance a damned old skinflint, sir,'
Fotheringay broke in hotly. 'Four times a year have I to travel down to
the wilds of the West Country and weary myself to death in the set of
fox-hunting country squires with whom my uncle delights to pass his
time. Each time I must stay a fortnight, for so he will have it, and of
that a week at least is spent in the stormings and blusterings, the
reproaches and reprimands, which the mention of my debts invariably
calls forth!'

'Sir John has the reputation of belonging to the old school,' observed
Mr. Gray sedately.

'He has stayed in it too long, sir,' replied Fotheringay severely. 'He
thinks that an officer of the Guards may do with a hundred pounds a year
as he could in the days of Corporal John. Why, dammit, Maxeter here pays
his _valet de chambre_ as much!'

'And he's worth every penny of it, curse me!' heartily vociferated
Maxeter. 'Peyraud has not his equal in London for the tying of cravats.
The Prince would have taken him from me, but I protested to His Royal
Highness that it was unfair, "for you, Sir," I told him, "are, so to
say, _hors concours_!" He was devilish amused!'

An excitable voice that cried out suddenly in French now drew their
attention to the next table. Three men, all dressed in the height of
fashion, but with certain niceties that stamped them as foreigners, sat
there, an open newspaper before them. One of them, a dark young man with
a passionate face, who wore the riband of the Order of Saint Louis on
his breast, was exclaiming excitedly:

'_Ils se moquent de nous! Ils se moquent de nous!_'

One of his companions, a foppishly attired youth of about twenty-five,
who was drinking sherry, nodded his head in approval.

'What can one expect of a government that bows always to the will of the
people?' remarked the third man, whose large and fleshy face wore an
undoubted air of authority. He had narrow eyes and thin lips that shut
with a snap.

'Is there bad news from France again?' asked Fotheringay in a low voice
of Maxeter. 'The _émigrés_ seem very excited.'

'The Duke of York has had a drubbing at Tourcoing by Lisle,' Maxeter
answered. 'And, if Mr. Gray's information be correct, he owed his safety
only to the swiftness of his horse.'

'I had the news from Mr. Secretary Dundas himself,' replied Mr. Gray.
'The Marquis d'Aligre seems mightily put out about it!'

'Which is he?' asked Fotheringay.

'The old man with the fat face. He brought a vast fortune out of France
with him and steadily declines to give a sol to aid the grievous
distress among his fellow _émigrés_. The one with the riband is the
Vicomte de Solesmes: the young man I do not know.'

Meanwhile the conversation among the _émigrés_ had been resumed.

'They are all shopkeepers,' declared the Vicomte. 'They are not a race
of soldiers as we. They have the strength and the determination of which
soldiers can be made, but their soul is in their shop!'

Fotheringay flushed up.

''Fore God,' he said to his companions, 'their impertinence is
intolerable. Do you know what they say?'

Maxeter yawned.

'I have said all the French I know,' he remarked cheerfully.

Mr. Gray leaned forward.

'I see you know French, Mr. Fotheringay,' he said. 'My advice to you is
to turn a deaf ear to the political arguments of these gentlemen. They
are of the type of French nobleman which, to my way of thinking, is one
of the few excuses for the conduct of the Jacobins.'

But the Vicomte, who waxed more excited with the warmth of his
eloquence, was speaking again.

'Look around us!' he exclaimed. 'The town is full of idle officers. They
look brave enough in their red coats now, but when it comes to fighting
they run ... like their famous Duc d'Yorck!'

With a crash Fotheringay's chair fell over. The young Guardsman had
sprung to his feet. He strode to the Frenchmen's table.

'You and your friends,' he said, addressing the Vicomte in polished and
exquisite French without a trace of English accent, 'will take
yourselves out of this coffee-house and will return only at the risk of
receiving the chastisement which your impertinence merits.'

He had spoken in a ringing voice and a dead hush fell upon the room.
Very white the Vicomte rose to his feet.

'By what right, Monsieur, do you interfere in a private conversation?'

'By the right conferred by respect for the uniform which I have the
honour to wear. You will permit me to add, Monsieur, that it would be
more fitting for you and your friends to be in the field seeking to
liberate your country than to seek shelter here to criticise those who
are doing it for you!'

The Vicomte's eyes blazed. He was about to speak when the Marquis rested
a pudgy hand on his laced sleeve. He fixed his small eyes, dulled with
years of vice, on the Guardsman's hot and angry face. He did not rise.

'Monsieur, you insult us!'

Fotheringay shrugged his shoulders.

'My remarks were addressed to your friend,' he said. 'But you can accept
them for yourself if you wish!'--he paused--'they will cost you
nothing!'

The hand of the Marquis d'Aligre flashed to his sword; but now the room
fell into an uproar. A party of officers stepped between the
adversaries.

'I shall kill you for this!' exclaimed the Vicomte over a barrier of
restraining arms. Then to the Marquis: 'No, no, Marquis, he is my man!'

'My friend, Lord Maxeter, will be glad to receive any friend of yours!'
Fotheringay retorted. 'Max,' he went on, 'I count on you!'

Some one handed him his hat. It was Mr. Gray, looking at him curiously
with his keen eyes. Fotheringay bowed to him stiffly and strode out of
the coffee-house.




CHAPTER III

THE MAN ON THE SOFA


The whole day had gone wrong, the young man reflected, as he slowly rode
towards Chelsea where the Lady Betty Marchmont lived with her aunt, the
Dowager Countess of Orifex. He was more concerned than he would admit
over the state of his money affairs, for there were transactions with
certain seedy Hebrews of Long Acre which he had sedulously withheld from
the knowledge of his guardian. His capital was not large, and he knew,
what Maxeter and his other friends did not, that the estates to which he
was heir were already heavily encumbered. He was growing increasingly
conscious that his means would not indefinitely stand the strain of his
life as a man of fashion. He would have to make up his mind to marry and
settle down before it was too late.

His encounter with the _émigrés_ had upset him. He cared nothing that
two duels, perhaps three, would follow the brisk brush of that morning.
But the Vicomte's sneer about the town being full of red coats rankled.
It rankled because, as far as Fotheringay was concerned, it was a
palpable hit.

'I'll kill him for that!' he muttered, and savagely dug his spurs into
Paladin's sides.

His nerves were yet jangling when he was ushered into the prim
drawing-room of Lady Orifex. Betty was at the clavecin humming over to
herself an old song of Lulli's, while her aunt's companion, Baroness
von Schlippenbach, the impoverished daughter of one of George II's
Hanoverian Court, bent over her embroidery frame at the window.

The melody broke off abruptly, as he entered, on a note that jarred and
sung. Betty rose and dropped in mockery a deep curtsey.

'The Baroness and I,' she said, casting down her beautiful eyes, 'are
profoundly sensible of the honour Mr. Fotheringay does us in remembering
our poor existence!'

And with spreading skirts she sank down before him once more.

'You seemed to be so glad to be rid of me the last time, Betty,' the
young man answered, flushing, 'that I had thought my presence would not
be missed!'

'Nor has it, sir! Nor has it!' Lady Betty flashed back, tossing her
head. 'Strange as it may seem I have managed very well to amuse myself
without you. Indeed, I wonder that you should have troubled to-day!'

And opening her large eyes in feigned amazement at him, she dropped into
a gilt _bergère_ and began to play with her little spaniel.

Fotheringay drew up a chair and sat down beside her.

'Indeed, Betty, I have been much taken up with my military duties ...'
he began. He tried to mollify her; but her reception of him had
increased his exasperation and, even as he spoke, he was conscious that
he had made a false start.

'So I observed at the Rotunda on Wednesday night,' she answered with a
teasing smile. 'I had believed I had seen you in gallant company with
Mr. Angelo and Mr. Bannister, the actor, and ... and others who, no
doubt, were likewise engaged in military duties ...'

'You were at Ranelagli on Wednesday?' said the young man. 'I did not see
you. With whom were you?'

'I am so much taken with my social duties, I vow, that I scarce
remember,' she rejoined mockingly. 'With Mrs. Sheringham and Major
Doyle, I believe I was. A great number of people joined our party. I
think the Prince of Wales was there ...'

Fotheringay bit his lip.

'You fly high, Betty, my dear,' he said. 'I did not know you numbered
His Royal Highness among your acquaintance.'

'Odd as it may seem, I do,' she retorted with a toss of her head. 'And
no later than last night I was at Carlton House to hear the Prince play
in the quartet of chamber music. On the violoncello His Royal Highness
is quite admirable!'

Fotheringay shrugged his shoulders. There were few men of his set who
would venture to discuss the character of the Prince of Wales with an
unmarried girl.

'Betty,' he said in a low voice, 'get rid of the Baroness. I want to
talk to you.'

'Schlippenbach,' observed the girl in a resigned tone, 'will you leave
us? Cousin Hector is going to talk secrets!'

'_Teueres Kind_,' said the Baroness, looking up from her work, 'scarcely
I think it is brober that a yong maiden shouldt alone remain vith a yong
man. Your oldt Schlippenbach iss disgreet. It is a family dradition.
Queen Garoline of plessed memory hass said of my late Papa, "Der
Schlippenbach" she hass said "iss domb like a fish!"'

But the girl stood up.

'Schlippenbach!' she cried peremptorily. 'Leave us when I tell you!'

The old Baroness, a haggard and acidulated spinster, her powdered hair
piled high in the fashion of a bygone age, had learnt the lesson of
years of humble dependence. Her thin and mittened hands folded in front
of her, she rose and with a guttural 'I go!' glided silently from the
room.

'Ugh!' ejaculated Betty, resuming her seat. 'Every time I see her I am
terrified of poverty and old age!'

'Betty,' said Fotheringay, taking her hand, 'there is something I wish
to say to her ladyship your aunt. But before I speak to her I want to
consult you, to ... to ...'

Betty whipped her hand away.

'My dear Hector,' she said. 'Is this a proposal?'

'Don't mock me, Betty,' Fotheringay pleaded. 'Since you came to town two
months ago to be presented I have discovered again my old playmate of
our childhood years. Do you remember the old days at Frome? Your aunt
brought you to spend Christmas with my mother. You were in mourning for
your father then, such a solemn little girl in black. We were
sweethearts then, dear Betty, and since I have seen you again in London
it has come upon me that you are the only woman for whom I have ever
cared. It has seemed to me sometimes that I was not wholly indifferent
to you. Dearest Betty, I want to seek happiness with you again at
Cranwell where my father and mother began their married life. On my
marriage the property, now administered by my uncle, comes back to me.
We will live on our estates; our friends shall visit us; and, from time
to time, we will travel up to London to taste the delights of the town.
How does the prospect please you, Betty? May I speak to your aunt?'

The girl sat very erect in the high-backed chair, her face inscrutable.

'Your proposal does me great honour, my dear Hector,' she said, 'but I
beg you to put it from your mind. It is impossible.'

The young man started back.

'Am I so unsuitable a _parti_, then?' he asked. 'My estates are large
and, with the careful management which I shall bestow, will return a
more than comfortable income. And, on my uncle's death, as you know, I
shall succeed to the baronetcy!'

'I will never live in the country again,' the girl exclaimed
passionately. 'I was never meant for a hum-drum life among cows and
sheep and poultry. I hate the country, do you understand? I hate it.
When my father was killed in the American War, I was left a penniless
orphan and all my life that I can remember has been spent in retirement
as a dependent on my aunt's generosity. I have only begun to live since
I came to London. I have beauty, I have wit, and in London I mean to
stay!'

'Town life is hollow,' said Fotheringay gravely. 'Its pleasures are soon
exhausted. There is no happiness in the town, my dear!'

The girl stamped her foot.

'_You_ have had your fling!' she cried. 'There is no novelty in London
life to _you_. But what do _I_ know of life? Whom do I ever see at Stoke
Norton except old Dr. Benfield or the Squire or Parson Clutterbuck? Here
in London a woman may sway empires, may make and unmake men, there are
fortunes at her command. Mrs. Sheringham says that with my looks I may
make a great match. The Prince is greatly _épris_, Major Doyle tells
me.'

'With all respect for His Royal Highness,' said Fotheringay, 'the Prince
of Wales is no fit acquaintance for an unmarried girl!'

Fiercely Lady Betty turned on him.

'And are you any different? With your painted women and your drunken
parties and your gambling night and day? And when you tire of it and the
money begins to give out ... don't deny it, every one says you are
_criblé de dettes_...! you come to me and offer me to become a squire's
wife in Somerset!'

'Better a squire's wife than a Prince's mistress!' Fotheringay retorted
hotly.

'Oh!' cried the girl indignantly, 'how dare you say such things to me?'

'You put them in my mouth,' cried the young man vehemently. 'You speak
as if there were no such thing as love. Has love no place in your
thoughts?'

'If I could meet a _man_ ...' she said.

'And yet I thought ... you gave me reason to think ... you cared for
me?'

'You do yourself too much honour, cousin,' she replied coldly.

'When I would have taken service with our battalion in Flanders, you
dissuaded me from so doing, if I remember rightly ...' he began.

But, furiously, she cut him short.

'Yes,' she said. 'And you bowed to a woman's whim! You let a woman
command you when your comrades are lying out in the open under the
grapeshot of the enemy, when your own uncle, your mother's brother, died
for his faith on the scaffold. Oh! I wonder you have the courage to
look your men in the face. When crimes are being perpetrated that cry to
Heaven aloud for the vengeance of a man's strong right arm, you in your
fine uniform prance about London, an autocrat among your soldiers,
drinking and dicing whilst women of your own mother's birth and race are
being foully massacred in Paris. If I met a man I could respect and
love, I'd follow him to the ends of the earth. But as for you, I respect
more highly Pichegru's ragged Republicans! At least they are ready to
die for what they believe!'

White to the lips, Fotheringay stood up and bowed to her. Blindly he
took his hat and sword from the old servant in the panelled hall and
blindly rode away. By five o'clock, when Montgomerie called at the Saint
James's Coffee-House to fetch him to dine at the Cocoa Tree, he was
drunk.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had very little recollection afterwards of the dinner. He remembered
a note arriving from Maxeter saying that he was meeting the seconds of
the Vicomte de Solesmes that evening and would let Fotheringay know what
was decided. For the rest the meal was a confusion of bunches of lights
that bent and swayed at him in their big branch candlesticks, of loud
voices talking together, of laughter, the popping of corks, of speeches,
of songs. There followed a journey in a coach to some gardens where, the
soft air of the May evening reviving him, he partly recovered his senses
in a box overlooking trees all dappled with coloured lights and leafy
paths crowded with throngs that strolled up and down to the strains of a
concealed orchestra.

Here there was more claret and champagne, and horse-play with women who
shrieked with laughter. One girl tried to slip a great latchkey down his
back, and he pursued her, shrilly screaming, until he was brought up
leaning over the ramp of the box. Carfax, an ensign, saved him from
taking a header into the grounds.

'You're most uncommon drunk, Hector!' he said, grinning, as he put him
back on his feet and, ringing for the waiter, ordered him soda-water.
Then somebody proposed visiting the gaming-house that had recently been
opened in Pickering Court, at the foot of Saint James's Street. They all
piled into coaches, leaving the supper table strewn with broken glass,
the cloth stained with spilt wine, and a faint odour of perfume hanging
in the air.

Arrived at Saint James's Street, a narrow passage between the houses
brought them to a small flagged court with a cloistral air, at the end
of which stood a low-pitched red-brick house with a green door. On one
of the pillars of the doorway was a brass plate inscribed: 'Rouge and
Roulette, French and English Hazard. Commence at one o'clock.' A couple
of link-boys idled about the court, and in the shadows lurked various
shabby individuals, hook-nosed and thick-lipped--Jewish
bill-discounters, always at hand 'to accommodate the nobility and
gentry.' The windows of the house were brilliantly lit, and through the
open casements the sound of voices and laughter floated forth upon the
warm evening air.

At the door Montgomerie linked his arm in Fotheringay's.

'You're so dam' drunk, Hector,' he said, 'that you'd best go home. I'll
walk round with you if you wish!'

Angrily Fotheringay shook him off.

'What ... what d'you mean?' he said thickly. 'I'm all right, curse you!
If any man says I'm drunk ...'--he raised his voice and looked round the
knot of men streaming up the steps--'damme, I'll call him out!'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' said an agonised voice from the hall, 'I pray
you make less noise. You'll bring the watch on us else!'

'Let him be, Monty!' called another voice.

'He'sh ... hic ... not drunk!' boomed a third. 'Come ... come up and
show 'em how to throw a main, Hector!'

A vague and swaying form, silhouetted against the light within, waved
from a window.

Friendly arms encircled him and he was drawn into the house.

The draught of soda-water and the drive through the night air had
cleared his brain, at least, though his head throbbed and he seemed to
have strangely little control over his legs. But Hector Fotheringay had
an iron constitution that reacted well against the effects of strong
liquor, even when, as on this evening, he had drunk what would have
sufficed to put most men in his set under the table. As they trooped
through the hall in a body, there flashed back upon his bemused brain,
bright as lightning in a clouded sky, the clear recollection of Betty's
words to him that afternoon. It was like a stab in the heart, and he
knew that, even drunk, he could not find oblivion.

The long, oval gaming-table covered with green baize was set at the far
end of the long low room, which was lit by clusters of candles in
sconces fastened to the wainscot. The crowd about the tables was silent
and preoccupied, and the only sounds were the rattle of the bones and
the cry of the throws. Little groups of men stood chatting while waiters
circulated with trays of iced punch. All round the walls were settees
upholstered in faded red plush.

Hector's party, men and women in a joyous, convivial troop, instantly
melted into the company about the table. But for the moment, Hector had
no wish to gamble. His numbed brain was fumbling with the memory of
Betty and her stinging taunt. Mechanically he took a glass of punch from
a waiter and stood a little on one side, morose and gloomy, despair and
mortification cankering his heart.

And then, to his unbounded surprise, he heard Betty's name mentioned. It
resounded clearly from a knot of men gathered about one of the couches
against the wall.

Fotheringay did not catch the words. But the loud guffaw they evoked
left him in little doubt as to their purport.

'The fortress is yet inviolate, I swear,' said another voice, drawling
and slightly guttural--not the one that had spoken first--'but I doubt
whether it will withstand a long siege, eh, Doyle?'

This time he had a brief view of the speaker, a stoutish man who sat on
the couch, the only one of the group thus placed. Fotheringay caught a
glimpse of him as one of the men in the circle half-turned to give his
glass to a passing waiter. Something seemed to snap in the young man's
brain. All the pent-up irritation of the day burst its dam and, leaping
forth, overwhelmed him. Scarcely conscious of what he did, his glass
still in his hand, he strode furiously up to the group, blindly pushing
aside two men that stood in his way. He was mad with red, unreasoning
rage. He saw nothing, heard nothing. He was only vaguely conscious of a
sea of swimming faces that stared whitely at him out of the void as he
thrust his way up to the couch.

'You speak of my cousin, sir,' he said, addressing the man on the sofa.
'Let this teach you to mend your manners!'

And he flung the contents of his glass in the other's face.

There was a moment's frightful hush. Stunned by the death-like silence,
the glass in his hand dripping on to the carpet, Fotheringay stared
stupidly round the circle. The mist began to clear.... Rather to his
surprise he recognized in the group Mr. Gray, his acquaintance of the
Saint James's Coffee-House, his gimlet eyes fixed upon him. On the sofa
a plump, elegantly dressed man was wiping his face with a lace
handkerchief. A star glittered on the breast of his exquisitely fitting
blue kersey coat. When he saw his face, Fotheringay, drunk as he was,
knew what he had done. Even as he reeled back aghast, from the back of
the room a drunken voice said clearly:

'Gad! He's soused the Prince!'




CHAPTER IV

AFTERMATH


In the ominous pause which followed that exclamation, Fotheringay came
to his senses and realised that his career was irretrievably ruined.
They were almost all men of his world in the room, and their deadly
silence was the silence of those assembled round a scaffold to see a
fellow mortal die. If sympathy or pity there was in that awed and
speechless throng, it was suppressed out of respect for the social code
that had been outraged.

In that age their world looked with amazing indulgence upon the
weaknesses and follies of men and women; but it guarded with scrupulous
jealousy its prerogatives and the principles from which those
prerogatives derived. Ruthless hands had rudely shaken one of the
pillars of their order and instinctively the entire company gathered
about it to defend it against the aggressor. In that instant Fotheringay
perceived that a pit had opened between himself and his comrades.

Unsteadily the Prince had risen to his feet. A tall man, with a great
hawklike nose and elegant-waisted figure, was at his side. It was
Colonel Douglass who commanded one of the battalions of Foot Guards.

'Sir,' he was saying, 'I entreat Your Royal Highness to withdraw and
leave me to deal with this affair!'

The Prince who, in all circumstances, comported himself with dignity,
did not even glance at his assailant.

'I know my honour is in safe hands, Douglass,' he said with composure.
'Doyle, will you see to my barouche?'

The crowd fell back precipitately as, accompanied by his gentlemen, the
Prince left the room. Then, with a black, icy look, Colonel Douglass
turned to Fotheringay and beckoned him aside.

'Your name, sir?' he rapped out.

'Lieutenant Fotheringay, Third Guards!'

'You will return to your quarters and consider yourself under close
arrest. Are any other officers of your regiment present?'

Fotheringay turned and mustered the awed group surveying them from a
respectful distance.

'Captain Montgomerie, sir, and Ensign Carfax!' he replied.

The Colonel looked round and named the senior of the two officers, who
at once stepped forward.

'You will take this officer's sword,' the Colonel said, addressing
Montgomerie, 'and conduct him back to his lodging. I make you personally
responsible for Mr. Fotheringay. You will wait upon your Commanding
Officer in the morning and ascertain his wishes regarding your charge.
Is that clear?'

'Sir!' said Montgomerie, stiff as if on parade.

Fotheringay detached his sword from his side and handed it silently to
his friend, who received it with cold, impassive face. Already the crowd
had begun to drift back to the gaming-table and the rattle of the dice
came to the ears of the two officers as they filed out into the moonlit
night. At the door a man stood back to let them pass. It was Mr. Gray
searching Fotheringay's face with his enigmatical regard.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next evening Hector Fotheringay sat at the window of his rooms and
looked out upon a world whose whole aspect had changed. The scene which
he contemplated was familiar enough, the chairmen gossiping at their
stand at the top of the street, the lamplighter with his ladder and his
oilcan and his tinder-box swiftly going his rounds, the great gilt
coaches lumbering down the cobbled slope bound for the Court or the
play. From time to time the evening breeze brought to his ears from
Piccadilly the flourish of a horn from the White Horse Cellar or the
Gloucester Coffee-House as the coaches came spanking in from the West,
and once the brazen roll of drums from the Palace hammered at his lonely
heart. But these were the sights and sounds of a world which was no
longer his.

He was ostracised, an outcast. He had insulted one who stood too high
for the code of honour to touch. That the provocation was great had not
been, would not be, taken into account. He had brought the good name of
his regiment into disrepute, and for that he was to suffer.

His career in the Army was at an end; his Colonel, before whom he had
passed a terrible quarter of an hour that morning, had said as much and
a great deal more besides. It was a question whether Mr. Fotheringay
should be tried by court-martial for conduct unbecoming an officer and a
gentleman or be permitted to send in his papers. A humble apology to the
Prince, he was advised, might secure clemency. His Royal Highness had
been gracious enough to say, in mitigation of the offence, that the
officer was undoubtedly drunk.

Bitterly he felt the humiliation of his position. The studied aloofness
of Montgomerie, who had been his friend, and the veiled insolence of
O'Dare, his servant, told him all too clearly that his fall was
complete.

The final blow had been struck an hour before in the shape of a perfumed
note delivered by a little black page.

     _It has come to me_, it ran, _that you have made a scandal with the
     P. about me at a gaming-house_. _If you have a shred of honour
     left, you will let this matter rest where it is and leave London
     without more ado. I never wish to see you again._

     _B. M._

Some garbled version of the scene had, of course, reached Betty. Would
she judge him thus harshly if she knew the truth? In vain he tried to
compose a letter that, while defending himself, should mollify her. In
the end he abandoned the attempt. Betty despised him so heartily
already, he told himself, that it can have wanted but little to make her
join in the hue-and-cry against him.

Ten o'clock was striking from Saint James's Church when Montgomerie put
his head in at the door.

'A Mr. Gray is below and asks if you will receive him,' he said
frigidly.

'That surely rests with you,' Fotheringay rejoined.

'He has permission!'

'I want no visits of sympathy! Tell him I am engaged!'

Tragic is the loneliness of the proud heart. At that instant what Hector
Fotheringay desired above all things else was an understanding word or
even a comprehending handclasp. But his world had outlawed him and he
would have none of his world.

Montgomerie was back with a note.

     _If I venture to crave five minutes of your time_, the crabbed
     handwriting read, _it is because I think I have a way out of your
     present difficulty._

Hector shrugged his shoulders.

'I will see Mr. Gray,' he said.

Mr. Gray was as composed, as enigmatical as ever, very soberly dressed
in black with a cloak across his arm.

'Mr. Fotheringay,' he said, taking the chair to which the Guardsman
pointed, 'if I venture to intrude at a moment that doubtless appears to
you ill-chosen, it is because I come on a matter of business, of
pressing business!'

His keen eyes ferreted in the young man's face.

'Last night I was witness of a scene that did your heart more credit
than your head. The consequences of that unpremeditated act are likely
to be grave. For that reason I offer you my services in averting them.'

Hector shrugged his shoulders.

'There's no use in crying over spilt milk,' he said. 'The damage is done
now. My career in the Army is at an end and I can no longer show my face
in London.'

'Your logic is inexorable, Mr. Fotheringay, and I bow to it. But you are
young, you have a long future before you. What if I proposed to you the
means of rehabilitating yourself?'

Hector laughed bitterly.

'By apology? By boot-licking? My Commanding Officer spoke of this. Let's
hear no more of it, Mr. Gray. For defending the honour of a lady I will
not apologise. If you proffer me your influence at Carlton House to this
end'--he stood up stiffly--'I must reject your assistance ...'

With firm hand his visitor thrust him back in his seat. 'Tock, tock,
tock! How quick you take me up!' he said. 'What is past is past! But I
can put you in the way of rendering your country a signal service
which, successfully accomplished, will go far to efface the memory of
last night.'

Hector stared at him, the blood draining from his face.

'What do you want with me?' he said slowly.

'If I may count upon your acceptance,' said Mr. Gray, 'I will take you
to a friend of mine who shall acquaint you more nearly with the details
of your mission. But, I warn you, Mr. Fotheringay, it is not without
danger. Nay, I will go farther and say that possibly your rehabilitation
may be achieved only at the price of your life ...'

The young man started, his eyes bright with excitement. The other's
words were like a rope flung to a drowning man. Here was the issue he
sought out of the black slough of despond in which he floundered. Here
was the chance to prove himself a man in Betty's disdainful eyes.

Long afterwards he was wont to think of that scene, the prelude to his
great adventure, the little sitting-room dimly lit by the heavy
candlestick that stood on the table between them, the flickering light
of the tapers falling upon the shrewd and eager face of his visitor, and
through the open casement, where the moonbeams fell into the room, the
distant voice of the watchman calling the hour.

'Think well on it,' Mr. Gray was saying, 'for once this matter is
engaged upon, there can be no drawing back.'

Hector stood up abruptly. From the armchair in the corner he gathered up
his hat and cloak.

'Will you take me to your friend, sir?'

For the first time the features of Mr. Gray relaxed. A gentle smile lit
his face with warmth. He sighed with the air of a man who has
successfully come through an ordeal.

'Mr. Fotheringay,' he remarked, 'I had little doubt, when I met you
yesterday at the coffee-house, but that you were my man. I have a coach
below!'

But with a dismayed expression Hector smote his brow.

'I protest I had clean forgot it!' he cried. 'Mr. Gray, I am under
arrest and may not leave my quarters!'

Another of Mr. Gray's quizzing looks.

'I have that which forces all doors, breaks all consigns,' he declared.
'You shall see! You permit me? Captain Montgomerie,' he called.

Hector's brother officer appeared.

'I desire that Mr. Fotheringay should accompany me. Is that in order?'

The Guardsman bowed.

'The papers you have shown me, sir, entitle you to dispose of my
prisoner as you deem fit.'

Profoundly puzzled, Hector Fotheringay followed his companion downstairs
and out into Saint James's Street where a hackney coach was waiting.
What manner of man was this who had power to override the awe-inspiring
authority of the Brigade of Guards? He was obviously not a military man;
by his dress he seemed to be rather a lawyer or a doctor. Fotheringay
turned the problem over in his mind as, his companion at his side, they
bumped and rattled through the dark and narrow back streets of Saint
James's. He scarcely noted whither they were proceeding, and it was only
when the coach halted and Mr. Gray bade him descend that he found they
had stopped on the far side of Saint James's parade ground outside a
wooden door in a high brick wall.

Mr. Gray paid off the coach and, producing from his pocket a key,
unlocked the door. They traversed a small garden by a path at the end of
which a light burned in a fanlight above another door on which Mr. Gray
knocked. It was instantly opened by an elderly footman in livery. He
seemed to know Hector's companion, for, without a word, he led the way
up a few shallow stairs and along a broad passage wainscoted in dark
oak. He opened a door and, holding up his hand to enjoin silence, tapped
at another door that stood beyond the threshold.

There was a pause. Then a resonant voice said clearly:

'Come in!'




CHAPTER V

AN INTERVIEW, AND WHAT CAME OF IT


A hushed and secluded air rested over the great dim room into which they
were ushered. The heavy padded door that closed noiselessly behind them,
the thick green curtains, drawn across the windows, banished every
sound. In the centre of the room was a pool of yellow light where wax
candles in silver candelabra softly mirrored their rays in the polished
wainscot and in the glass of the mahogany bookshelves lined with green
silk that occupied the whole of one wall. For the rest the noble
proportions of the room were swallowed up in gloom.

A silver candlestick stood in the centre of an immense map that entirely
covered a large table over which the slim form of a young man was
bending. He had a document in one hand and a pencil in the other and
constantly referred from the document to the map. On a broad desk beside
him, piled high with despatch boxes in crimson and dark-green leather,
calf-bound volumes marked for reference and bundles of documents, a
space had been cleared for a silver tray with decanters of port and
glasses. A half-emptied crystal goblet of wine stood beside the
candlestick on the map which the young man was studying.

He took no notice of their entry. Mr. Gray put a finger to his lips and
motioned to Fotheringay to take a chair. In a state of utter
bewilderment the Guardsman obeyed. He was appalled at the interview to
which he had thus, mysteriously and unexpectedly, been bidden. For in
the slim figure, silhouetted against the candlelight, with the
characteristic profile, the abundant hair carelessly combed back, the
challenging, pugnacious nose, the mobile and finely chiselled mouth, he
had recognised the most remarkable young man of his day. How often had
he seen him at White's, bending over the green cloth, as, even now,
tireless, restless, self-possessed, he pored over his map, with the pale
dawn peeping in under the blinds!

For fully five minutes Mr. Gray and his companion sat in the shadow and
contemplated the rapt figure of the man at the table. From time to time
he would raise his glass to his lips, then fall again into a fit of
abstraction. At last, as he turned to replenish his glass, he seemed to
remember that he was not alone. He straightened himself up and advanced
across the carpet with a quick, firm step, his head erect, his chin
thrust forward. It was as though he wished to show that the immense
burden of his responsibilities was not bearing him down.

But his face, pale and harassed from prolonged strain, with bags beneath
the eyes, belied the brave parade of his gait. As he met the quick,
enquiring regard of the steady blue eyes, Fotheringay told himself, had
he not already known him by sight, he must have recognised Mr. Pitt if
only that, of his years, one man alone in Europe could have combined as
he did youth with the poise and gravity that great responsibility long
sustained brings.

'Ah, Gray,' said the Minister in his grave and polished voice, 'this
news from Flanders is vexatious. We make no progress. But the wind must
soon bring accounts from the Channel. Has my brother Chatham no tidings
from Lord Howe?'

'I have not been to the Admiralty, sir,' Gray replied.

The First Minister put one slim hand to his brow.

'True, true,' he said, 'it was for another matter you came. Let me
think ...'

'I have brought the officer of whom I spoke, sir,' Mr. Gray put in, 'if
you would suffer me to present him.'

With a warm-hearted, spontaneous gesture the Minister stretched out his
hand.

'Of the Third Foot Guards, I think,' he said, glancing at his visitor's
uniform. 'The Duke of York reports noble things of your men in this last
engagement, Mr. Fotheringay. General Lake should be proud of his
brigade. But surely I have seen you before?'

'At White's, sir,' said Hector.

'Ah!' said the Minister. 'We are fellow club-men, then, it would appear.
A glass of wine, Mr. Fotheringay? Gray, I know you won't refuse! Be
seated, gentlemen, I beg!'

He filled their glasses and waved them to chairs. Then a fit of
abstraction took him again and he was lost in thought for a while.
Suddenly he turned to Fotheringay.

'You are partly French, I think?' he said.

'My mother was a Marquise de Sainte-Valentine,' Hector replied.

'Is your knowledge of the French tongue sufficient to enable you to pass
yourself off with impunity as a Frenchman?'

'Unquestionably, sir!'

'Are you willing, in the guise of a Frenchman, with papers with which
Mr. Gray will provide you, to go to Paris to discharge a certain mission
on my behalf?'

'Nothing would suit me better, sir!'

The Minister looked up quickly.

'I find your promptness exceedingly becoming, Mr. Fotheringay,' he
remarked. Then, leaning back in his chair, the tips of his fingers
pressed together, he went on:

'In France great events stand before. Every indication shows that the
Jacobins are nearing the end of their resources. At home, it is true,
their reign of terror holds their enemies in thrall, and on the
frontiers their armies are everywhere victorious. But France is
starving, Mr. Fotheringay, for fine words fill no bellies and the
Republicans want bread. And their paper money has no purchasing power.'

He paused and drank from his glass.

'The growing arrogance of Monsieur de Robespierre is alienating his
stoutest supporters. To hold things together he must advance ever
farther along the road that leads France to perdition; for there is no
turning back on the path he treads. He is bound to plunge ever deeper
into worse excesses like a gambler who, to settle his debts, borrows
afresh to play on.'

He spoke softly, measuring each word, but his beautiful voice rang out
distinctly in that quiet room.

'I am of those,' he went on, 'who have ever held that out of the present
convulsions of France general harmony and regular order must sooner or
later emerge. France is being strangled by politics, Mr. Fotheringay.
Now, mark what I say! Robespierre will surely fall as all men of blood
like him have fallen. But France will not be saved until she finds a man
who will place the interest of the State above the interest of a party!'

A lump came in Fotheringay's throat. He had a mental vision of this wise
young man sitting nightly in that silent room peering into the dark
future.

'All France seems smitten with madness now. Who could have said that
such evil dwelt in the hearts of men? But it will pass: it will surely
pass. And then...?'

The silver voice died away and there was a moment's hush.

'But I waste your time, Mr. Fotheringay,' the Minister resumed briskly.
His manner now was hard and practical. 'The fate of Europe for many
years to come will be decided in Paris within the next few weeks. It has
been and is my constant endeavour so to shape events that from her
present ordeal France may emerge discerning that her true interest lies
in the maintenance of peaceful relations with this country.'

He paused and mustered Fotheringay with his penetrating glance.

'What I am about to tell you now,' he said, 'I reveal to you only under
the pledge of absolute secrecy. Through a gentleman in Paris--I will
call him Mr. Engstrom, the name by which he is known, for, though an
Englishman, he passes himself off as a Dane, a banker--we are in close
touch with a certain group of deputies of the Convention. They have
divers proposals to formulate of so delicate, nay, so dangerous a
character that Engstrom has requested Mr. Gray, who is in general charge
of our intelligence service in France, to send an absolutely trustworthy
emissary to him in Paris to receive them. You are the chosen emissary,
Mr. Fotheringay. You speak French fluently: in appearance you might pass
for a Frenchman: and you are, Mr. Gray informs me, a man of integrity
and courage. Mr. Gray will provide you with a French passport and other
papers of identity that should go far to deflect suspicion from you.
But I will not hide from you that your mission will be one of the utmost
danger. The Jacobin Government has its spies everywhere, and, in the
present state of affairs in France, the breath of suspicion is as good
as sentence of death. Now that you have learnt what your mission is to
be, are you still willing to go on with it?'

'Yes, sir,' said Hector.

The Minister glanced at Mr. Gray and nodded approvingly.

'You don't ask me what your reward will be?'

Fotheringay shrugged his shoulders.

'Mr. Gray already has my promise,' he answered.

The Minister stood up and his visitors followed suit.

'As from to-day,' he said, 'you will receive a month's furlough from
your regiment. On your return from France we will see how best to adjust
a certain incident which has made no small stir in the clubs.'

A roguish smile lit up the wan, tired features. It reminded them that he
was only thirty-four.

'Gad!' he exclaimed. 'I should like to have seen his face!'

He held out his hand to Hector.

'Au revoir, Mr. Fotheringay!' he said. 'Gray will arrange all details
with you. Good luck and a safe return! You will not delay his departure
by an hour,' he added anxiously to Mr. Gray.

'Mr. Fotheringay will leave immediately, sir!'

'With your permission, sir,' Hector broke in, 'there is a small matter I
must adjust before my departure!'

The Minister looked at him coldly.

'My business brooks no delay, sir!' he rejoined severely.

'An affair of honour ...' Hector stammered.

'A meeting?'

Hector bowed.

'The time to kill a Frenchman, sir, and I am at your service. We meet in
Hyde Park at five o'clock to-morrow morning!'

'No, no,' said the Minister. 'Positively I'll not have you risk a thrust
through the guts, Mr. Fotheringay. Gray, you will have the goodness to
stop this meeting!'

'Sir,' said Hector proudly, 'you have stayed my disgrace; but that does
not entitle you to take away my honour. I _must_ meet this man ...'

'Better be branded as a coward than fail in your duty to your country,'
said the Minister. 'Let's hear no more of this, Mr. Fotheringay. I hold
you to your word. Sir, your servant!'

He bowed and turned away. By the time they had reached the door, he
seemed to have forgotten their existence. They left him in the big dim
room bowed over his great map in the wan candlelight.




CHAPTER VI

THE EVENING BATCH


Rocking and swaying over the rough cobbles the Calais diligence threaded
its way through the seething Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Paris stewed
breathless in the sultry air of the hot May evening. On every floor of
the tall old houses windows were garnished with citizens and
citizenesses in various stages of undress. At the house doors, on chairs
set beneath the frowning black carriageways or thrust forward on the
narrow sidewalk, the concierges, male and female, lolled and gossiped
with their neighbours or watched the busy life of the street. The heat
was oppressive, and from the reeking heart of the city nameless odours
of pollution and decay rose in one vast and nauseating blend to the
bronze-tinted sky. All Paris was limp and extenuated, gasping for the
cooling breeze that sundown, in this torrid summer of the Year Two of
the Republic, so persistently denied.

When the coach neared the Tuileries its progress grew slower as, with
every turning, it became more deeply involved in the stream of traffic
that, night and day, surged about the approaches to the Convention. The
rue Saint-Honoré was packed. Carriages and market-carts, mounted men and
foot-passengers, hawkers and idlers, moved slowly forward in an almost
impenetrable phalanx. From his lofty perch the coachman of the mail
rained down warnings and oaths upon the jostling crowds that so
reluctantly divided to make passage for the diligence as it lumbered its
way towards the Messageries, its weary, road-stained horses slipping on
the broken and neglected roadway, their hoofs striking forth showers of
sparks from the uneven stones.

'_Attention, tonnerre de Dieu!_'--'_Gare à vous, les citoyens!_'--'_Hé,
là-bas, la citoyenne!_' thundered the driver, and, loud as a
pistol-shot, his whip cracked about the heads of his steaming horses.
Imprecations, abuse, and chaff were flung back at him from the shabby,
evil-smelling mob that swarmed, wheel-high, about the Calais Mail.

Suddenly, out of the press ahead, the roll of drums resounded. A murmur
of excitement ran through the crowd. The shouting and laughter ebbed and
died. An odd hush fell upon the mob swaying to and fro around the coach,
as the driver, with wrists of steel, checked the straining horses and
drew up at the kerb.

The muffled note of the drums drew nearer. Above the heads of the
billowing multitude two carts were now visible such as farmers use for
carting grass or hay, with high wheels and a sort of low palisade above
the axle. Each was filled with standing figures that staggered and
lurched to every movement of the vehicle. Before went two drummers in
dirty blue uniforms, striped cotton trousers that flapped at the knee,
and stained and ragged stockings falling in wrinkles about coarse black
shoes, big tenor drums slung from a leathern strap that crossed their
chests. Behind them the evening sun glinted on a line of drawn sabres
that rose and fell on either side of the carts.

The driver of the mail, having brought his horses to a halt, slackened
the reins, dropped his tall whip into its slot, and dexterously blew his
nose on his fingers.

'The evening batch!' he said to the young man on the box-seat by his
side.

From the windows of the diligence now the inside passengers were craning
their necks, and on the roof the occupants of the rear seats were
standing up. The young man beside the driver looked about him curiously.
He was a well-built, handsome young fellow with a proud and rather
arrogant air, clean-shaven, his dark hair (which, according to the
custom of revolutionary France, he wore without powder) gathered up
loosely under the broad brim of his hat and tied with a black riband
behind. The dust of the road lay thick on his plain grey travelling-suit
and even powdered his cheeks and eyebrows.

The crowd remained very quiet in an attitude of mournful indifference.
As it heaved forward and back, its feet rustled in the silence like the
dance of leaves in a churchyard. Now the carts turned to pass down a
side-turning, and the dull rumble of wheels joined itself to the echoing
rattle of the drumsticks. On the shafts of each cart the driver sat,
ragged, ill-featured fellows with matted hair and feet thrust into
sabots dangling listlessly. An escort of mounted men brought up the
rear.

They were a wan and dejected company, the occupants of the carts. Men
and women, they numbered about a dozen in all. Their heads were bare. At
the throat the upper part of their garments had been shorn away so that
neck and throat were exposed, showing a deep expanse of skin which, like
their faces, was yellowed with the sickly hue of long confinement. Dirty
ropes, deeply stained with blood, were tightly wound about their wrists,
giving them a helpless air that accentuated the look of mute despair
graven in their hollow eyes.

There was little means of distinguishing their station in life, for
almost all, like the crowd that silently regarded them, appeared to be
dirty and shabby. A perpetual murmur went up from the carts, a jumble of
incoherent, high-pitched chatter like the babble of a fever ward. A fat,
gross woman in bedraggled finery, her face grey beneath its coat of
paint, her coarse, dyed hair shorn close away from the nape of her
swelling throat, screamed repeatedly, '_Jésu! Jésu!_' while a
middle-aged man with congested features, leaning over the side of the
cart, seemed to be addressing the mob--the drums drowned his voice--in a
flood of never-ceasing oratory. There was a young girl who, looking like
a boy with her clipped locks, was quietly sobbing: there were two ragged
men, their hairy torsos protruding from their torn and filthy shirts,
who laughed and shouted badinage at one another; and there was a
grey-beard, quite oblivious of his surroundings, whose lips moved
silently.

In all this company of spectres there was only one whose bearing
revealed complete indifference to the goal of that sad journey. He was
in the second cart, a big man, with a vast chest and a leonine head
covered with auburn ringlets. Of all the company he was the only one
that was respectably attired. Of all those pale prisoners he alone had
the clear skin and the fresh tint of health.

He had a bold, calm eye, the eye of a leader of men, and as he lolled
nonchalantly against the back of the cart he let his haughty gaze rove
out across the crowd. For a moment it met the compassionate and earnest
regard of the young man on the box-seat of the Calais Mail. It stirred
him strangely, and, in the one brief instant in which their glances met,
to him, the stranger in this forbidden, blood-drenched city, it was
like a handclasp of amity.

The next moment the cart had turned the corner and the mournful wailing
procession had passed on. The crowd stirred into life again, the
mail-driver shook up his horses, and the diligence resumed its rocking
progress towards the rue des Victoires.

Arrived at his destination, the young man, after giving the driver a
greasy assignat from a bundle he produced from his pocketbook, descended
to the ground and waited composedly for the guard to get his valise from
the boot.

The yard of the Messageries was densely crowded. There were people who
had come to meet relations or friends, a knot of important-looking men
with enormous cockades in their hats who respectfully greeted the
pompous official that, girt about with a tricolour sash, had joined the
mail at Abbéville, shabby clerks that fussed prodigiously about the
way-bill, hawkers who ran in and out of the assembly with newspapers and
broadsheets shouting, '_Voyez le dernier discours du Citoyen Couthon à
la Convention!_' or, '_Demandez "La Conjuration de l'Assassin Pitt"!_'
and pedlars with cakes and fruit, lemonade-sellers, porters, touts, and
gendarmes. And all this swarming, shouting, gesticulating, pushing
multitude was cockaded, the men with the red-white-and-blue of the
Commune flaunting on their hats or red caps, the women with enormous
rosettes worn in their hair or planted between their breasts.

It was a squalid, ill-mannered, evil-smelling horde, and the young man,
as he waited for his valise, let his thoughts slide back regretfully to
Piccadilly, as he had left it three days before, with the rich shops,
the splendid horses, the well-dressed citizens waving to the
spick-and-span coach as it turned out of the yard of the White Horse
Cellar and bowled along the even, well-metalled roadway.

Only three days ago! How far away already seemed that momentous
interview in the great dim room in Downing Street and the long talk that
followed it in Mr. Gray's snug quarters at the Treasury! That night, in
the Minister's study, he had been dimly conscious of the presence of a
hidden force that imposed its will on his. It seemed to him that some
influence, recking nothing of convention, had taken charge of his life.
It had brushed aside the Draconic code of his order and placed, for the
first time, the responsibility for his acts on himself instead of on
others.

He was a defaulter, but he was free. He had flown in the face of
society, but his flight had borne him aloft above the cramped confines
of his sheltered life. He was master of his actions now in a
hand-to-hand struggle with fate.

He exulted in his sense of new-found liberty. He regretted nothing. Now
and again, especially when, from the top of the Deal coach, he had seen
dawn redden the sky, he had had a disturbing vision of Maxeter anxiously
consulting his watch as he paced the dew-soaked grass of Hyde Park and
of the growing look of raillery in the faces of the Vicomte and his
friends. He had fled an engagement of honour, and by this time, he
reflected, his name was anathema in the clubs. But so it had to be. Mr.
Gray would suffer no explanation, no compromise, for so the service of
Mr. Pitt demanded. It was Hector Fotheringay's first lesson.

At length his valise was deposited at his feet. He handed it over to a
porter and bade him bear it to the Hôtel des États Unis in the rue
Favart, a quiet and inconspicuous house, where, since a week or more, a
room, he knew, had been reserved for the young French timber-merchant
from Copenhagen. The hostess, a buxom and black-eyed woman with a kindly
expression, looked at him sharply as she handed him the key.

'Number 23, the second floor,' she said. 'Take the citizen's valise up,
my friend,' she added to the porter, and privately motioned to the young
man to stay behind.

'You are a stranger in Paris, I think, _citoyen_,' she said to Hector,
when the porter had mounted the winding stair. 'You will do well to don
a cockade before you go out in the street again, especially as you must
proceed at once to the section of the _Quartier_ to report your arrival.
In the departments one is less exacting, but here in Paris ...'

As she was speaking, she rummaged in a drawer.

'Give me your hat,' she said.

She produced a large tricolour cockade, and with a pin which she took
from her ample bosom fastened it across the buckle that adorned the
front of the young man's hat.

'_Et voilà!_' she exclaimed. 'You will give the _porte-faix_ a few sols
more, _mon petit_, and he will guide you at once to the Section
Lepeletier--it is but two paces from here. One cannot be too prompt in
putting one's papers in order!'

And so, in the wake of the porter, who wore in his buttonhole a little
plaque inscribed, beneath crossed fasces, 'La Patrie ou la Mort,' Hector
Fotheringay, Lieutenant and Captain of His Majesty's Third Foot Guards,
went forth adorned with the emblem of regicide France.

A long queue of people extended along the pavement of the rue des
Filles-Saint-Thomas, where, in the disestablished convent of that name,
the headquarters of the Lepeletier Section was installed. A red bonnet
set on a pike, fastened to the gate above a decapitated statue of the
Blessed Virgin, marked the entrance.

Hector followed the porter to the head of the queue. These endless
queues seemed to be universal in Paris, he had noticed on his drive
through the city. Every butcher's, every baker's shop had its patient
file of customers.

'Give the citizen something for himself and he will take you in!'
whispered the porter as he beckoned to a man in a red cap who leant on a
pike under the archway. To Red Cap he said:

'The citizen lodges _chez_ the Citizeness Dupin. He comes for his
_certificat de civisme_.'

Hector had his assignat ready and slipped it into Red Cap's greasy palm.
Then he paid off the porter, who insisted on shaking hands, and
accompanied Red Cap into the house. An angry murmur rose from the crowd;
but of this Red Cap took no notice.

He brought Hector into a spacious room with a groined roof, a long table
set at the far end, at which, in the midst of a prodigious confusion of
papers, a humpback was writing furiously. He wore an immense cocked hat
pushed back from his low forehead, and on the table in front of him was
a long cavalry sabre and a brace of pistols. Above his head, crowned
with a wreath of laurel, was a bust of Marat, '_L'Ami du Peuple_.' The
room smelt abominably close, though many of the leaded panes of the
windows were broken. The floor was indescribably filthy. Some soldiers
squatted on a heap of straw in the corner. One of them, naked to the
waist, was anxiously examining his shirt inch by inch.

A young man with a rakish air and brown hair falling about his shoulders
detached himself from a knot of men lounging behind the table as Red Cap
and his companion approached. He exchanged a few words in whispers with
Hector's escort. Then he extended his hand.

'Your papers, citizen,' he said to Hector.

Hector handed over his passport and certificate of employment. The young
man glanced at them and dumped them down on the top of a pile of
correspondence at the humpback's elbow. Then he returned to Red Cap.

'To go back to what I was telling you this morning, Petitpierre,' he
said. 'Yourself and the Citizeness Petitpierre can have the _loge_ at
the Théâtre Feydeau any evening you wish. The new piece is very good,
_formidable_!--it deals with the patriotic career of the _Citoyen_
Robespierre! Every night the _parterre_ rises and acclaims the actors!'

'_Bien sûr_, we'd like to go, friend Maurice,' replied Petitpierre. 'If
so be as to-morrow evening ...'

'_C'est fait, c'est fait!_' exclaimed the other. 'You shall have the
seats in the morning, my friend. And if, when next you visit your
brother at Mélun, you could manage to bring me back a little butter ...'

Petitpierre clapped him on the back.

'A patriot never fails his friends,' he said jovially. 'A pound of the
finest for the Citizen Maurice: I shan't forget ...'

'Charpentier, Jean-François,' said a high-pitched voice from the table.

'_Allez, allez_,' remarked Maurice, and plucked Hector by the sleeve.
'The Citizen Commissary Grand-Duc is waiting!'

The young man advanced to the table. He saw a pale face, unshaven for
days, with matted hair that fell about a narrow, sloping forehead.

'You are the Citizen Charpentier?' said Grand-Duc.

Hector bowed.

'Yes,' he replied.

'Say "Citizen Commissary" when you address me!' the humpback commanded.

Hector felt his colour mount in his cheeks.

'Yes, Citizen Commissary!' he said meekly.

'Born at Saint-Lunaire, in the Department of Île-et-Vilaine, according
to the old calendar, the 20th September, 1767. Profession, Merchant.
Employed by the firm of Hendrik and Christensen, timber-merchants, of
Copenhagen?'

'Yes, Citizen Commissary!'

The humpback handed him two square cards.

'Fill up these! You are fortunate, citizen. The President of the Section
is in his room beyond and can sign your certificate immediately!'

Hector took the pen the Commissary proffered and began to fill in the
particulars. It was his first contact with the Revolution as a living
force. He thought he had seldom seen a more sinister-looking individual
than this pigeon-chested manikin who eyed him with such singular
pertinacity. His hands shook so much that he could scarcely write.

At last it was done. Grand-Duc took the cards and, after glancing at
them, struck a bell at his side. Darkness was falling without and a man
appeared with a lamp which he put down on the table. To him the
Commissary gave the cards and a pile of documents. The man bore them
away in silence while the Commissary stretched himself and laid his
horny hands upon the table before him. Sideways he looked at Hector.

'You come to offer your services to the Republic, Citizen Charpentier?'
he said.

'As every good patriot should, Citizen Commissary!'

'You come late!'

'The English blockade is hard to evade, Citizen Commissary!'

'I do not reflect upon the patriotism of the citizen. I mean you were
expected before this!'

Hector's heart turned to ice within him. The humpback's eyes, somnolent,
yellow eyes, were fixed upon his. Always he was watching him. There was
an indescribable air of suspicious inquisitiveness about this misshapen
creature that filled the young man's mind with the deepest misgiving.
What did his words mean? Was it a trap?

His hands were cold as ice as he replied as boldly as he could:

'For a week my ship was delayed by contrary winds in the Downs before
the English coast whilst I lay hidden in the hold. I made all speed I
could, Citizen Commissary!'

The messenger reappeared with one of the cards, Hector's passport and
his other papers. The humpback handed them to the young man.

'Wear the card in your hat, young man, that all patriots may know you
are an honest man. Au revoir! Lose no time in paying your respects to
our mutual friend!'

With a soft chuckle he gave Hector his hand and plunged once more among
his papers.




CHAPTER VII

AT ENGSTROM'S


In grave perplexity Hector left the Section. The dark allusions of the
humpback had made him vividly conscious of the appalling danger of his
mission. He felt that the small square card which, like everybody else
he saw, he wore beside the cockade in his hat, was his only shield. Once
let the identity of Jean-François Charpentier be stripped from him and
he would be utterly, irretrievably lost. But who was this Jean-François
Charpentier? A young Frenchman making his way from Copenhagen to Paris,
Mr. Gray had told him, whom the excise officers had found concealed in
the cargo of a Danish brig in the Downs. They had clapped him in the
prisoners-of-war camp at Dartmoor, but his papers they had retained
against an emergency such as this. But what had he to do with the
Citizen Commissary? And who, above all things, was their mutual friend?

Well, events must take their course. Whoever Charpentier was, he must go
through to the end with his identity. Engstrom, who, Mr. Gray had
assured him, would make all arrangements for getting him back to England
with the proposals he had come to fetch, must, of course, be told of
this complication. He would doubtless be able to furnish him with fresh
papers for his return. And, having thus satisfactorily settled things in
his mind, Hector made for the Palais-Royal--now christened the
Palais-Égalité--to dine; for he had tasted nothing since the mail had
stopped at Creil for the midday meal.

He knew Paris pretty well. He had often visited France. One of his
earliest recollections was of being taken, a chubby urchin, by his
grandfather, that awe-inspiring old aristocrat, the Marquis de
Sainte-Valentine, to see His Majesty King Louis the Fifteenth at meat in
his Château of Versailles. He retained a dim picture of a knot of people
behind a golden barrier staring at a little periwigged old gentleman, a
laced hat on his head, dining in solitary state off gold plate at a
small table.

In later years he had often stayed with his mother at the family _hôtel_
in the Place Royale with its great pink courtyard, its swarms of
brilliantly liveried servants, its vast kitchens, its enormous stables.
Where was all that pomp to-day?

His last visit had been in the spring of the Revolution, in '89, when he
and Henry Venables, his companion on the grand tour, had made their bow
at the Tuileries to poor, placid King Louis and his dainty Austrian
queen. Strange to think that five brief years had swept that Court away
and buried its glories in nameless graves!

The _ci-devant_ Palais-Royal was as noisy as a fair. A band of music
played in the garden, and the keepers of the open-air lottery tables and
wheels of chance rent the air with their raucous _boniments_. The
colonnades were densely crowded, and outside the cafés every table was
taken. With some difficulty he found a seat in the Café des Milles
Colonnes, where the excellence of his dinner and the choiceness of his
bottle of Beaune taught him that, to any one with money, the hungriness
of France was naught but a fable.

The Café des Milles Colonnes was very gay. Its gilt mirrors, torn from
the salons of dead Philippe Égalité's palace, reflected a scene from
which the sordidness of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, as Hector had seen it
that evening, was utterly banished. He was surrounded on every side by
exquisites of both sexes, the men in brilliant silks and satins and the
finest linen, abundantly perfumed, and the women lavishly frocked in the
classical style that had lately become the fashion and that revealed
their charms with an audacity that amazed him.

But, as he lingered over his wine in contemplation of the scene, it
seemed to him that the note was forced. The _abandon_ was too high, the
laughter too loud. There was an air about this chattering, flirting
throng as unreal as the ciphers on the paper money that bulged from the
pockets of the waiters' aprons. It was as though every one there had
vowed to forget for the evening that tall machine which, not a mile
away, reared its scarlet posts to the star-spangled sky, in grim
expectation of the morrow ...

His dinner cost him, with the tip to the waiter which the Republic, One
and Indivisible, he noticed, had not abolished, five thousand livres,
which, he reflected, in his grandfather's day, was about the monthly
allowance of poor Uncle Sainte-Valentine who had perished on the
scaffold. He donned his hat and strolled forth thoughtfully into the
night.

Engstrom lodged in a house in the rue Vivienne, not a stone's throw from
the headquarters of the Section Lepeletier, and within easy distance of
Hector's hotel. This was the young man's next objective, for the fright
he had received at the Convent of the Filles-Saint-Thomas had
determined him to lose no time in getting in touch with the banker.

The door of Engstrom's house was open. At the door of her loge beneath
the _porte cochère_ the concierge sat on a chair knitting. A bright lamp
lit up the neat little room behind her, and above her head, aroused no
doubt by the light, a canary chirruped cheerfully in a cage. It was a
pleasant, soothing picture of French domesticity.

'The _Citoyen_ Engstrom?' said the old lady after demanding the young
man's errand. 'On the third floor. But I don't think he has yet
returned.'

It was an old house with a broad flight of downtrodden stone steps,
black and greasy, that wound their way aloft. They were dimly lit by a
light that fell from above through the well of the staircase.

Hector mounted to the third floor on which, above a brass plate
inscribed 'Engstrom,' the handle of a bell protruded. He rang, and,
after what seemed to be a long interval, a light shuffling footstep fell
on his ear. Presently the door opened about half an inch.

'The Citizen Engstrom?' Hector demanded.

'He's not at home!' a quavering voice replied. The unseen ministrant
would have closed the door had not Hector, foreseeing the movement,
slipped his foot forward.

'You are a friend of the Citizen Engstrom?' the voice demanded.

'The friend of all oppressed!' Hector answered in a low voice.

Instantly the door swung back. An old woman in a mob-cap, a candle in
her hand, stood there.

'Come in quickly, for the love of God!' she whispered.

Hector obeyed and noiselessly she closed the door behind him. Without a
word the old woman led the way along a corridor and into a sitting-room,
where, on a Buhl table, a lamp was burning. There she turned, and Hector
saw that her face was grey with terror.

'Monsieur,' she whispered, 'he has not come back. Always he returns
before dark!'

She had clutched her cheek with her hand which she now drew shuddering
away.

'A misfortune has happened to him,' she moaned. 'I know it. All the
evening I have sat here and waited for his step upon the stair. Yet he
does not come!'

On the mantelpiece, above which a portrait hung, a great gilt clock
ticked solemnly. Hector felt the old woman's distress gaining upon him.
He made an effort to shake it off. He glanced at the clock.

'It's not yet half-past ten,' he said reassuringly.

The old woman wrung her hands.

'In the two years I've served him,' she wailed, 'I've never known him
return as late as this. I have a feeling, M'sieu, that some evil has
befallen him. I dreamed of bats last night, and that always foretells
misfortune! Hark! There's some one at the door!'

She picked up her candle and crept away. Hector heard the front door
open and the sound of a whispered conversation in the hall. Then came a
wail of fear from the old woman and her light and trailing footstep went
padding down the corridor.

The sitting-room door opened. A big man stood on the threshold. He had
dark, burning eyes and a great black mustache. His face was contracted
with fatigue and his caped cloak white with dust. Dully, suspiciously,
he surveyed Hector. Then he closed the door and came into the room.
With a jingle of spurs he walked across to Hector.

'Do you take snuff?' he asked.

The young man started.

'Certainly,' he replied, recovering himself swiftly. 'Permit me?'

And from his pocket he drew a scarlet snuff-box, and, flicking the lid
up with his thumb, held it out to the other. The man's stern expression
relaxed.

'So you've come,' he said.

He glanced round nervously at the door. The old woman was there in a
poke-bonnet, a shawl about her shoulders.

'_Bon Dieu de bon Dieu!_' she mumbled. 'To plunge us all in disaster! I
go, Messieurs!'

'Go, _la mère_!' replied the big man. 'And, as you value your life,
don't come back!'

She padded softly away, and they heard the front door slam.

Then the big man turned to Hector.

'Something's happened to Engstrom,' he said rapidly. 'He was to meet me
at the Café Conti by the Pont Neuf at six. He has never missed an
appointment before. It was vital that he should see me. I've ridden all
the way from Brussels.'

He glanced about him with a hunted look.

'He would never let me come here. But I thought he must be ill. And I
daren't carry what I've brought about Paris with me. I've always
reported to him before at his place in the rue des Petits Champs. He
keeps a bookseller's shop, you know.'

'I thought he was a banker!' said Hector.

'Only in this house. His bank is on the _entresol_. In the rue des
Petits Champs his name is Poirier! _Grand Dieu_, who's that?'

The bell at the front door had jangled furiously. Together the two men
tiptoed into the corridor. Through the door they heard a voice whisper
frantically:

'Open for the love of God!'

'Simon!' muttered the big man, and pulled back the latch.

A man came whirling in, bareheaded, breathless. With shaking hand he
motioned to them to shut the door.

'Engstrom ...' he gasped.

'Not here,' said the big man, and drew him into the sitting-room.

'Now,' he said when they were gathered round the lamp.

'They took him this morning ... at the shop ... I was on my way to
report to him ... I saw it all. I tried to get a word with him ... but
they guarded him too close. He went before the Tribunal at noon ...'

He shrugged his shoulders with a despairing gesture.

'This evening ...' he began, and burst into tears.

The big man's brow darkened.

'Already?' he said half aloud. Then: 'Have they got any one else?'

Fiercely Simon flung up his head. Hector saw the tears glisten wet on
his face in the lamplight.

'Van Brink, the cur. They took him at eight o'clock at his lodging. He
has given this place away. I had it at the Section and went to the Café
Conti to warn you. Jules told me you had come on here. Philippe, save
yourself! They will be here any minute now!'

He sprang to his feet and made for the door.

'Are you coming?' he cried.

'In one instant!' said the big man quietly.

'Adieu!' cried the other.

'Simon, stop! There is something you must do!'

'_Sauve qui peut!_ I have warned you ...'

He flashed away, and they heard the door slam. From his breast-pocket
Philippe had taken a wad of flimsy paper which he held over the lamp
until it kindled. He nursed the flame and watched the papers burn until
they were a charred mass that he stamped beneath his feet into the
carpet. Then he raised up the lamp and faced the portrait that hung
above the mantelpiece.

'My poor friend!' he said.

Hector, looking over his shoulder, saw a big leonine head set in an
aureole of auburn ringlets. It was the face of the quiet, proud man he
had seen that evening on the way to the guillotine. He would have cried
out in astonishment had not Philippe, putting down the lamp, laid his
hand on his sleeve.

'Now,' he said, 'we must be quick. Come!'

He blew out the lamp and the room was plunged in darkness. From the hall
a faint glimmer of light fell through the glass panels of the door.
Suddenly, from the distance, a muffled report rang out, there was a
shout, a shrill scream, and the thunder of feet on the stairs.

'_Actum est_,' said the big man and stood stock-still. He had a pistol
in his hand.

'My friend,' he said composedly, 'we are too late. They are on the
staircase already.'

The bell pealed wildly: they could hear the wires strain and jangle.
Heavy hands beat on the door.

'_Monsieur_,' said the big man firmly, '_je vous salue!_'

In the faint glow that from the doorway pierced the gloom, Hector saw
his companion swiftly raise his weapon. Instinctively he snatched at his
hand; but he was too late. There was a deafening report, and the big
man, swaying, crashed dead to the floor, overturning table and lamp in
his fall.

From the ground came the sound of something that gushed and gushed. A
little swathe of black smoke hung in the air and the room reeked of
burnt powder. Outside the front door the clamour redoubled.

Suddenly above the din a deep voice resounded.

'_Ouvrez au nom de la loi!_'




CHAPTER VIII

LOISON


It was then that all the instincts of Hector's upbringing asserted
themselves. A wild and unreasoning anger seized upon him, a fierce
revulsion against the Jacobins and all their works. Better a thousand
times to die even as the man at his feet had died than to be carted like
an ox to the slaughter. But he didn't mean to die just yet, or, if he
must, he would, at least, die fighting. He sprang to his feet and darted
out into the passage.

Now they were smashing in the panels of the front door with a flintlock;
he could hear the woodwork shiver beneath the heavy blows of the
iron-shod butt. A stream of filthy invective resounded from the other
side of the straining woodwork as he tiptoed away down the corridor.

Only a confused plan of action was in his mind. Was there a back
entrance, he wondered, a service staircase leading from the kitchen? If
there were it would probably be guarded. Then perhaps a window? But the
apartment was on the third floor, an almost impossible descent unless
one had a rope. He opened a couple of doors--a small dining-room with
stags' heads on the walls, a big, dark bedroom. Ah! here was the
kitchen!

A louder crash than the rest, a roar of triumph from the corridor behind
him announced that the front door had at last given way. Quickly he
stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

A fire glowed redly on the big open hearth. By its light he glanced
swiftly round. His heart sank. There was no door and the window was
small and closely barred--barred!--the mockery of it!--because it gave
on a shallow roof beneath. He was caught like a rat in a trap. Heavy
feet went tramping through the corridor outside and loud voices rang
through the apartment. First they would go into the sitting-room, he
expected, and find the body: then they would proceed to ransack the
whole place methodically.

They could not know of his presence yet, unless the old concierge had
given him away. But she was not likely to speak unless she were asked,
and no one else had seen him come to Engstrom's. They might never know
he had been there if he could but escape them now. If he could but
hide...!

Hide? But where? He cast a despairing glance round the kitchen. No place
of concealment could he see. That flat cupboard with the shelves was
useless; useless, too, the dresser ...

_The dresser!_

It was slowly moving forward, swinging inwards like a door, noiselessly
without even a creak. A ray of light fell into the kitchen. In the
opening a young girl stood, shielding a candle in one hand. When she saw
him she drew back swiftly with the instinctive, distrustful movement of
a frightened bird. But Hector stayed her with a gesture. He did not dare
to speak. He put one finger to his lips. So they stood for a fleeting
instant, regarding one another in silence. And then, in the passage
outside, there fell upon their ears a footfall. The floor-boards creaked
protestingly. And Hector Fotheringay remembered that the kitchen door
was not locked.

He opened his right hand and disclosed the scarlet enamel snuff-box he
had shown to Philippe. It was his last chance, and it did not fail him.
The girl nodded in understanding and beckoned. In the corridor a voice
cried, '_Voyons la chambre au fond du couloir!_' and Hector followed the
girl into the opening. The dresser fell back into place behind them with
a slight click.

They were on a narrow flight of stairs. The girl went in front, and her
slim, cool fingers enclosed the young man's wrist. They descended a
dozen steps or so, then she stopped, fumbled with a catch, and a low
door swung back.

She laid a little hand on the cross-beam of the door to warn her
companion not to strike his head and, stooping, scrambled through.
Hector followed, and found himself in a black and stuffy hole. But now
the girl raised a curtain and showed a lighted room.

They emerged from under a long shelf, screened by a deep valance, that
ran along one side of what was apparently a dressmaker's workshop. The
shelf was strewn with paper patterns pinned to lengths of cloth in
process of being cut out. A table in the centre of the room was littered
with sewing materials and in a press in the corner a line of finished
garments hung. On the far side of the room was a door, and the roof,
which was paned with glass, ran up to a long skylight.

On the centre table a tiny lamp was burning, and by its light Hector
surveyed his rescuer. She seemed little more than a child. Her blonde
hair was braided in plaits round her head and her wide grey eyes were
limpid with a child's look of trusting innocence. She wore a clean but
ragged little frock of blue flowered muslin, high-waisted, and her
coarse white stockings could not disguise the slimness of her ankles.
Her skin was waxen white, her features pinched and wan, and she had an
ethereal, a gossamer air about her which Hector had never met in a woman
before.

'I was working late,' the girl said. 'And I came to see Monsieur
Engstrom. Who are those men in the house?'

'They came to search Monsieur Engstrom's apartment,' Hector replied. 'He
was arrested this morning!'

The girl laid her hand on her heart. Her eyes were dilated with fear.

'Arrested?' she repeated awe-struck. '_Alors_ ...?'

Hector nodded gravely.

'This evening,' he said.

The girl looked at him blankly for a moment.

'Then _you_ are in grave danger,' she said. 'Where do you live? Have you
any place to go to?'

'I arrived in Paris only a few hours since,' the young man answered.
'But if I can but get safe away from this house, I can make shift for
myself!'

With a critical eye she surveyed him.

'Untie this riband in your hair,' she suggested. 'So!'

She went to the press and took down a long black cloak of silk with a
hood.

'Put this on!' she commanded. 'Pull the hood over your head and carry
your hat beneath the cloak. There is a box, an urgent order, to go to
the house of the Citizeness Vallier to-night. She lives at the end of
this street, the rue de la Loi, at Number 31, to the left when you leave
the house. I was to take it, but you shall be my messenger. You will
excite no suspicion if you are seen leaving the shop!'

'And you?' Hector asked.

'I shall stay here. It's not the first time I've sat up working in the
_atelier_ all night; _allez_!'

'But if they find that secret door?'

'They'll not find it. The wall is solid and the door cannot be opened
from Monsieur Engstrom's side. For more than two years now he has used
it when he desires to come back unseen. But now ...'

She bit her lip and turned away.

Hector took her hand.

'Mademoiselle,' he said, 'may I not be favoured with the name of the
lady to whom I owe my safety?'

'Monsieur Engstrom called me "Mademoiselle," too,' she said. 'And he
made me call him "Monsieur." I like it. It sounds so old-fashioned!
Everybody calls me Loison, M'sieu! For my other name'--she shrugged her
shoulders--'I don't need to use it, so why should you burden your
memory? We shall not meet again!'

Hector bowed and kissed the small slim hand.

'Mademoiselle Loison,' he said, '_votre très obéissant serviteur_!'

A little colour stole into her waxen cheeks.

'How strange that sounds!' she said. 'Once I met a _ci-devant_ abbé who
talked like that! _C'est drôle tout de même!_'

And she gave a little silvery laugh. Like a child she passed without
effort from grave to gay.

From under the shelf she produced a large round cardboard hatbox and
hung it on Hector's arm.

'You must pull out your hair _thus_!' she said, and suited the action to
the word. 'And when you walk, take short steps! And take no notice of
the men who speak to you in the street! These dirty Jacobins think that
every woman is in love with them, the ...!'

And she rapped out a foul expression that Hector had never heard in a
woman's mouth before even from the frail beauties of the Palais-Royal.

She used it quite naturally, so that it scarce seemed to sully her lips.
Now she got up, and, opening the farther door, turned to watch the young
man cross the workroom.

'_Doucement, doucement!_' she cried. 'You stride like a _Tambour-Major_
of the National Guard! So! That's better! Leave the box with the
concierge and say the _Citoyenne_ Vallier must have it at once! And send
the cloak back to-morrow!'

She led him through the dark front shop and stood for an instant, her
hand resting on the latch of the door.

'When I open,' she said, 'slip out quickly.'

Then she bobbed to him.

'Mademoiselle,' she said, mimicking his formal air, '_votre très
obéissante serviteuse_!'

But her voice shook a little. He looked at her quickly. Suddenly the
tears welled from her eyes and her small breasts were shaken with sobs.

'Go, go,' she pleaded as he was about to speak, and, opening the door,
she pushed him out into the darkness.




CHAPTER IX

THE OWL


The night was fine, and the rue de la Loi, which, in happier days,
Hector had known as the rue de Richelieu, was dark and deserted. It was
much cooler, and a little breeze tugged at the weather-beaten placards
of the Convention that covered a blank wall at the corner of the street.
Hector did not tarry, but, gathering his cloak about him, his box
dangling from his arm, made off briskly to the left as the girl had
instructed him.

When he reached Number 31, he found that the big doors were closed for
the night. But from a window of the ground floor on the right of the
carriageway a light fell from a heart-shaped opening in the shutters,
while a violin squeaked out a little lilting air that the young man had
never heard before.

A bell-pull stood beside the door. Hector tugged at it, and the music
ceased. The shutter opened. A head was thrust out.

'_Eh bien?_' demanded a rude voice.

Hector lifted his box to the window-sill.

'For the Citizeness Vallier,' he said, disguising his voice as best he
could. '_C'est pressé!_'

The shutter opened a trifle wider, disclosing a man who wore a red cap
with a tassel. Slowly he scrutinised the hooded figure on the pavement
below.

'Hand it in, _ma belle_!' he said. 'For the sake of thy pretty eyes I
will take it myself at once to the citizeness!'

Bending suddenly down he attempted to seize the young man round the
waist. But Hector drew back hastily, and, with a guffaw, the man took in
the parcel and closed the shutter. As Hector hastened up the street, he
heard the violin again. But now the man sang in a wheezy, discordant
voice to his jaunty little air:

    _'Dansons la Carmagnole,_
    _Vive le son, vive le son,_
    _Dansons la Carmagnole,_
    _Vive le son ... du canon!'_

So this was the infamous _Carmagnole_, Hector reflected, as he hurried
away, the song of the _sans-culottes_, that had echoed through the
profaned halls of the Tuileries and resounded in the ears of the
helpless victims of the massacres in the prisons. Gently scraped on a
fiddle by the light of the moon, it sounded like the tune of an old
country dance.

But the porter and his song soon passed from Hector's mind. He was
desperately concerned with his own situation. Engstrom dead, the object
of his mission had vanished, but what was he to do now that Engstrom had
failed him, Engstrom upon whom he had relied to clear up the mystery of
Jean-François Charpentier's identity and furnish him, if needs be, with
fresh papers to return to England?

The mocking glance of the humpback haunted his memory. 'Lose no time,'
he had enjoined him, 'in paying your respects to our mutual friend!' In
order to leave Paris, he would, he knew, have to get his passport viséd
at the headquarters of the Section and also at the Department of Foreign
Affairs. But to what cross-examination would he not have to submit if he
faced the humpback again? And should he explain his failure to report to
'our mutual friend'?

Then there was that evening's adventure. Apparently he had succeeded in
getting away from the workroom unseen; but what if the concierge should
remember his visit and be able to describe the young man who had asked
for the Citizen Engstrom and had entered the house, but had not been
seen to come out again? Could he in safety return to his hotel? On the
other hand, if he did not, and abandoned his valise there, would it not
arouse suspicion?

He had doffed the cloak that Loison gave him and resumed his hat,
carrying the cloak on his arm. He strode along, heedless of where he was
going, racking his brain to find a way out of his appalling dilemma.
What should he do? To whom should he turn? Why had not Mr. Gray
envisaged the possibility of the arrest of Engstrom and the dislocation
of the whole organisation?

A touch on his arm aroused him in terror from his meditation. There was
a glare in his eyes. A man with a smoking torch stood under an archway
above which, on a pike, the red bonnet of liberty was suspended. And at
his elbow, grinning up at his face, was Grand-Duc, the Citizen
Commissary, a ragged _houppelande_ covering, but not concealing, his
monstrous hump.

'You walk late abroad, _citoyen_,' he said. 'These are troublous times
for midnight strolling!'

With an effort Hector pulled himself together. His walk had brought him
back to the rue des Filles-Saint-Thomas. He was outside the headquarters
of the Lepeletier Section.

'My first evening in Paris, Citizen Commissary,' he replied, trying to
master the cold fear that swept over him like a nausea. 'I ... I wished
to see the life of the city. I have been to dine at the Palais-Royal--I
mean the Palais-Égalité!'

The manikin frowned.

'A cesspool of profligacy, young man,' he said severely. 'In a little
while the stern and pure virtue of good patriots will cut out this
canker from the body of the State. These are spies and traitors, the
slaves of Pitt and Yorck, who, with their foreign gold, seek to corrupt
the morals of the Republic. But a terrible vengeance will overtake them.
Their sins shall be purged away in blood. Our great healer, the
guillotine, will minister to the well-being of the Republic One and
Indivisible. Forty yesterday! Sixty-one to-morrow! Not enough! Not
enough ...'

He spoke with an exalted air, his yellow eyes flashing, his hands in
unceasing play.

He drew his ragged coat about him.

'Come,' he said. 'You will take a cup of spirits with me and the
saviours of the Republic.'

He turned to the man with the torch.

'If I am wanted,' he remarked, 'I am _chez_ Chrétien!'

Then he linked his arm in Hector's, and together they walked along the
silent street.

For a brief moment Hector wrestled with a feeling of panic. This stunted
creature with his frenzied talk of blood horrified him so that the mere
touch of his arm on his sleeve made his senses reel. Resolutely he
fought down his paralysing sense of fear. Fate had willed that he should
retain the identity of Jean-François Charpentier and see this mad
adventure through. He must collect his thoughts, he told himself, for he
would have to call on all his _sang-froid_, all his confidence, to meet
the ordeal that stood before.

'For one so young,' the Commissary remarked as they went along, their
footsteps echoing in the quiet street, 'you are singularly privileged,
citizen. The Republic has need of as many eyes as the hundred-headed
hydra to detect the foul assassins who plot in the dark the murder of
citizens. I am overwhelmed with the work of the Section and cannot get
about as much as I should like, but you are young and active and you
shall learn from me. _Tiens!_ You saw this young man Maurice at the
Section this evening, a dashing fellow with brown hair? _Peste!_ There's
a fine blade for you, but it was I who taught him all he knows. Trust
Grand-Duc, _l'ami_! Once they mocked me for my name and urged me to
change it, because, they said, a grand duke is an aristocrat. "_Pour ça,
les amis, pas de doute!_" I told them. "But _grand duc_ is also the
great owl, the bird of night that sees in the dark. And, even as the owl
spies out its prey in the blackness of the night, so will I pierce the
darkness wherewith the hirelings of Pitt seek to cover up their
conspiracies against patriots!" _Bigre!_ How they acclaimed me!
"Grand-Duc," they cried, "be _grand duc_ still!" And so I kept my name.'

A narrow lane brought them out upon the small square before the Théâtre
Favart. The evening performance was over and the front of the theatre
was in darkness. But at one corner of the _place_ a dim light fell from
a window. Two trees in green tubs flanked the door of a small café. The
door opened from the square directly into a long room with a low
ceiling, which, like the walls, was discoloured, with a counter at the
far end at which _la patronne_ sat enthroned against a background of
bottles and kegs. The floor was strewn with sawdust, and on the stained
and peeling walls various inscriptions, mainly of a political
character, were scrawled. Tall barrels set about the floor did duty for
tables. The room was poorly lighted by a couple of smoky lamps suspended
from the low ceiling.

Only a few persons were present, and they conversed in undertones or
played cards or draughts silently. The whispering, the low roof, the dim
lighting, lent the place a furtive air. As Grand-Duc crossed the café,
the conversations abruptly ceased. He nodded to the woman at the counter
and pushed open a door in the wall behind her.

About a table in a back room five or six men were assembled drinking
spirits out of tin pannikins. A large demijohn, encased in wicker, stood
on a barrel against the wall, and from time to time one of the group got
up and replenished his drinking-vessel from it. The air was suffocating
with the mingled fumes of unwashed humanity and strong tobacco.

At the door Grand-Duc saluted the company.

'_Bonsoir, les amis!_' he said. 'I bring you the patriot Jean-François
Charpentier who has slipped the yoke of tyrants to offer his services to
the Republic!'

'Shut the door, _nom d'une pipe_!' grumbled a hoarse voice. 'We don't
want every _sans-culotte_ in here drinking at our expense! There are
pannikins on the side, comrade! Draw yourself and the young man a dram!'

But one of the company had forestalled this invitation. A man with a
bloated face and eyes shot with blood, who seemed to be more than three
parts drunk already, thrust a cup of spirits into the hands of Hector
and his escort. Some one made room for them on one of the two wooden
benches set on either side of the table.

They were a villainous-looking lot assembled at that board. Round that
table were faces such as Hector had seen before only in the greasy
crowds that flocked to the hangings at Tyburn or in the mobs that had
glared savagely at him and his company of Guards during the recent
street riots in London, brutal faces, debauched and debased, with a
vulpine leer in their cruel eyes, with beetling foreheads and loose,
sensuous lips ...

'The patriots who watch over our safety,' said Grand-Duc, indicating the
company with a sweeping gesture. And he named to the young man at his
side a string of names, Louis du Bas-Rhin, Amar, Jagot, Voulland ...

'_Baste!_' cried the man with the bloated face. 'The Citizen will become
acquainted quick enough with the Committee of General Security ...!'

_Le Comité de la Sûreté Générale!_ The infamy of this little band of
seven had spread far beyond the boundaries of France. Men shuddered at
the very name of this gang of butchers, '_les gens de l'expédition_,' as
they were called in Paris--'the despatchers,' as one might say--who
brought their daily grist to the red machine of the Place de la
Révolution. Hector seized his pannikin and drank deeply of the spirit it
contained, raw and fiery Hollands that burnt his throat.

'What of these mountebanks of the Committee of Public Safety?' a third
man broke in--the others called him Voulland. 'Is the knife to go rusty
for lack of meat? What of the Citizen Couthon's famous bill? When does
it go before the Convention, _tonnerre de Dieu_?'

The humpback cast a frightened look around the circle.

'Mind how you speak,' he cautioned.

'I'm not afraid of Robespierre or of that wretched _cul-de-jatte_,
Couthon, or of that mummer, Saint-Just, either!' the other vociferated.
'Shall patriots be silent when the enemies of the Republic are allowed
to shelter their infamous conspiracies beneath the pall of justice?
Shall they stand idle and see _la Mère Guillotine_ cheated of her prey?
_Parbleu_, it's only that saint can save us!'

Grand-Duc held up his hands to still the turmoil that broke out all
round the table.

'_Doucement, les amis!_' he said. 'No later than this afternoon I was at
the rue Saint-Honoré. Citizen Couthon assured me that the new law is
almost ready. It comes before the Convention next week. It simplifies
matters admirably, my children. No witnesses, no defence, nothing to
impede the course of justice, and death the only penalty. Henceforth the
Republic will rely entirely on the patriotism of the judges, the Public
Accuser, and the Citizen Jurymen!'

'Good!' said an old man with an evil, debauched air about him, whose
speech was thick and who hiccoughed as he talked. 'Dumas knows his
business, and Fouquier can take a hint as quick as most. What is the
tally for to-morrow?'

'Sixty-one!' another put in. 'Citizen Fouquier is at the Conciergerie
now drawing up his lists.'

'He'll work overtime before we're done with him, this animal!' exclaimed
the man with the bloated face. 'He's a rare ferret for digging the
_sacrés_ aristocrats out of their holes!' And he emptied his pannikin.

Their language was indescribable. Their speech was the thieves' Latin of
the Paris underworld, the _argot_ of the hulks and stews, filthy,
obscene, every second word an oath or a blasphemy. Hector felt his gorge
rising. The stench of the room, the suffocating fumes of their tobacco,
the coarse earthen smell of the spirit, nauseated him. He longed to be
out in the fresh air under the stars, out of the taint of these ghouls
of the guillotine.

The door opened, and a young man in a dirty neckcloth appeared.

'_Salut, la compagnie!_' was his greeting.

He was not more than thirty with the profile of a rat. Yellow eyes set
close together and lit by a strange, haunted look, peered out of a grey
and ravaged face above a long thin nose with wide nostrils and the mouth
of a rodent. His features were all atwitch, and his little eyes were
constantly in motion. He looked like a man who never slept, like one who
lives with ghosts.

'I have submitted my answer to the charges of my enemies to the Citizen
Robespierre to-day,' he said as he took his seat at the board. He pulled
a bulky manuscript from a pocket of his stained and faded coat. 'I have
a copy of my defence here, comrades, and you shall hear it ...'

'Ah, bah!' cried the man with the bloated face. 'One is among friends
here, Carrier. We know how you handled things at Nantes ...'

Carrier! Nantes! There came back to Hector's mind the vague recollection
of a ghastly tale which had come out of France the year before, of
priests shipped at night at Nantes in vessels that were scuttled in the
darkness, of the Loire rolling piles of corpses down to the sea, of a
ghastly fusillade upon a bridge--tales that many friends of France had
stoutly denounced as fabrications.

'A song, Carrier!' proposed the man with the bloated face. 'Fill your
pannikin, man, and let your troubles be! Give us your song!'

Uproarious applause, accompanied by the hammering of tin cups on the
table, greeted this suggestion. Eager hands presented the new arrival
with a brimming cup, and, after a copious draught, the young man with
the haunted eyes began to sing in a throaty voice. The air was '_La
Carmagnole_,' the song a doggerel blend of blood, blasphemy, and
bawdiness. And the entire company roared the refrain, beating the board
with their pannikins:

    _'Mangeons à la gamelle,_
    _Vive le son, vive le son,_
    _Mangeons à la gamelle,_
    _Vive le son ... du chaudron!'_

The noise was at its height, Carrier, his yellow eyes aflame, the saliva
frothing at his lips, swayed to and fro, cup in hand, animating the
chorus to further efforts, when the door opened suddenly. A gendarme in
a blue coat with a yellow cross-belt, a tufted _bicorne_ hat on his
head, stood on the threshold.

'_Citoyens! Citoyens!_' he bawled, striving to make his voice heard
above the din. Gradually the noise subsided, but the man with the
hiccoughs continued to growl discordantly:

    '_Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,_
    _Les aristocrates à la lanterne!_'

'Is the Citizen Charpentier, Jean-François, among you?' asked the
gendarme.

Hector's heart seemed to stand still within him. It was as though every
drop of blood in his body had turned to ice. The drunkard had ceased his
growling and fallen asleep. The room was quiet. All eyes were turned to
Hector.

'Here he is!' said Grand-Duc, and clapped Hector on the back.

'Citizen,' said the gendarme, 'the Public Accuser begs you to go to him
at the Conciergerie immediately!'




CHAPTER X

THE FRIEND OF CITIZEN CHARPENTIER


There are moments in the life of every man when the clamour of the world
is stilled, and in the brief ensuing silence he seems to hear the
pendulum of eternity ticking away the hours of his allotted span. In
these rare interludes a man may see himself scaled down to his true
proportions in the scheme of things, and realise, though but dimly, that
all around him, from the cradle to the grave, immense, unfathomed forces
are directing the current of his life.

When Hector Fotheringay stood up to face the summons that had come to
him in the back room of Chrétien's tavern, he was suddenly acutely
conscious of his utter helplessness in the embrace of the power that,
like a raging flood, was sweeping him forward to his appointed destiny.
The bestial faces that confronted him faded away, and for a fleeting
instant he seemed to see again the quiet dignity of old Saint James's,
with the beef-eaters at their post outside the Palace, and the busy
traffic of the street streaming up and down the slope past coffee-houses
and clubs. Ever since that morning when, in his brave scarlet-and-gold,
he had come off King's Guard, he appeared to have been fulfilling a
definitely arranged programme. A sort of desperate calm settled upon him
as silently he rose to follow the messenger to the Conciergerie.

He was completely ignorant of the bureaucracy of the Revolution, and to
him the Public Accuser was merely a name. He knew only, as all Europe
knew, that the Conciergerie was the last halt on the journey to the
scaffold, and that, in the ill-famed prison, Marie Antoinette had spent
the last night of her life before setting out to be reunited to her
hapless husband.

The members of the Committee had broken out into conversation again as
though a summons to the Conciergerie at midnight were all in the day's
work. Hector took courage from their nonchalance. From the approaching
interview, he told himself, he might at least hope to derive some
information regarding this mysterious Jean-François Charpentier.

Grand-Duc touched his arm.

'I told you our mutual friend was expecting you,' he said. 'You should
have waited on him at once instead of letting him send for you. Come to
the Section to-morrow and tell me how you got on.'

Hector would have liked to ask his mentor who the Public Accuser was.
But he was afraid of rousing his suspicions, so, saying he would see him
in the morning, he took his hat and, nodding to the company in as
democratic a manner as possible, made for the door.

'_Hé!_' cried the humpback, 'you are forgetting your cloak!'

Hector turned in a panic. Grand-Duc took the black silk cloak from a row
of pegs on the wall and was about to hand it to Hector when he stopped
and, holding the garment up in front of him, scanned it curiously. With
a hurried word of thanks, Hector made to take the cloak from the
humpback, but Grand-Duc stepped back and avoided him.

'A woman's cloak!' he said mockingly. '_Ma foi!_ You lose no time,
citizen! Only a few hours in Paris and a gallant rendezvous already!'

With an effort Hector mastered his growing nervousness and tried to
carry it off.

'I must have made a mistake at the Café des Mille Colonnes where I dined
to-night,' he said, 'and have taken this woman's cloak in place of my
own. If you will give it to me, Citizen Commissary, I will return it in
the morning!'

'Do that!' said the humpback. 'Some pretty _citoyenne_ is crying her
eyes out for it to-night, I shouldn't wonder!'

He was in the act of handing the cloak over when something caught his
eye. It was a little shield or tab sewn to the interior of the cloak.

'Ah!' he remarked, and held the cloak up towards the light. 'Here is
perhaps the owner's name!'

The badge showed a little embroidered Cupid with bow and arrow above the
words: '_Au Cupidon, rue de la Loi._' Through eyelids half-closed the
Commissary shot a quick glance at Hector. It made the young man
uncomfortable. It was as though the mantle-maker's address had told the
humpback something. Grand-Duc had grown suddenly reflective. He dropped
the cloak over his arm.

'Now I come to think of it,' he said, 'I can save you the trouble of
going back to the Café des Mille Colonnes. I live in the rue de
Beaujolais close by, and my servant shall run across to the café in the
morning, leave the cloak, and fetch yours. You can collect it when you
come to see me at the Section! _Allez, jeune homme!_ The messenger grows
restive!'

Hector dared not protest against this perfectly reasonable suggestion.
But he wished he had given some other explanation, and he cursed his
folly in forgetting the cloak. And he remembered with a pang that he
would not now be able to return the cloak to the shop as he had promised
the girl ...

       *       *       *       *       *

He had little recollection of that night walk through Paris in the wake
of his stolid and uncommunicative escort. His thoughts were very sombre:
at every turn fresh complications seemed to arise increasing the need
for vigilance, unceasing vigilance ...

A freshening of the air told him that they were approaching the river.
Presently they came out upon an open space with a railing along one
side, and Hector recognised the Palais de Justice. The guard turned
aside down a lane, and presently, at the foot of a gloomy tower, stopped
at a wicket on which he hammered. A small trap in the door slid aside
while an unseen face scrutinised them. Then the door opened.

Another gendarme presented himself.

'Is the Citizen Fouquier still there?' asked Hector's guide.

'In the registrar's office as usual!' the other replied. 'Twice he has
sent down to know if you had returned!'

Hector gasped. Fouquier! Of course, he was the Public Accuser! So this
blood-stained ogre was the 'mutual friend' of whom Grand-Duc had spoken.
Now came crowding into his mind a dozen tales he had heard from
_émigrés_ of this scoundrel, the link between the twin Committees of
Public Safety and of General Security and the guillotine, of his
cold-blooded ferocity, his cynical raillery of his victims, his
insatiable blood-lust. And in a moment he would meet him face to face,
this man he was supposed to know, the friend of the Citizen Charpentier.
He had no plausible tale to tell; and he gave himself up for lost.

In a cold sweat of apprehension he followed his guide along a corridor
to a door that stood ajar. Without knocking, the gendarme marched in. In
a second he reappeared and beckoned to the young man. Squaring his
shoulders, Hector Fotheringay prepared to meet his fate.

The registrar's office--the '_bureau du greffe_,' as it was called--was
a fair-sized apartment with dingy cupboards all round the walls save on
one side, where there was a door in a partition, the upper half of which
was glazed and looked into the adjacent room. The bare boards were
begrimed with the dirt of countless feet, the furniture was old and
dingy, the walls were stained with damp. The whole place exuded a
mournful atmosphere of mouldiness and decay.

At a large table in the centre, behind a rampart of documents, the
Public Accuser was seated. Before him was a burly man with a thatch of
velvety black stubble descending from his pendulous cheeks to the loose
folds of his double chin. He wore a dirty cotton blouse, and a great
bunch of keys dangled from a black leather strap that girdled his
capacious paunch.

'_Voilà!_' said the Public Accuser, and handed his _vis-à-vis_ a paper.
'The list of the sixty-one who will sneeze through Sanson's little
window to-morrow! I've taken off the name of this rascally _ci-devant_
abbé--what's his name ...?'

'Marchand, is it?' suggested the gaoler.

'_C'est ça!_ The Committee want to interrogate him again in the morning,
so we'll slip him into the evening batch. I dare say it will be the
same to him whether we shorten him at compline or at matins!'

The gaoler grinned. Then he said:

'Did the _Citoyen_ Sanson speak to the _Citoyen Accusateur-Public_ of
the trouble with the carts?'

'Yes, yes,' the man at the table replied. 'It will be gone into!'

But the gaoler was not satisfied. He had a string of complaints. The
carts arrived late. The ropes that came back with them were never
cleansed and the blood made them so stiff that they could be tied only
with difficulty. The Public Accuser plunged with avidity into all these
details, dragging up reports, returns, and memoranda from the immense
pile of correspondence before him. Gradually it dawned upon Hector, as
he listened with horror to the banal discussion of the ghastly
incidentals of their work of blood, that this man, with the livid,
pock-marked face and dull, fish-like eyes, the rims reddened from want
of sleep, was the type of jack-in-office, the petty official, meticulous
and hide-bound, prolix, pompous and pedantic, swamped with overwork,
suspicious of every one, trusting nobody but himself.

At length the gaoler retired, his list in his hand. Then only did
Fouquier-Tinville, lifting his lifeless eyes to the door where Hector
had remained standing, beckon the young man to approach the table.

'You have kept me waiting, Citizen Charpentier,' he said in a dry and
formal voice. 'You reported at the Lepeletier Section early this
evening, I understand. Why have I to send for you?'

Hector had already perceived that the new leaders of France would
swallow any amount of flattery.

'I was loath to derange the Public Accuser, who, as everybody knows,
labours night and day for the safety of the nation. I had intended to
write and ask when it would be convenient for the citizen to receive
me.'

Fouquier smiled and showed his yellow teeth. His smile was worse than
his frown, Hector decided.

'The guillotine keeps me busy,' he replied. 'And more work is yet to
come. Heads must fall like tiles off a roof before the _patrie_ is
safe.'

With feverish hands he began to rummage in the mass of papers
surrounding him.

'The Commissary Regnault wrote to me from Copenhagen in your behalf. He
is flattering to you, young man. I do not find his letter here for the
moment, but, in virtue of the citizen's recommendation, I propose to
give you a trial. Friend Regnault says that those reports on the members
of our mission to Denmark were your work! _C'est bien, ça!_ A spy who is
worth his salt must know how to worm himself into the confidence of his
fellows...!'

From a carafe at his elbow he filled himself out a bumper of neat
spirits and tossed it off. His voice was loud and vulgar, his language
coarse and freely dotted with disgusting oaths. Never had Hector even
imagined such a bizarre blend of cut-throat and bureaucrat, arrogant to
his subordinates just as he was, the young man guessed, servile to those
above him. His breath reeked of spirits and his hands shook. There was a
strained look in his face as though he feared sleep and the hours he
must spend alone. It was clear that he relied on work and alcohol to
distract his mind from the spectres whose names filled the dusty
_dossiers_ that littered his table.

'You have the _flair_ for _espionage_, Regnault says,' he resumed. 'Have
you the nose for conspiracy, citizen? Can you smell out the stinking
_calotte_ of these rascal priests hiding under the red cap of liberty?
Can you track down treacherous scoundrels like Danton and Hébert who
plot the ruin of the nation? I have work for you, citizen, important
work. But first I shall test you; first I must try you out!'

His husky voice sank to a whisper, his head fell forward on his chest,
his basilisk eyes were veiled. His lower jaw drooped as, hunched up in
his chair, he gazed into space with the vacant, fascinated stare of an
imbecile. It was as though he saw something between him and the dingy
presses round the walls.

But presently he started, and wearily passed his hand across his
forehead.

'What was I saying, _nom de Dieu_? Who are you?'

He stared vaguely at Hector. Then:

'_Ah, oui_,' he said, recollecting himself. 'It was for the Citizen
Couthon, I remember. He has asked me to recommend him a young man as
confidential secretary. It is a fortnight since he first spoke of it,
and every time he sees me he wants to know if I have found him the right
man. For fifteen days, Citizen Charpentier, I have kept the post open
thinking you might suit, and this very evening the Citizen Couthon rates
me for an idle _coquin_ for failing him. And you are in Paris the whole
time without reporting to me, _sang de Dieu_!'

'If I had only known, citizen ...' Hector began.

'_Ta, ta, ta!_' he said irritably. 'The post is still open. A word from
me and it is yours. But what did I want to say?'

He spoke with a visible effort of concentration that plainly spoke of a
brain deadened by overwork and excesses of every kind.

'You will see the Citizen Couthon. A great orator, the Citizen Couthon,
a great patriot, who has gathered into his hands much of the power of
the party. He has many friends and many, many visitors. It will be a
good experience for you. You will learn much in the house of the Citizen
Couthon!'

For a moment his listless eyes searched the young man's face. Then he
began to grope among his papers again.

'Wait, I give you a word for the citizen,' he said.

For a little while the silence of that sad and dingy room was broken
only by the scratching of the quill pen across the paper. Hector sat and
watched dully. He was trying to realise that Jean-François Charpentier,
Jacobin spy, had definitely stepped into the shoes of Hector
Fotheringay, Lieutenant and Captain in His Majesty's Third Regiment of
Foot Guards.




CHAPTER XI

COUTHON


In the Paris that Hector Fotheringay had known the rue Saint-Honoré had
been, like the Strand in London, in the main a business thoroughfare. It
was a street of shops and offices and _bourgeois_ apartments. In these
tall gaunt houses with the high-pitched _mansarde_ roofs the social
scale tapered pyramid-wise from the wealthy tradesman, who occupied the
first floor, to the artisan or the little modiste, who lived under the
tiles.

But the Revolution had changed all that. The Terror had ruined trade and
the rich _bourgeois_ were fleeing from Paris. The Convention that, for
nearly two years now, had sat day and night without a break, had drawn
the whole political world to the rue Saint-Honoré and the streets
adjacent to the Tuileries. Here the political clubs had their
meeting-places, and all about, in apartments and in single rooms, the
representatives of the people lodged, trailing behind them, in a squalid
cortège that tramped all day up and down the dark and grimy staircases,
the tatterdemalion figures that were making the history of France.

It was on the morning following his first momentous evening in Paris
that Hector Fotheringay penetrated into this swarming antheap. A good
night's rest, a shave, and a change of linen had done much to restore
his courage, and he set out for the house of the Citizen Couthon in an
adventurous frame of mind.

His ignorance of French politics was his sure shield. He had heard of
the Citizen Couthon for the first time on the previous day. He had
remarked, it is true, the curious effect which the mention of the name
had produced upon his landlady when he had asked her that morning to
direct him to Citizen Couthon's lodging. But he had already discovered
that people in Paris had acquired a strange distaste for politics.
Either through fear or indifference they did not discuss them; their
talk was all of food and the growing difficulty of obtaining it.

Of a gendarme that stood under a carriageway guarding an invalid chair,
Hector asked if the Citizen Couthon lodged within the house. There was a
great coming and going about the _porte cochère_--deputies with their
sashes, officers, National Guards--and, even as the young man spoke to
the gendarme, two mounted messengers rode up from different directions,
and, springing from the saddle, vanished into the house.

'The Citizen Couthon lives on the second floor above the _entresol_,'
the gendarme replied. 'But without an appointment, _tu sais_, it's
useless. Besides, he is going out at once to the Convention.'

But Hector had his note from Fouquier, and, nodding to the gendarme, he
mounted the stairs. The front door of the apartment indicated stood
open. The hall was full of people. Some sat on a bench, others stood
about, while a group surrounded an apple-cheeked maidservant in a
mob-cap. They all talked at once, and the woman raised her hands to gain
a hearing.

'The Citizen is working and must not be disturbed,' she announced. 'He
goes very soon to the Convention. You can see him there or at the
Committee of Public Safety. _Citoyens, citoyens_, you waste your time to
stay!'

She broke away from them, but Hector stopped her. He showed her his
letter.

'From the Public Accuser,' he said.

An uneasy expression crept into the woman's face.

'From the Citizen Fouquier?' she repeated in a dying voice.

Hector nodded.

'It is most urgent,' he prevaricated.

Slowly the woman wiped her hands upon her apron.

'Wait there a little,' she whispered, and took the letter from him. 'I
will tell the Citizen Couthon.'

Some of the bystanders, who had overheard this brief dialogue, nudged
one another and scanned the young man with undisguised curiosity. His
appearance seemed to excite their merriment, in some cases even their
resentment. Instinctively he felt himself bristling up as he marked the
sneering lips, the mocking eyes. But he controlled himself. Hector
Fotheringay, he reflected bitterly, could no longer afford to take
offence.

In all the company he discerned a certain studied shagginess which
contrasted strongly with his own trim and clean appearance. It was as
though they rivalled one another as to whose hair should be the most
unkempt, whose neckcloth the most ragged, whose clothes the shabbiest.
The rather theatrical poverty of the lamented Marat had set the mode.
These _sans-culottes_, Hector found, paraded their tatters very much as,
in far-off Saint James's, men paraded their cravats, their horses, or
their women.

'Ps-sst!'

The maidservant called to Hector from a door at the end of the hall. The
company fell back as he crossed the lobby, and, after passing through a
small apartment that, from the decked table, seemed to be the
dining-room, he was shown into a large square chamber.

The room was newly decorated in white-and-gold, and very tastefully
furnished with a suite of white-and-gold furniture upholstered in
apple-green. A beautiful Aubusson carpet covered the floor and a
splendid Buhl clock ticked on the white marble mantelpiece. The
apartment was bright and airy and flooded with the sunshine that poured
through the windows.

At first Hector thought he had the room to himself. But suddenly, from
the depths of a tall _bergère_ that stood facing the light with its back
to the door, a grating, querulous voice spoke.

'What is it? What is it? Why don't you come in?'

Hector advanced until he could see the occupant of the chair. It was a
man of indeterminate age in a white dressing-gown, a wrap flung about
his legs. Arched brows met above an aquiline nose; and his mouth was
small and well-shaped, his chin pointed. Altogether his features were
good; but they wore the pinched and suffering expression of a confirmed
invalid, and their tint was leaden.

As Hector came forward, the man in the chair straightened himself up and
looked at his visitor with the imperious mustering glance of one who is
accustomed to judge men swiftly.

'You are the Citizen Charpentier of whom the Public Accuser speaks?' he
asked. His voice was most disagreeable, rasping like a file, with a
touch of the unmistakable accent of the Auvergnat.

'Yes, citizen,' said Hector.

'Show me your papers,' the man commanded, with a suspicious glance at
the other. His thin hand drummed nervously on the arm of his chair.

Hector detached from his hat his _certificat de civisme_. The invalid
scanned it carefully and handed it back.

'After Marat,' he said, 'the patriot Robespierre has, only a few days
since, all but lost his life to the knife of an assassin hired by the
infamous Pitt. On the same day the Deputy Collot was murderously
assailed as part of the same foreign conspiracy. Those whose lives are
precious to the welfare of the State have, therefore, to be unceasingly
vigilant.'

The self-assurance with which he spoke was the expression of a vanity so
ingrained as to stand on a higher plane than mere vulgar boasting. His
French was careful and correct, and his speech devoid of the obscenities
and oaths that had so strongly spiced the table-talk at Chrétien's.
Almost for the first time since he had clambered down from the Calais
Mail at the Messageries, Hector felt himself to be in a normal
atmosphere.

'At the tribune of the Convention to-day,' Couthon proceeded, 'I shall
deliver one of my great speeches denouncing the conspiracy aimed at the
lives of my fellow guardians of the Republic. _Tenez_ ...'

From the folds of his dressing-gown he drew a wad of foolscap. Unfolding
it, he began to declaim:

     _Pitt, Coburg, and you all, cowards and petty tyrants, who regard
     the world as your inheritance, who, in the last instants of your
     agony, struggle with so much fury, sharpen, sharpen your daggers.
     We despise you too much to fear you and you well know that we are
     too great to imitate you ..._

He looked up quickly to see, Hector thought, if his audience was
listening.

     _... But the law_, he trumpeted, with uplifted, menacing
     forefinger, _the law whose reign terrifies you has its sword poised
     above your heads; it will strike you all. The human race has need
     of this example, and Heaven, whom, you outrage, decrees it!_'

He broke off again.

'You come from abroad?' he said. 'Tell me, how do they judge me in
foreign countries?'

'The reputation of the Citizen Couthon is immense,' Hector improvised
rapidly.

'As an orator I have no equal,' the invalid rejoined. 'Again and again
the Assembly decrees that my speeches shall be placarded throughout
France. You have heard of my great oration against atheism? Robespierre
is sound in the matter of his speeches. But he is always a lawyer. _Que
voulez-vous?_ For eloquence they come to me. More and more do the
demands upon my time as France's national orator encroach upon my
labours at the Committee of Public Safety and the Club des Jacobins. I
am overwhelmed with work. My anteroom is thronged day and night. I
require some one who will canalise for me the stream of citizens who
daily seek out in his home Couthon the patriot, Couthon the great
Republican. On the recommendation of the Citizen Fouquier I will give
you a trial. Your nascent patriotism shall be cherished and strengthened
in the sternly moral home of the great tribune under the benevolent eye
of Madame Couthon, mother of my two innocent children!'

Suddenly he caught his side. A violent spasm of coughing tore at his
chest. His livid face went greenish-white and the perspiration stood out
on his forehead. With a trembling hand he pointed at a bottle that stood
on a table against the wall. Hector fetched it and measured a dose out
into a glass. The invalid tossed it off. Little by little the coughing
ceased, but was succeeded by a fit of hiccoughs so violent that it
threatened to rend the sufferer's frame. Presently, too, this seizure
passed away, leaving the invalid pale and breathless.

'I suffer, always I suffer!' he gasped. 'It is as though Heaven were
jealous of the great services I render to the Republic and strove to
hamper my zeal with this twisted and broken body. Bah! My limbs may be
stunted, but my brain is unimpaired. Never forget that, Citizen
Charpentier. If my enemies should seek to seduce you, do not let this
crippled body mislead you. My spirit is unbroken. If the salvation of
the nation should demand it, even as with my hammer I condemned the city
of Lyons to destruction, so I should willingly depopulate France, making
genius, talents, honour, and industry disappear, that the Republic might
live. Sanson and his pupils guillotine with so much rapidity; twelve
heads fell the other day in thirteen minutes! The bloody harvest that is
ripening will stimulate them to greater efforts, and it is I, Couthon,
who wield the sickle!'

He fell back panting, his eyes suffused with blood, froth at the mouth.
Hector realised that this neurotic creature, all brain, was more
dangerously homicidal even than Fouquier and his masters, 'the
despatchers.'

'Now I go to the Convention,' said Couthon after a spell. 'Take from the
adjoining room my coat and hat, citizen; you will find them on the
couch.'

Hector obeyed, and assisted the cripple to dress himself for the street.
Couthon eyed him.

'You are strong, young man,' he said. 'You shall carry me downstairs to
my chair. You will be less clumsy than this _animal_, Javoir, the
gendarme who attends on me! Return here at one o'clock, young man, and
I will acquaint you with your duties!'

He stretched out his arms and clasped them about Hector's neck. His wrap
slipped to the ground, disclosing two shrunken, dangling legs, slight as
a child's, powerless as a puppet's. His breath was fetid and his hands
were cold and dank, like the body of a frog. With an unconquerable
feeling of disgust, Hector picked him up--he was not heavy--and bore him
from the room.

Under the _porte cochère_ the gendarme still waited with the chair. It
was a strongly built piece upholstered in lemon-coloured velvet with two
solid wooden wheels in front and a small wheel behind. Above the two
arms two handles projected which, by a system of cogs engaging on the
front wheels, enabled the occupant to propel himself forward. In this
strange vehicle Hector deposited his burden; the gendarme carefully ran
the chair off the pavement into the roadway, and, elbows out, head
thrust forward, hands rotating briskly, away the Conventionnel went,
rattling over the cobbles. He had no need to call for room; for at the
sound of his approach the traffic scattered and men fell silent or
whispered awe-struck beneath their breath: '_C'est Couthon!_'

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus Hector Fotheringay entered upon his new occupation. Every morning
at eight he arrived at the rue Saint-Honoré, and from that hour until
late in the evening, sometimes till far into the night, he was at the
beck and call of the cripple. He was amazed at the indomitable energy
that dwelt within that shrunken frame. Long spells of frightful pain,
blinding headaches, and accesses of violent hiccoughing did not affect
the _Conventionnel's_ astonishing capacity for work. Upon his shoulders
fell the burden of most of the great administrative reforms of the
Government: he closely followed political developments in the provinces;
he was largely concerned with the all-important question of the
food-supply of Paris; and he was one of the most frequent as well as the
most prolific speakers at the bar of the Convention. He took the keenest
possible interest in the work of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and, in
innumerable cases, personally drafted the instructions for the Public
Accuser and often for the President of the Court as well.

His immense tenacity was the inspiring genius of the new law that
stripped the Revolutionary Tribunal of even the semblance of a court of
justice. It was his will that he or his fellow dictators in the
Provisional Government, Robespierre and Saint-Just, in decreeing the
arrest of a suspect, should send him, in the same breath, to his death.
And so the great shadow of the Terror lengthened over Paris as the
packed carts lumbered to the guillotine, the toll of shuttered shops in
the rue Saint-Honoré, marking the ruin or flight of the shopkeepers,
became even longer, and the Palais-Égalité, that Hector had lately found
so gay, grew dark and deserted.

But the secretary of the Citizen Couthon, busy from dawn to dusk, was
glad of the work, because it left him so little time to think of the
glittering triangle knife that he seemed to see, day and night, hanging
poised above his head....




CHAPTER XII

THE TIGER AWAKES


He was haunted by the appalling danger of his position. It preyed upon
his mind. As he elbowed his way through the greasy crowds that hung all
day about the Convention and marked how the Revolution had brought to
the surface the lees of the Parisian populace, always the most
potentially violent mob in the world, he felt forlorn, abandoned, a
straw drifting aimlessly upon an angry ocean. It broke his sleep of
nights, those hot and breathless nights that a torrid June had brought
upon Paris.

Night after night he would awake with a start, bathed in perspiration
from some ghastly nightmare peopled in turn by Fouquier and his friends,
or Couthon with his fetid breath and leaden face. Or he would find
himself again in Engstrom's house with the man Philippe falling dead at
his feet, and he would start up, the smell of burnt powder in his
nostrils, the sound of heavy footfalls in his ears. But the smell of
powder was only the odour of newly roasted coffee and the footfalls
those of the serving-maid come to wake him.

Sometimes Betty, fresh and fragrant, flitted through his dreams,
elusive, unattainable. He would long for the touch of her small, cool
hand to comfort him, he would strain his ears in sleep to catch the
vibrant tones of her voice that always so strongly stirred him. But he
could not reach her: figures would always interpose themselves, the
Vicomte with his burning, passionate regard, or Maxeter, ignoring his
erstwhile friend with cold, haughty stare. And he would open his eyes to
the blazing sunshine of another day with the tears of longing yet wet
upon his cheek.

He was now lodged in the rue Helvétius, within a few minutes' walk of
the Citizen Couthon's, in the house of the Citizeness Fourbe. She was
cousin by marriage of the gendarme, Javoir, one of Couthon's bodyguard
of two, who had recommended the place to Hector as being clean and
respectable. For the present, at any rate, the young man's plan was to
render himself as inconspicuous as possible. He was therefore glad to
move his valise from the Hôtel des États Unis, with its continual
comings and goings, to the quietude of the modest back bedroom at Madame
Fourbe's.

His position at Couthon's forced him to be more than ever circumspect as
to his movements. Remembering what the man Philippe had said about
meeting Engstrom at the Café Conti, he had thought of visiting the café
on the chance of meeting, through the agency of the red snuff-box, some
of Mr. Gray's people in Paris; for he knew there must be others. But
very reluctantly he had relinquished his intention. If, as seemed almost
certain, the arrest of Engstrom had led to the disruption of his
organisation, the place would surely be watched. With every day that
passed, he realised more clearly that the downfall of Engstrom signified
the absolute annihilation of any prospects of success he might have had.
He felt that he was now wholly cut off from home, that no longer could
he count on the long arm of Mr. Gray stretching forth from Downing
Street to pluck him out of his desperate plight.

Fiercely he chafed at his forced inaction. Again and again he asked
himself to what good end he had braved the perils of his errand. He
found no reply. He had been drawn into the wheel work of the Revolution
and, a tiny cog, must play his part or be relentlessly crushed in the
machinery.

He long wavered as to whether he should risk calling on the girl at the
mantle-maker's of the rue de la Loi to explain his failure to return the
cloak. He had never ventured to keep his appointment with Grand-Duc,
hoping that, when no man's cloak was forthcoming at the Café des Mille
Colonnes, the matter would pass from the humpback's mind. The girl had
certainly known Engstrom and her name might well figure in the _dossier_
of the organisation. But Hector could not bear to think he had failed in
courtesy to this quaint little sempstress who had served him so well,
and he determined to take a chance and see her.

His duties, however, left him little leisure for private errands, and
more than a week elapsed after he had taken this decision before he
could contrive an opportunity. Here another disappointment awaited him.
Loison had left 'Au Cupidon.' 'The young person is no longer employed
here,' the acid and elderly forewoman had told him stiffly, and there
was that in her manner which had warned Hector not to push his curiosity
further. The girl had left no address, the forewoman said, and the young
man had quitted the shop with the uneasy feeling that, for all he knew,
he had been instrumental in costing the girl her position. He wondered
whether she had any family: she seemed very young to be cast forth alone
upon the rude mercy of revolutionary Paris. But he dared not make any
further enquiry after her and that for a very good reason.

One evening Grand-Duc had called. It was the day of the Feast of the
Supreme Being, and Couthon, decked out in his best, had left early in
his roll-chair to bowl along in the great procession of Deputies that
was to go on foot from the Tuileries to the Champs-de-Mars. All Paris
was out of doors, only Hector stayed at home, for Couthon's parting
injunction to him had been not to quit the house, as he himself would be
absent until late.

Hector sat dreaming over a great pile of correspondence in the apartment
of the rue Saint-Honoré. The sun was setting in a magnificent pageant,
and through the open windows there mounted from the street the sounds
and smells of the hot and dusty throngs flocking homeward from the
festival. In the distance resounded in fitful bursts of discordance the
fifes and drums of the Volunteers marching back from the review to their
great camp in the Plain of Sablons.

Suddenly the door of the sitting-room opened and the humpback appeared.
He was very smartly dressed in a brand-new butter-coloured frock suit
and top-boots with buff tops. He wore an immense stiff cravat, the front
of which was adorned with a large cameo head of Marat set in glass, and
there was a cluster of wheat-ears in his buttonhole. His hat and clothes
were white with dust.

'Couthon not in, citizen?' he said, blinking his lizard eyes that, after
the glare outside, were unaccustomed to the shuttered dimness of the
room.

'He has gone to the fête,' Hector replied.

'Aye, I saw him there, enthusiastically joining in the adulation of the
Citizen Robespierre. Some of us, I confess, had a different idea of this
Supreme Being. We had scarcely pictured him as a manikin powdered like
an aristocrat in a bright blue coat. _Pfui!_'

He spat noisily into the fireplace, and, hoisting himself upon the
table, looked down upon Hector.

'In your new position you forget old friends, it seems,' he remarked. 'I
have it in my mind that you promised to come and see me, is it not so?'

Hector felt horribly nervous. He recollected his fib about the black
silk cloak.

'You see how I am placed, Citizen Commissary,' he said. 'All day I am
here. I have not a moment for myself or my friends.'

'_Je sais, je sais_,' rejoined Grand-Duc. 'In any case your cloak has
not been found. Some worthy _sans-culotte_ has doubtless inherited it.
It should be a warning to you, citizen, to be careful of the places you
frequent. So _ce bon Couthon_ keeps you busy, _hein_? What a man! What a
prodigious worker! As if I did not have already enough to do at the
Section, he has charged me with the _Instruction_ in the Engstrom
conspiracy ...'

Hector's heart sank. How that name terrified him!

'A vast _affaire_!' the Commissary continued. 'We are only at the
beginning. Figure to yourself that this cursed rascal was two men, the
banker Engstrom in the rue Vivienne, the bookseller Poirier in the rue
des Petits Champs. Always he kept the two identities separate so that it
was only Engstrom who appeared at the rue Vivienne and only Poirier who
frequented the rue des Petits Champs. Where then did he disguise
himself? Not in the street, _évidemment_! What then follows?'

He glanced sharply at Hector. The young man's throat was dry with
apprehension.

'I ... I don't know!' he managed to gasp out.

The humpback threw up a finger.

'I will tell you,' he said. 'In one or both of his two houses he must
have had a secret entrance in rear by which he entered in the one
character to leave, by the front, in the other. This did not occur to
the _imbécile_ who, until yesterday, had charge of the case. It is my
first deduction. I shall act on it at once. To-morrow we carry out the
most minute domiciliary search of the two houses...!'

He rubbed his hands gleefully together.

'You will see I am on the right track,' he said.

He slipped from the table to the ground and extended his left hand to
Hector.

'I leave you,' he said. 'I shall not see my bed this night. I have the
whole case to study. All day I have wasted in this tomfool adoration of
the God of the _Sans-Culottes_. If you had seen this man to-day, mincing
along in his finery, careful to keep an interval between himself and his
fellow deputies, wallowing in the plaudits of the idiotic crowd!
Robespierre, Robespierre, pride goeth before a fall!'

He brushed the dust from his hat and clapped it on his head with an air.

'You will tell the Citizen Couthon from me that the Engstrom
investigation is _en train_. _Citoyen_, I salute you!'

And he took his departure, leaving Hector feeling that, slowly and
surely, from every side the waters were closing in on him.

The heat was terrific. All day and every day the sun blazed pitilessly
out of a sky that was like molten metal. Sometimes, when the hot wind,
whirling clouds of noisome, stifling dust along the neglected streets,
set from the direction of the Place de la Révolution, it wafted along
the narrow rue Saint-Honoré a sickening blast of decay from the red
shambles at the foot of the guillotine. The stench was so nauseating,
especially of an evening when the parched city seemed to lie panting
under the painted sunset, that the inhabitants of the _Quartier_ began
to murmur. So loud, indeed, did ultimately the protests grow that, one
day, Hector took down from the Citizen Couthon's dictation the draft of
a decree ordering the removal of the guillotine to the distant Faubourg
Saint-Antoine.

The decree was enforced. Thereafter the swarming street beneath
Couthon's windows heard no more the rumble of wheels as the daily
procession of carts that grew daily longer rattled over the
kidney-stones through the cowed and muttering crowds.

Couthon's home life was very tranquil. His wife was a placid and
taciturn _bourgeoise_ who went through life with a dazed expression on
her plain face as though she had never surmounted the shock of her
husband's elevation to power. Like most of the women of her standing,
she had but the vaguest notion of the tremendous events that were taking
place around her. She realised only that there were certain solid
advantages in being the wife of the all-puissant _Conventionnel_. There
was sometimes a carriage to drive out in and often there were tickets
for the theatre.

But best of all she was spared the food worries that beset the
distracted Parisian housewife in the summer of '94. The immense queues
that stood all day outside the shops in the sweltering heat knew her
not. The finest white bread, calves' brains, sweetbreads, and other
dainties to tempt her ailing husband's difficult appetite were always at
her disposal.

She went in obvious awe of her husband, though he treated her genially
enough, addressing her as '_ma bonne femme_' or '_ma belle_.' She was
good-hearted in an indolent fashion; and more than once she asked
Couthon to exercise his influence to obtain some favour for a humble
friend. For the rest she kept herself wholly in the background, busy
with her kitchen and her children, two beautiful boys with curling
golden hair and the faces of cherubs. Couthon was devoted to his
children, and would keep them in the room with him for hours while he
discussed with an inventor a project for a 'four-head' guillotine or
dictated to Hector a savage decree ordering bloody reprisals against
some insubordinate provincial town.

Hector took all his meals, save only his _petit déjeuner_, at his
employer's table. In the first days fear was his constant companion. He
was not afraid of his real nationality being suspected; for not only did
he speak and write French like a Frenchman, but his French blood had
given his temperament a natural adaptability which the narrowness of his
upbringing had never obliterated. But it was desperately hard to attune
his mind to the minds of these men of blood, and he had to be constantly
on the watch lest his feelings should betray him.

He was more concerned about his ignorance of French politics. He felt it
was bound to give him away. But gradually he began to realise that,
under the present rule, only those in the swim took any interest in
political matters. It was evident that Couthon did not expect his
secretary, at the outset, to be different from the bulk of the French.
And from what Hector picked up from stray references to the career of
the Citizen Charpentier, it was clear that he had left France before
the fall of the Bastille. The Citizen Regnault, French envoy at
Copenhagen, had found him there and used him to spy on the members of
the various missions despatched to Denmark by the Provisional Government
to buy supplies for the army. Charpentier was, therefore, not expected
to be posted on current affairs. Hector had a quick intelligence, and he
picked up the thread of things fast enough to receive the grudging
praise of the _Conventionnel_.

Couthon interested him prodigiously. He could not help admiring the
man's pluck. His health was wretched, he suffered agonies of pain, he
ate next to nothing; but he never gave in. He was a living brain working
incessantly, indefatigably, in a virtually dead body, a fanatic, but
cold and deliberate, his whole life vowed to the service of the State.
His very patriotism seemed to save him from the base ignominy of his
fellows. Like them he was savage and relentless; but it was as though a
motive higher than mere blood-lust, personal vengeance, or private gain
inspired him.

So he appeared to Hector until disillusion, swift and terrible, overtook
him and he saw the tiger awaken in this cold and bloodless man.

       *       *       *       *       *

One morning the _Citoyenne_ Couthon came into the sitting-room where
Hector was reading the _Moniteur_ to his employer. Couthon in his
dressing-gown was reclining on a couch set against the wall, a wrap
about his shrunken limbs. In his lap was a long-eared white rabbit which
nibbled at a leaf of lettuce that the cripple extended. Its fellow
crouched on the floor close by where Jean, the youngest child, a boy of
four, was stroking it with a chubby hand.

The _Citoyenne_ wore her habitual morning attire. It consisted of a
loose cotton wrapper and a red flannel petticoat girt about with a large
print apron. Her feet were thrust into shapeless list slippers and her
hair was tied up in an old scarf.

'Couthon,' she said in her flat, lifeless voice, 'there is a young
person in the kitchen who would like to have a word with you.'

'Who is it, _ma bonne femme_?' he asked amiably, and jocularly added:
'Not another Corday, I trust?'

'_Pardi, non_,' his wife rejoined. 'It's only a poor sempstress who has
worked for me in the past. She has lost her situation and is in great
want. She is looking for her brother who came up from our _pays_ to
Paris and thought that you might help her find him. You will see her,
_n'est-ce pas_?'

'_Bien sûr, ma belle!_ You can send her in.'

The _Citoyenne_ retired and presently they heard her voice at the door.

'Fear nothing, my child. My husband is very kind. _Va!_'

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the girl from the rue de la Loi. Hector knew her at once, though
she was sadly changed. She looked more ethereal than ever, as though a
breath of wind would blow her away. Her eyes were sunken, her small face
was drawn and wasted, and her fingers, nervously intertwined, were
pitiably thin. Her clothes were an extraordinary collection of odds and
ends. Over the flowered muslin dress in which he had seen her
before--more tattered than ever and now no longer clean--she wore a
man's uniform coat of faded blue with the tails cut off. Her little bare
feet were thrust into wooden shoes. On her pale blonde hair a stained
and ragged red cap, surmounted by the inevitable cockade, was poised
almost coquettishly. Hector felt a lump in his throat as he looked at
her, so frail, so timorous, so forsaken did she appear as she stood
there, her grey eyes raised appealingly to the terrible _Conventionnel_
on the sofa.

'Well, _mon enfant_,' said Couthon benignly, '_la Citoyenne_ Couthon
tells me you are from our country of the Auvergne.'

He spoke gently and with a paternal air that was well in keeping with
that pleasing picture of domestic bliss--the cheerful room with the
sunshine glinting on the golden curls of the child fondling the white
rabbit on the carpet.

'Yes, _citoyen_,' the girl replied.

'And what is your name?'

'Loison, _citoyen_.'

'And where do you come from in the Auvergne?'

'From Clermont, _citoyen_.'

Couthon nodded affably.

'I knew it well when I was younger. A beautiful country! You seek news
of your brother, _mon enfant_? How is he called?'

'Mallet, _citoyen_, Ferdinand Mallet!'

An extraordinary change came over the features of the _Conventionnel_.
It was as though his countenance were suddenly illuminated by some
internal fire. He struggled erect, heedless of the rabbit he had been
caressing, and the pretty animal leapt affrighted to the floor.

'Mallet?' he repeated. 'Mallet? Of Clermont?'

He fixed his pale-blue eyes, now blazing with a spiteful light, upon the
girl's wan face.

'Of the Château de la Tour?'

'Yes, citizen!'

'Your ... your mother,' he demanded--his voice had become hard and
grating--'where is she?'

'She is dead, citizen.'

'And Mallet, what has become of him?'

'My father is likewise dead.'

A ferocious and horrible joy gleamed in the cripple's livid face.

'They guillotined him, _hein_?'

'On the Place d'Armes at Clermont, citizen, in the Year One of the
Republic,' the girl rejoined impassively.

Couthon threw his head back and chuckled raucously.

'And you the brat of the _ci-devant_ Chevalier de Mallet and his
adulterous spouse, the wanton wretch that bore you, come here to claim
_my_ help?'

He flicked the wrap from his twisted puppet's legs.

'Look at your parents' work!' he cried in a whirlwind outburst of
passion. 'It is the fault of Louise de Mallet that I am a cripple. That
painted jade, your mother, lured me to the rendezvous that wrecked my
life. Your father lay in wait to surprise us, and it was he that forced
me to lie through the winter's night in a stream hiding from him. They
crippled me for life, the pair of them! They lamed my legs, but they
could not lame my brain. And it is my brain that shall stamp out the
whole of your accursed brood. Find your brother, shall I? Aye, I'll find
him for you and send him to sneeze into Sanson's basket. But you shall
go first, _ma belle_!'

He was screaming and stuttering with fury, an expression of tigerish
ferocity on his pale, dank face. He foamed at the mouth, and flung
himself about the gilded sofa as though, had he but had the strength to
rise to his feet, he would have hurled himself upon the girl. The
little child on the floor picked himself up and ran in terror from the
room, scattering the rabbits on his passage. But Loison stood still, her
hands clasped tight before her, staring in proud repose at the foaming,
writhing monster before her.

'Seize her, seize her!' shouted Couthon, and snatched at the bell-rope
that hung down the wall at his side. But at that moment the _Citoyenne_
Couthon burst in and flung herself upon the frantic figure on the couch.
She grasped the hand that clawed for the bell-rope and turned a
terrified face to the girl.

'Go, go, for the love of God!' she said.

Hector, who knew that the sound of the bell would summon Couthon's
gendarmes, sprang forward and touched Loison on the shoulder. The girl
seemed to awaken from a trance. She laid one hand on her breast and
looked up trustfully at him.

'Go now,' he whispered, 'and wait for me in the Orangery. I will come as
soon as I can!'

She nodded obediently like a little child; and, gathering her ragged
coat about her, went quietly from the room.




CHAPTER XIII

GRAND-DUC LAUGHS


The Orangery lay very still in the quivering noonday heat. An air of
peace rested over this quiet corner of the Tuileries Gardens. It was as
if a vestige of the old-world repose of the Palace and its
pleasure-grounds, driven before the raw breath of revolution, had sought
refuge and lingered in this tranquil nook. With its statuary, its prim
shrubs, its neat paths, it was like an oasis in the savage desert of
politics engirdling it.

On the one side, across a stretch of green turf, the Place de la
Révolution swam in the dancing heat rays. Through the close-set trees
that enclosed it on the other echoed the laughter and cries of the small
children gathered about the puppet-show on the Terrasse des Feuillants,
where a _sans-culotte_ Punchinello was beheading a wicked aristocrat
with the sweetest little guillotine imaginable. For the rest, the
sparrows that cheeped about the paths and the bees that hummed drowsily
above the flower-beds seemed to have the place to themselves.

Noon was past when Hector hurriedly entered the Orangery in search of
Loison. He did not see her at first, for she had chosen a seat on a
marble bench that a tall shrub concealed from view. Turning a corner, he
suddenly came upon her, nursing her knee in an attitude of profound
dejection. At the sound of his approach, she looked up, but averted her
gaze immediately.

'My dear,' said Hector, sitting down beside her, 'you've made a
dangerous enemy this morning.'

She coloured slightly.

'_La canaille!_' she said in a low voice. 'Oh, _la canaille_!'

'He made himself ill with rage,' Hector resumed. 'He's taken to his bed
and the doctor is with him now.'

'Did you hear what he called my mother?' the girl said hotly.

Hector took her hand and patted it.

'Don't think of that now,' he replied. 'Can you leave Paris? It were
best you were out of his way. Have you any place to go to?'

'And what does it concern you?' she demanded, facing him. 'You showed me
Engstrom's countersign that night at the rue de la Loi. But I suppose
you are a spy, one of Fouquier's _moutons_! I don't care! You can tell
them to come and take me!'

The young man sighed.

'I'm not what you think I am,' he answered. 'I have been forced into
this position at Couthon's. I went to your place as soon as I could to
explain why I had not sent back the cloak, but you had gone. Grand-Duc,
of the Lepeletier Section, found the cloak, and I had to tell him I had
taken it by mistake from a café in the Palais-Égalité. He said he would
change it, and I didn't dare to try and get it back from him. I felt as
though I had been basely ungrateful to you. I don't think I even
properly thanked you for what you did for me that night ...'

She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were very sad.

'I did it for Engstrom. He was my only friend,' she said. 'And you, who
are you?'

'Only a poor hunted wretch like yourself,' he replied.

Her mood changed. Her eyes grew tender, and she smiled wanly.

'_C'est vrai?_' she asked him. 'Will you help me? Everything is so ...
difficult ...'

Her head fell forward, and suddenly she lurched against the young man's
coat. Hector caught her in his arms.

'Loison, my dear, what ails you?' he said.

But she had not fainted. She disengaged herself from his arms and put
her hand wearily to her head.

'I'm hungry,' she whispered. 'I'm weak! I can't go on!'

Hector sprang up.

'My child, I never guessed,' he said--how could he? He had never seen a
human being dying by inches of hunger in his world of Saint James's. 'Do
you think you can walk as far as the rue de Saint-Florentin? I know a
woman there who will give you food!'

She stood up, so white and woe-begone in her pitiful rags.

'It will be dangerous for you to be seen with me!' she said
hesitatingly.

The young man took her arm.

'Couthon will do nothing to-day,' he said. 'Now you shall eat, and
afterwards, we shall see!'

There was a dairy in the rue de Saint-Florentin where privileged
housewives of the _Quartier_ like the Citizeness Couthon obtained milk
and eggs and butter. The dairywoman was dependent on the Citizen Couthon
for her permits to leave Paris on her periodical foraging expeditions
among the outlying farms. This was one of the routine matters with which
the secretary dealt. He thought that Madame Bompard would be anxious to
oblige him.

His confidence was not misplaced. In a democracy it is the
understrappers who possess the real influence. The wise make friends of
the subaltern officials who can so easily abridge the most tiresome
formalities. As Hector anticipated, the dairywoman, the whole of whose
trade was surreptitious and in flagrant contravention of the system of
'maximum' prices introduced by the Government, was all smiles. He told
her he wanted a meal for a young girl, a friend from the country.

'_Mais comment, citoyen!_' exclaimed Madame Bompard. 'She is outside,
this little one, you say? The friends of the _Citoyen_ Charpentier are
my friends ...'

She plucked open the back door leading into the courtyard where, by
prudence, Hector had bade Loison wait.

'Advance, little one! _Grand Dieu_, the child looks famished! I haven't
much to offer, _citoyen, tu sais_--a little omelette, a bowl of milk, a
few cherries. What does that say to thee, _ma petite_? Oh, _citoyen_, it
is not worth the trouble!'

She said this, rather half-heartedly, to Hector, who had laid an
assignat on the counter. She protested a little more, eyeing the money
hungrily the while, but ultimately, with many expressions of gratitude,
slipped the note into the till. Then she began bustling about her
kitchen where the bluebottles buzzed angrily on the window-panes while
Loison and Hector seated themselves at the dirty table.

But when the meal was brought, Hector rose and stood over against the
stove. He did not wish to embarrass the hungry child by watching her at
her food. She ate and drank in silence, but when once he ventured to
steal a glance at her, he found her regarding him with a curious,
enquiring expression in her grey eyes.

'And now,' said Hector, when, with many greetings from the _Citoyenne_
Bompard, they had passed out into the street, 'the sooner you go home
the better--that is, if you have a home to go to!'

'I have a room,' the girl replied wistfully, 'but it is far from here,
citizen, beyond the Pont Neuf. And I am not sure whether I can return to
it!'

'Why not?' demanded the young man.

The girl flushed up.

'I owe three weeks' rent!' she said in a low voice.

'Then it shall be paid,' returned the young man gaily. 'You must look
upon me as your banker, Loison. I have it in my mind, before I take you
home, that you and I should make some purchases together. I am free till
four o'clock. Do you think we can buy you some better clothes than these
in the time?'

'Since you are so good to me, give me a little money for food,' she
said. 'I can manage with my clothes a little longer ...'

'We shall buy food as well,' announced Hector, 'if you know where in
your Quartier to get it, which, I confess, I don't. And, Loison, don't
call me "_citoyen_"! My name is Jean, Jean-François Charpentier--_de
Mademoiselle le très obéissant serviteur_!'

The allusion amused her. She laughed a little cooing laugh and flashed
her white teeth at him. She had the milky teeth of a child. Then,
growing solemn again, she asked:

'Are you a _ci-devant_ aristocrat, _cito_ ... I mean, Jean?'

'Something like that!' said Hector.

'I thought so that night, the first time I saw you,' she replied
reflectively. 'You reminded me of Engstrom. He always bore himself
bravely, too. He never looked cowed like these cursed _sans-culottes_,
the ...!'

And she rapped out the expletive that had so startled Hector at their
last meeting.

'That's a foul word in your mouth, Loison,' he said. 'You ought to
remember that you are of gentle birth!'

'No word is too foul for _canaille_ like Couthon!' the girl burst out.

Hector laughed.

'I quite agree,' he answered. 'But if we talk like them, Loison, we
might get to think like them. There are not many _ci-devant_ aristocrats
left alive in Paris. You and I have to maintain their reputation for
good manners. You know the old saying, "_Noblesse oblige_" ...?'

She stopped and looked intently at him.

'"_Noblesse oblige_,"' she repeated. 'That brings back to me the days
when I was a little child. I used to copy that out in my writing-book.
But that was years ago in our château outside Clermont-Ferrand. It seems
so long ago I had forgotten it. "_Noblesse oblige!_" Tell me again, what
does it mean?'

'It means that you must never let yourself forget you are a
_ci-devant_!' Hector answered, and the girl grew silent.

Through the blazing heat they regained the Tuileries. In a quiet corner
of the gardens Hector gave the girl a wad of assignats. She turned the
money over in her hand with an air of stupefaction.

'For clothes and to get some food,' the young man said.

She uttered a little gasp.

'But you are mad!' she exclaimed. 'Never in my life have I seen so much
money! Why, I could buy up the whole of the Père Isidore's stall with
this!'

And she sought to thrust the packet back into the young man's hand. A
few livres would be ample, she protested: when she could afford to buy
clothes, she went to the Jewish dealers in the Vieux Marché du Temple.
Second-hand clothes were good and cheap just now; for the guillotine
ensured a steady supply. Hector shuddered. It was horrible to think of
this delicate young girl wearing the cast-off garments of the poor
wretches despatched in packets to the slaughter.

'This time you needn't trouble the Père Isidore,' the young man told
her. 'You shall go to a _modiste_ and order what you like and to a
milliner as well!'

And he handed her back the notes. Then only did her womanly instinct get
the better of her French sense of thrift. Her eyes grew bright with
excitement and the colour mounted in her cheeks.

'It's ... it's like a dream,' she sighed contentedly. 'I've never had
any new clothes of my own since I grew up. I was only sixteen when they
cut off the head of Papa, and then Mamma died and we had no money. I
came up to Paris with my nurse to stay with her daughter. But poor
Nounou died, and they ... they were unkind to me, so I ran away. My
brother, who is twenty-four, went to Paris when Papa died, and we never
heard from him again. I tried to find him, but in a great city like
this, _que voulez-vous_?

'Since then I've very seldom had enough money even for food. If it
hadn't been for a girl I met who got me work at Madame Aicard's in the
rue de la Loi, I should have starved. Often I used to wonder if I should
ever have any of the pretty things we used to make for the
_citoyennes_. We had a very distinguished _clientèle_ "Au Cupidon."
Sometimes in the evenings when I stayed behind to finish an urgent order
after the other girls had gone home--like I did the night I met you
first--I would dress up and pretend I was a rich _citoyenne_ myself. But
_I_ needn't trouble any _modiste, citoyen_ ...'

'Jean,' corrected Hector.

'Jean, _alors_--I shall buy the material and make myself a dress. I know
where to go. It will be cheaper, too, to buy from the wholesale
dealers!'

Hector nodded.

'And safer, as well,' he said. 'We shall have to see about getting you
away from Paris, my dear. In the meantime you must stay at home, and
your dressmaking will give you something to occupy the time.'

'I can go out after dark and do my shopping,' the girl replied.

'No, no,' said Hector. 'We will do what is necessary now. You must not
go out again until I come for you.'

But the girl would not hear of it.

'Already you have risked too much for me,' she declared. 'If you and I
are seen together, your position with Couthon is ruined forever.
Remember that this, this'--she broke off, biting her lip, and shot a
humorous glance at her companion--'_enfin_, this Couthon means to
deliver me to Sanson if he can. Believe me, Jean, it is better we should
part!'

They had reached the Seine quays and stood for a moment at the parapet
watching the stream of traffic that passed to and fro above the yellow
river swirling through the hoary arches of the Pont Neuf.

'No!' cried Hector. 'My debt to you is not yet paid, Loison. Perhaps you
are wise to warn me against compromising my situation with Couthon, for
while it lasts I should be able to help you. But we cannot part like
this.'

She turned and looked at him.

'Leave me, at any rate, now,' she pleaded. 'My friend, the city is
swarming with spies, and already Couthon may have heard that you have
been with me! Let us go our ways till happier days arrive! Leave me,
Jean, I beg!'

'Tell me, then, at least,' he pleaded, 'where you live. I must know
where to find you in case I can contrive to get you out of Paris!'

'I am dangerous, dangerous to you!' she said in a low voice.

'Give me your address and I will leave you now!' Hector persisted.

Still she hesitated.

'It is not wise,' she said.

'The address!' urged the young man.

She shrugged her shoulders.

'I live in the Impasse du Paradis--it is in the rue de la Cruche Cassée,
behind Notre Dame--the house of the Citizen Braille. But you must not
write--it is not safe. If you come, come only after nightfall and ask
for the Citizen Darras--he will know if I am in, and you will thus
arouse no suspicion. He is an honest man. I shall tell him you may
come.'

She held out her hand.

'Adieu!' she said.

'Au revoir!' he answered, and pressed her thin fingers in his. 'Promise
me, Loison, you will not linger in the streets. The sooner you are
safely back in your room the better!'

'I shall lose no time,' she promised. 'Good-bye, and thank you . . .
Jean!'

With that she turned and left him. He watched her until she had gained
the bridge and was lost to view in the press of traffic. Then slowly he
made his way back to the rue Saint-Honoré.

The first thing he heard on entering Couthon's apartment was the fluty
voice of Grand-Duc. He would have drawn back, but it was too late. The
sitting-room door stood open, and Madame Couthon, who was within, called
out to him.

Hector had not seen Grand-Duc since the Feast of the Supreme Being. But
he had not forgotten the humpback's promise to hunt for a back entrance
to the apartment of the rue Vivienne. He wondered what his presence
portended. He was not left long in doubt.

'Imagine to yourself,' exclaimed the _citoyenne_ and drew Hector into
the room--'imagine to yourself, Charpentier, that this _coquine_ whom I
befriended this morning is a dangerous conspirator!'

Directly he entered the room, Hector perceived that the atmosphere was
unfriendly to him. He found himself face to face with Grand-Duc, who
stood by the window, his hat under his arm, his hands behind his back,
his short legs straddled wide. His strange amber eyes glinted
unpleasantly.

'My poor Couthon,' lamented the woman. 'Did one ever hear of such a
thing? _Bon Dieu de bon Dieu!_ A young girl like that! _Citoyens!_'

She inclined herself towards the two men and sailed off to her kitchen.
The door slammed ominously. There was a moment's pause. Hector realised
that he was expected to say something. The humpback's sturdy silence
made him feel horribly nervous.

'Is this true?' he asked. 'The Citizen Couthon was greatly upset. But I
imagine it was a private matter!'

The humpback looked searchingly at him.

'I heard of this girl's visit on coming here just now,' he said, 'to
report to the Citizen Couthon that we had discovered a secret entrance
to the conspirator Engstrom's lodging in the rue Vivienne. This back way
leads through a mantle-maker's shop, known as "Au Cupidon," in the rue
de la Loi, where this girl, Loison Mallet, was recently employed.'

Hector had his part to play. He knew that the time had come for him to
play it. The suspicious glare in Grand-Duc's eyes dismayed him. How much
had this man found out?

'That's very curious,' Hector remarked, 'for that was the name on the
cloak I took by mistake from the Palais-Égalité. Do you recollect,
Citizen Commissary?'

Grand-Duc stared fixedly at the speaker. Hector met his gaze
unflinchingly. He was surprised to find how cool he could be now that
the critical moment had arrived.

'I remember it very well, Citizen Charpentier,' the Commissary replied.
'What is even more curious is that, two days after the police visited
Engstrom's house, this girl absented herself from her work at Madame
Aicard's establishment. And then only it was discovered that a black
silk cloak was missing!'

'Not the one that I picked up by mistake?'

'The identical one!'

Hector shrugged his shoulders.

'It is, indeed, fortunate,' he said, 'that I am well accredited;
otherwise, I suppose one might say that my connection with this cloak
was suspicious. I hope you regard me as above suspicion, Citizen
Commissary?'

The humpback shot him an enigmatic glance.

'Where the security of the Republic is concerned,' he rejoined, 'no one
is above suspicion. But do not fear, _citoyen!_ We shall get at the
truth. Already we know that Engstrom used this girl to let him into the
shop so that he could gain his house by the back way unseen. Already we
are on the track of their friends, even of the young man who sought news
of the _Citoyenne_ Mallet two days after her disappearance from the
_atelier_!'

He laughed discordantly.

'The great owl sees in the dark,' he said.




CHAPTER XIV

THE IMPASSE DU PARADIS


Three days later the Citizen Couthon left Paris. By the doctor's orders
he was going to make a short stay at the waters of Saint-Amand. He was
accustomed to assert that he derived great benefit from his periodical
visits to the spa, and the doctor encouraged him in his belief.

A large, bluff man, Dr. Largier, with a smooth, round face beaming
through horn spectacles and a restless hand that forever flicked away
the traces of snuff from the breast of his bottle-green surtout. Careful
trimming had made his career. He never committed himself in medicine,
and he had applied the same safe and simple plan to politics. Thus
skilfully ballasted, the full tide of the Revolution had swept him from
a provincial back-water to a snug haven in Paris, where he was content
to waive his fees from the important political personages he attended in
consideration of certain material advantages which these valuable
relationships secured him.

Good Dr. Largier had a finger in every pie--mud pies, most of them. He
frequented the company of bankers and _agents de change_ and army
contractors. Where there was a million-livre deal in rotten hay or
paper-soled boots for the army going forward, when an adroitly
manipulated political situation raised or depressed the _rentes_ at an
agreed time, by a whisper in one quarter or a note in another this
agreeable and well-informed Dr. Largier usually contrived to net his
share. He was a popular figure in the wormeaten world of finance of the
First Republic; for in the circles he patronised, honest men were rare,
and as he had no character so he had no enemies. For the rest, his
patriotism, which was of the most ardent description, was, like his
diagnoses, strictly non-committal; he was a tremendous talker, and he
was fond of parading a classical education in his speech.

'_Cher grand ami_,' he said to Couthon, as, on the evening of Loison's
visit, that worthy lay shaking and hiccoughing in bed, 'for a chronic
dorso-lumbar pachymeningitis such as you are suffering from, believe me
there is nothing like the healing waters of Saint-Amand. How truly did
the Greek philosopher proclaim: "_Ariston men hudor_"--"water is best."
A little cooling medicine which I shall give you, a few days' rest from
your indefatigable labours, "_sub tegmine fagi_," the devoted attention
of your noble companion, the charming citizeness, will--I, Largier,
confidently assure it--restore that mental vigour--if not your full
bodily strength, for I, humble follower of Æsculapius, cannot, alas!
work miracles--which the safety of the nation finds indispensable. Go,
worthy patriot, seek in your Gallic Tusculum a brief respite from the
crushing cares of office. Impose upon yourself this sacrifice and
lighten the hearts of those who cherish and admire you!'

He rolled out these turgid periods with considerable unction, and,
having vigorously polished his spectacles on a fold of his coat, popped
them on his nose and gazed seraphically through them at his patient.

But the physician's idyllic picture did not at all please the invalid.
He was extremely loath to give up the direction of affairs even for a
day. If he were to follow the doctor's counsel, he made it a condition
that his secretary should accompany him. Largier knew his patient's
domineering disposition too well to seek to oppose him.

'By all means,' he agreed. 'Provided you are convinced that you will do
better to have your amanuensis with you rather than leave him in Paris
where he can watch the trend of political events on your behalf.'

The patient wavered, as the doctor knew he would. Couthon's suspicious
mind instantly saw all kinds of intrigues set afoot by his enemies as
soon as his back was turned. After a great deal of argument and a second
devastatingly learned oration from good Dr. Largier, a compromise was
reached whereby the Citizen Charpentier should remain in Paris, but
should prepare a daily summary of current events for despatch each
evening by mounted messenger to Saint-Amand.

Hector's heart rejoiced. Since the scene of the morning he had conceived
a violent aversion to the cripple. This loathsome creature, with his
foul breath and clammy touch, his insatiable ambition and overweening
vanity, his tigerish ferocity lowering behind a screen of _bourgeois_
punctiliousness, now seemed to him even more revolting than the
black-hearted and bloody-minded Fouquier, who, all said and done, was no
better and no worse than he appeared to be. In the days that followed,
the mere presence of the cripple filled the young man with horror; but
the thought of the coming respite heartened him.

The morning of departure dawned. Below, in the freshness of the June
morning, the travelling _calèche_ stood at the house-door. Javoir, the
gendarme who was to accompany Couthon to the spa, was busy stowing the
famous roll-chair safely away on the roof of the vehicle. Upstairs
Hector, under Couthon's eye, was taking note of a hundred different
instructions which the cripple, dressed for the road, dictated from his
couch.

The _Citoyenne_ Couthon in a huge poke-bonnet, a little basket of
provisions on her arm, bustled in followed by the apple-cheeked maid
with the two children. They were to accompany the _Conventionnel_ to
Saint-Amand.

'_En route, l'ami!_' cried the Citizeness, and opened the door.

'I am ready,' Couthon replied, and held out his arms to Hector.

A wave of physical nausea swept over Hector as the thin arms of the
cripple slid about his neck. Couthon was very light, and Hector felt how
easy it would have been to pitch the grotesque creature with the
dangling legs through the open window on to the stones of the street far
below. But the young man mastered his feelings, and, carrying the
cripple downstairs, deposited him on the back seat of the _calèche_.

Now the whole household was safely bestowed. Javoir folded up the steps
and slammed the door, then swung himself up on the box, the driver
clicked with his tongue and touched up his horses.

'Be diligent at your post, Charpentier,' screamed Couthon at the window
as the wheels began to move.

'See that this _imbécile_ Muron'--this was the other gendarme who was
being left behind--'locks up every night after you go,' admonished the
citizeness over her husband's shoulder.

'Remember your orders! If that _coquine_ of a Mallet comes back, you
are to seize her and send her to Fouquier!'

The cracked voice was swallowed up in the rattle of the wheels. At last
they were gone. Hector breathed again. For a week, for seven whole days,
he would have the apartment to himself.

The relief was immense. He yearned for a respite from his crushing
anxiety. He felt that he was breaking beneath the strain of the
incessant suspense. He wanted time to think, to compose a plan of
action. That Grand-Duc meant mischief he was now almost sure; the very
leisureliness of the Commissary's procedure filled him with gloomy
forebodings. With some surprise as well; for every day now men went to
the guillotine on the flimsiest of evidence. He could only surmise that
the intense rivalry between the different committees of the Terror
shielded him for the moment. He was useful to Couthon; and Fouquier, who
never worked for his own hand, had, he imagined, placed the Citizen
Charpentier in Couthon's household for some specific purpose not yet
apparent.

All this Grand-Duc might know and, realising the powerful patronage that
the young man enjoyed, was biding his time until he had built up an
overwhelming case against him. Hector had already learnt quite enough
about the astounding intrigues and counter-intrigues in the inner ring
of the Government to realise that quite possibly Grand-Duc was working
in the interests of some more highly placed personage, in order to
involve in Hector's fall Couthon and perhaps Fouquier as well.

In all this network of plot and counterplot, however, a certain measure
of safety lay. If he could manage to keep a bold face, he might yet
stave off Grand-Duc, who, for the moment, at any rate, did not seem sure
of his ground. Apparently he had not yet learnt of Hector's visit to
Engstrom's, and, although he knew that a young man had enquired for
Loison at the shop, he had not yet secured a witness who could
definitely identify the visitor. The only person who could do this was
the acid and elderly forewoman, who, Hector remembered, had been alone
in the shop when he had called. It was odd that Grand-Duc had not
brought her forward.

And yet, though his own situation was precarious enough, Hector found
his mind engaged much more with Loison's plight than with his own. The
process was unusual, and it surprised him.

Hitherto in his life he had had to think only of himself, his career,
his amusements, his affairs of honour, his debts. Betty, even, had never
dwelt so insistently in his thoughts as this insignificant little
sempstress. Betty, after all, had her own assured income, such as it
was, a devoted aunt, an established home; he had never had to bother his
head about her safety, about her material comfort. But now this little
girl had become a definite charge upon him, a responsibility none of his
seeking, but a responsibility none the less.

He could avoid it, of course. He could take the dismissal she had
offered him and put an end to an acquaintance which both of them
recognised to be dangerous. But here again he felt, as he had felt on
leaving the great dim room in Downing Street, that he was no longer
dependent on the approval of others. He was a law unto, he must judge
for, himself.

Not that for a moment he thought of evading this responsibility. But, in
the long musing fits in which he indulged, walking to and from his
lodging or lying awake at night, he discovered with surprise that, here
again, Destiny had taken charge of his life and, unsought, interwoven it
inextricably with the life of another.

That same evening he went off to the Impasse du Paradis. He had much to
talk to the girl about. He was anxious to ascertain, for one thing,
whether she had any relations in the country to whom she could go. Her
connection with Engstrom was still unexplained; it was important to find
out how far she was implicated in the meshes of Mr. Gray's organisation.
He and the girl would sink or swim together, he realised that. Already
she was cornered; while his existence at Couthon's hung from a single
thread. Unless soon they could get into touch with Engstrom's band--if
any survivors remained--their ultimate fate was sealed.

In a rookery of old streets beneath the shadow of Notre Dame, so narrow
that their entrance was a mere slit between the ancient gabled houses,
he found, after long searching, the rue de la Cruche Cassée. It was a
quarter of vanished splendours, a region that had fallen on evil days
before ever its strait lanes had rung to the stamp of '_La Carmagnole_.'

Here, in the days of Henri IV, great nobles of the Court, fat
ecclesiastics of the adjacent Cathedral Chapter, had had their mansions.
Slender turrets yet glanced suspiciously down from high walls set flush
with the narrow streets; there were vast courtyards, glimpsed through
gateless portals, where grass thrust up its green shoots between the
stones. The great _hôtels_, with their overladen, crumbling façades,
were now abandoned to the lowly. Barrels, stacks of timber, empty
waggons, that filled the echoing courts, spoke of the merchants who had
installed their businesses in the stately apartments of the lower
floors, while above, even to the garrets, whose windows flanked the
carven panoplies of arms below the high-pitched roofs, the rooms were
now given over to the lodging of all manner of humble folk.

At the end of the street a faded tavern sign that hung motionless in the
heavy evening air told Hector that he had reached his journey's end. '_A
l'Enseigne du Paradis_' he read upon the board. Before him opened an
alley so overshadowed by the crowded buildings that, even at noontide,
scarce a ray of the sun could have penetrated it. Now, an hour after
sunset, it was almost dark, a place of gloaming, silent and deserted, so
narrow that a couple of Hector's Guardsmen could hardly have marched
down it abreast, that ran for some fifty paces, to end against a high
blank wall.

Hector looked about him for some one who could show him the house of the
Citizen Braille. But the law of the 10 Prairial, Couthon's measure, was
in full vigour, and Paris was slowly dying in its relentless grasp. The
spies of the Convention were everywhere and denunciation meant death.
Men sat at home o' nights, or, if they went abroad, hurried by on their
business, distrustful of every stranger. And so the rue de la Cruche
Cassée was deserted.

Accordingly Hector turned down the alley to hunt for the house. He went
to the end before he found it. Set against the high wall, which, by the
green foliage waving above the iron railing surmounting it, seemed to
enclose a garden, was a tall, crazy old house, grey and weather-beaten,
its plaster cracked and stained with damp. A mournful silence enveloped
it, and as Hector stood in perplexity the only sound that came to his
ears was the rustling of the trees above his head.

And then a painted board caught his eye. 'Braille, Cordonnier,' it said.
It was fastened to the gatepost of the house with a rudimentary drawing
of a hand pointing to a cellar door that stood flush with the pavement.
Various boots and shoes and slabs of leather that stood in diamond-paned
windows flanking the door corroborated the evidence of the pointing
finger. But the door was solidly padlocked, so Hector, without more ado,
entered beneath the frowning carriageway.

He mounted a stone staircase, the steps deeply worn by the feet of the
centuries. The house was very still, but as he passed the second
landing, a woman popped her head out of a door. The sight of a stranger
seemed to terrify her, for she withdrew and would have shut the door had
not Hector adroitly stemmed it with his elbow.

'The _Citoyen_ Darras, _s'il vous plaît_?' he asked civilly.

'The fourth floor!' gasped the woman, white to the lips, and, with a
vigorous push, slammed the door in his face.

'I must look like a _sans-culotte_!' the young man said to himself with
a smile as he continued to mount.

He had learnt his lesson from the mocking faces in the lobby of
Couthon's house. By letting his hair grow rather longer than would have
met the approval of his adjutant, by not brushing his clothes, and by
making the process of shaving a triweekly instead of a daily operation,
he had contrived an appearance of comparative dilapidation in keeping
with the _mode_ of the moment. He had been obliged, it is true, to
consent to dingy neckcloths, but he consoled himself by knowing that
the rest of his body-linen was clean.

A battered door confronted him as he turned the stair to gain the
fourth-floor landing. It was innocent of knocker or bell, so Hector
rapped on it briskly with his knuckles.

No sound followed. The silence of the house was unbroken. And yet the
place did not give the impression of being empty. The silence was the
silence of fear, the silence of a darkened room where there is a man
holding his breath to avoid discovery. Hector had a mental picture of
frightened citizens, like the woman he had seen, sitting behind each of
the innumerable doors he had passed, listening to the footsteps that
mounted, mounted, wondering if the summons they portended was for them.
He had raised his hand to knock again when, from below, came the creak
of a light footstep.

It was not an ordinary footstep, the firm tread of one who is on
definite business. It was a light, padding step, frequently broken, the
step of one trying to make himself unheard. But Hector's sharp ear,
strained to the utmost watchfulness, caught the slight reverberation as
that unseen foot slipped on the worn-down stone.

He peered down the well of the staircase. A young man of about his own
build was creeping softly up the flight, balancing himself on his toes,
stopping repeatedly with head cocked up to listen. And now Hector caught
sight of his face. He recognised him immediately.

It was the young man with the rakish air and the brown hair falling
about his shoulders whom he had seen at the Section Lepeletier, the
young man called Maurice who had asked the guard to get him butter.




CHAPTER XV

ON THE STAIRCASE


This was the young man of whose prowess as a spy the humpback had
boasted. 'A fine blade' he had called him, his prize pupil. Maurice
must, indeed, be an adept at his trade to have made his way unseen in
Hector's wake through the deserted streets of Paris, for Hector, his
wits sharpened by his last encounter with Grand-Duc, had kept a close
lookout on his walk across the city. Grand-Duc, then, was having him
watched.

Noiselessly Hector leaned forward to crane his neck over the banister
again. With a shock he discovered that the spy had reached the floor
immediately below. He was standing there, motionless, listening. Hector
withdrew his head swiftly. One thought was uppermost in his mind, an
appalling thought that made his heart beat faster and his pulses race.

The battered door before him remained closed. No sound came from the
apartment within. He dared not knock again, for that would betray the
man at whose door he stood. And he knew that, trapped in this twilight
staircase, he could not escape the spy.

He must kill this man. To elude him would be of no avail, even had
escape been possible. Maurice must not leave the house alive to take
away the information that would send both Loison and himself to the
scaffold.

He must kill this man. From the floor below the soft scrape of that
stealthy footfall on the stone stairs began again. The banister moved
slightly, creaked. He must kill this man, swiftly, without noise ...

And now the spy's head appeared coming round the bend of the staircase.
Hector could see his brown beaver hat with its huge cockade. The man was
breathing hard from his climb. From the landing where Hector stood the
stair bent sharply upwards. Silently, with the utmost deliberation,
Hector began to move backwards until he felt the mounting stair beneath
his feet. Now he was on the first stair, now he stood on the second, out
of the sight--unless he leaned forward--of any one who issued forth from
the staircase upon the landing.

The creaking stopped. A soft footfall rustled; then silence. Hector
looked out gingerly. The spy stood staring at the battered door. Hector
drew himself up, his hands dropped to his side, his fingers spread,
waiting for the man on the landing to turn. Waiting ...

With a whistling sound the spy expelled the breath from his lungs.
Nonchalantly he put his hands on his hips, surveying that blank door
before him. Then he doffed his hat to wipe his brow, and, as he did so,
turned ...

Like a flash Hector sprang. The slight elevation on which he stood gave
him, as he had planned, the impetus he required. By the failing light
that fell from a window of the staircase at his back he saw surprise,
consternation, and then sheer horror, the stark and anguished
realisation of death flicker rapidly in succession across the rakish,
jaunty face. The brown beaver hat struck him across the eyes; but the
blow did not deflect him from his purpose. He had calculated his leap
exactly, and his merciless, throttling grip on the throat of the spy
checked the other from falling beneath that swift impact and held him
upright until his life was choked away.

And now the man was dead. He had not spoken, he had not cried out: only
a dull, wheezing rattle accompanied his death agony. Not until he felt
the man he clutched unstiffen and relax, and at last remain a loose,
sprawling puppet in his grasp did Hector, kicking the legs away, softly
lay the body down. Then only was it that, from the well of the
staircase, he perceived the uncertain and shifting glimmer of a light.

He glanced down. Far below some one was mounting the stairs with a lamp.
The dazzle in his eyes prevented him from seeing anything but the
swaying yellow gleam that moved slowly higher. What was he to do? He
looked at the stairs and from the stairs to the body. Maurice would take
no tales back to Grand-Duc alive. But dead?

Suddenly a voice spoke at his very elbow.

'Pardon, citizen, but it is not permitted to leave corpses on the
staircase!'

The battered door had opened. An extraordinary-looking individual stood
there. He was a big man with a great bushy beard like one of the
Apostles, a bandanna handkerchief bound about his head. He was wearing a
dirty white shirt over what appeared to be a woman's striped cotton
petticoat beneath which a stretch of hairy leg was visible. His bare
feet were thrust into a pair of tattered and downtrodden Turkish
slippers.

'There is, I understand, a large pit at Picpus for the reception of
inconvenient dead bodies,' he added gravely, 'and quicklime is at the
charge of the Government!'

He had picked up from the floor the dead man's hat with its flaunting
cockade and held it in his hand. With it he indicated a printed notice
hanging on the wall.

'"Tenants are forbidden to deposit rubbish in the staircase,"' he read
out. With an ineffable air of disdain he dropped the brown beaver on the
corpse at his feet and lightly brushed his hands together.

There was an inexpressible air of raillery about this man which his thin
and wasted countenance could not gainsay. He had small, roguish,
impudent eyes, and a large, humorous mouth. His whole face radiated the
most imperturbable good-humour mingled with a kindly cynicism.

The light in the staircase wavered ever nearer. Hector looked
despairingly at the man in the doorway.

'Help me!' he said simply. 'You must be the Citizen Darras, I think?
Well, I am the friend of Loison. This fellow followed me here and I
killed him. And there is somebody coming upstairs!'

The laughter faded out of the roguish eyes. The man stepped forward and
glanced over the banister.

'It's only the Père Braille, our landlord, putting the light in the
staircase. It hangs on the second floor. He never comes any higher
except to get his rent. And he's stone deaf! Nevertheless, we shall do
well to get _this_'--he stooped and grasped the dead man's
shoulders--'inside!'

Hector raised the legs, and between them they bore the body across the
threshold.

His companion closed the door. They were in a large, bare room with a
ceiling that ran sharply down. From the high window that at the far end
framed a patch of evening sky it seemed to be a studio, though there was
no sign of an easel or any of the other customary paraphernalia of the
artist. It was miserably furnished. Carpet or curtain there was not. A
small rusty stove with a long pipe that disappeared into the wall, a
truckle-bed all tumbled and scattered with clothing in a corner, a
table, littered with crockery and the remains of food, and a broken
chair constituted the entire furniture. The walls bore traces of former
occupants in the shape of various studies, mainly from the nude, done in
charcoal on the peeling and mildewed plaster.

'I am Darras,' said the bearded man. 'Loison spoke of you. I should have
opened before, but I was in bed. I am one of that large and
ever-increasing number of our fellow citizens, who, as long as they
preserve their heads in their normal positions between their shoulders,
are a source of continual exasperation to our governors. Not content
with changing the calendar, the Revolution has, for many of us, reversed
the process of nature. I sleep by day and go abroad at night. Hence my
delay in answering your summons, for which, my friend, I apologise!'

'The delay was providential,' Hector answered. 'Had you opened at once,
I might never have known that this rat was at my heels, and so brought
destruction upon you and Loison!'

'Destruction?' said Darras whimsically. 'Can these rascals destroy,
think you? The Revolution, citizen, has made us all philosophers. It has
brought home to us the great truth that life is but a very little
passage through the vast labyrinth of eternity. But their judicial
procedure, I confess, annoys me. I can conceive of nothing more
provoking than to be dragged before their famous Revolutionary Tribunal.
Let us, therefore, hope that this _beau monsieur_'--he touched the
corpse with his slippered foot--'came alone. Very often they hunt in
couples!'

Night was falling. The studio was almost dark. Only from the tall
window the lemon sky cast an eerie radiance athwart the dusky room
where, on the bare boards, the dead man lay.

'But let's get rid of him,' said Darras. He grasped the corpse by the
foot and dragged it, head bumping, arms sprawling, across the floor to
the truckle-bed beneath which he thrust it. Then, taking a cudgel from a
corner, he cleared a space on the table, and, mounting, rapped a
measured signal on the ceiling. He bent his head and listened. A muffled
knocking replied.

'Loison!' he remarked, and jumped to the ground. 'Mount to the next
floor, citizen. The door on the left is Loison's!'

'But what about ... him?' Hector asked, pointing at the truckle-bed.

'Him?' repeated the other, who was rummaging in the bed. 'I think you
can leave him to me, citizen. I am going out now to see whether this
unfortunate _contre-temps_ be not capable of adjustment.'

He turned round, a pair of ragged breeches in his hand. He held them up,
surveying them ruefully.

'Positively,' he remarked as he loosened the string of his petticoat, 'I
shall have to make myself an apron of fig-leaves like our father Adam or
a pair of goatskin pantaloons like _ce bon Robinson Crusoë_. This is the
only nether garment that remains to me save this dainty confection'--he
plucked a fold of his petticoat between his two fingers--'souvenir of a
gallant episode in days that are no more! The only consolation I have is
that I have never paid my tailor. In this respect, at least, you will
agree that my revolutionary principles are impeccable!'

'But,' exclaimed Hector, aghast, 'we can't leave the body here. What
arrangement can you possibly make? How can we take a dead body
unobserved through the streets?'

With the utmost deliberation Darras pulled on his breeches.

'It is evidently a question which requires consideration,' he observed,
tucking in the ends of his ragged shirt. 'But I do not despair of
finding a solution. For the present I would only remark, _mon cher ami_,
that you keep a lady waiting. Go to Loison now, but return here when I
knock: I may have need of you in connection with the affair in hand.'

So saying he extricated from a shabby old coat which he had taken from
the bed a flat leather case and laid it on the table. His nonchalance
was supreme. There was no bravado about his attitude. He went about the
business of dressing as though he had forgotten that dreadful livid
thing thrust away beneath the tumbled bed.

Hector held out his hand. 'Permit me, Monsieur Darras,' he said, 'to
take the hand of a brave man. Not only do you save my life, but you
assume a responsibility that rightly should be mine!'

The blue eyes of the Citizen Darras twinkled.

'_Allez!_' he returned. '_C'est un peu mon métier!_'--as who should say,
'It's all part of my trade!'

But he gave Hector his hand, and the two young men exchanged a hearty
clasp. Then Hector left the darkling studio with its dreadful secret. As
the door closed behind him, he heard Darras unconcernedly humming the
old French song:

    '_Il pleut, il pleut, bergère,_
    _Et plon, et plon, petit patapon._'

From under Loison's door a light shone dimly. Hector tapped.

'_C'est vous_, Darras?' a fresh young voice replied.

'It is I, Jean,' Hector said softly.

From the other side of the door came a little fluttering gasp. There was
a moment's pause. Then the door opened.

At first Hector could scarcely believe that three days could have made
so much difference in any one's appearance. It was a new Loison that
stood on the threshold, one small hand laid on her bosom, her cheeks
rosy with the eager flush of expectation. Her eyes had lost their
wistful look: her face was firmer and rounder, and its pallid, waxen
tint had vanished. Gone, too, were her rags, those pitiable, formless
rags that had hidden her graceful young shape. She now wore a little
blue gown, very plainly made, with a fichu, according to the _mode_ of
the time, of cheap lace, and short sleeves that displayed her slim,
white arms. Its simple elegance seemed to set off the inborn refinement
of this waif of the Revolution and to bring out a sort of natural
dignity that transfigured her. Such was the magic of the little dress
that the young man, gazing spellbound across the threshold, realised
that this was not a child, but a woman.

With laughing eyes she peered round the doorpost, eyebrows raised, hand
poised daintily, like a startled nymph. Moulded closely to her supple
figure the pretty gown emphasised the grace of all her movements. No
sound mounted to them from the empty staircase that descended into the
dim depths of the old house. The girl and the man were completely alone.
She dropped to the ground in an elaborate curtsey.

'Monsieur,' she whispered low, 'deign to enter!'

He started. So, or in such terms, had Betty last greeted him; with equal
grace had his cousin sunk in mock obeisance to the ground before him.
With no less pride than the Lady Betty Marchmont did this young girl now
bear herself; but there was no arrogance, only simple sympathy and
friendship, in the sweet and girlish face.

There came to him a breath of fragrance as he crossed the threshold. The
air was faintly perfumed with the evasive scent of mignonette, the sweet
savour that brings back to every exiled Englishman the memory of some
old English garden where the nightingale throbs her heart out to the
lucent moon. He saw the flowers in a box outside the open casement,
where, shivering in the velvet pall of night, the stars peered down into
the little room.

It was a squalid garret with a roof that sloped abruptly down to the
white muslin curtain that, at the far end, shut off the bed. But it was
clean and tidy. The bare boards were clean-scrubbed; the little dresser
was spotless; while the white crockery ranged on its shelves was
shining, and the few cooking-pots that hung beneath were scoured bright.
There was a small press for clothes, two chairs, and a round table on
which, in a pewter candlestick, the long flame of a candle quivered
yellow in the still air. In one corner was a small cooking-stove.

She came in and closed the door.

'All this,' she said, her arms outstretched, 'I owe to you, M'sieu
Jean!'

'Don't speak of that! You saved my life, Loison!' he said.

But she did not heed him.

'That night I first met you at the rue de la Loi,' she went on as though
she had not heard him, 'I had almost made up my mind to end it all. The
Seine runs high beneath the Pont Notre Dame; one little jump, and it is
peace. I could not earn enough to buy food, and I was always hungry. And
I had no friends except Engstrom. He was always kind to me; but to him I
was nothing but the little sempstress who would wait on in the shop to
open to him when he knocked or to any one who should show the scarlet
_tabatière_. He had no time for anything but his work; for he led a
hunted life, _le malheureux_!

'Then you came. You spoke to me differently from any one I had ever met.
You reminded me of something, some one, in my life that seems so far
away that it is even less than a memory, something that comes and goes,
_tiens!_ like the odour of my poor mignonette there. I wanted to meet
you again because you helped me to recall the old times. That night I
came back here to my room--I had no bed then; I used to sleep on some
sacks I stole from the slaughter-house of Sainte-Geneviève--determined
not to give up. I don't know why ...!'

She broke off. She did not look at Hector. Her face was turned to the
window, her eyes roaming out over the deep blue immensity of the night.

'You didn't return. I stayed away from Madame Aicard's--she is the
_patronne_ of "Au Cupidon"--because I was afraid they would say I had
stolen the cloak. I had only a very, very little money. Darras
downstairs helped me, but he couldn't do much, for he was as poor as I.
Two years ago, when they put Papa in prison, my brother Ferdinand went
to Paris. He spoke of enlisting in the army. I thought if I could find
him, he would look after me. Ferdo was always fond of me: there were
only we two children. But I didn't know where to look for him, and
Darras said we should have to enquire of the Government. Then I
remembered Couthon. I had heard my mother say more than once that she
knew him well before he went off to Paris and became a great man at the
Convention. If I had known what he would say about her ...'

Her voice broke, and she put her two hands to her eyes.

'Loison,' said Hector comfortingly, 'don't think of him!'

'_C'est bien, c'est bien!_' she said. 'I don't. But I cannot forget. And
I want to thank you, M'sieu Jean, for saving me, for making it possible
for me to live. I wish I could show you how truly grateful I am. Would
you like to be my lover?'

She had turned and faced him now. They were very close together. The
fragrance of the mignonette mingled with the perfume of her hair. He
looked into her eyes. More than once he had idly speculated about the
morals of this girl abandoned, almost a child, in the saturnalia of the
Revolution. Even as he had sat and talked with Darras, he had caught
himself wondering what degree of intimacy existed between her and the
towsled _rapin_ downstairs.

But he discovered no depravity, no prurient self-consciousness, in those
calm grey eyes. She put the question with utter simplicity.

As the young man gazed at her face there drifted back into his mind
various phases of his life, episodes with Nan and Moll and Petra, the
pretty Dane, wild nights at Mrs. Harvey's in Great Titchfield Street,
and a long (and expensive) entanglement with the Boldini of the Italian
Opera ballet. He had been, nay, he was, like the rest, a hunter; but
somehow, as he looked into the depths of those clear and steady eyes
mutely questioning his, he did not savour the zest of the chase.
Instead, the colour mounted in his cheeks, and he felt shy as any
school-boy.

The girl relieved his embarrassment.

'Lucie, the girl who had the room opposite,' she said, 'told me that men
paid money, much money, for love. That was how she made her living until
they guillotined her. Victor, Marie's husband--she was the daughter of
my old nurse: I used to live with them, you know--offered me money that
night he came to my room. But he was fat and gross and ... and horrible.
I couldn't bear him. That was why I ran away from them. But you are
different. I like you, M'sieu Jean: you have been kind to me. If,
therefore, you will take me, perhaps I can thus pay you back a
little ...'

A great and overwhelming pity rose up within him. For a moment he could
scarce trust himself to speak. What a picture of ravaged France her
ingenuous words portrayed! What a vision of broken-hearted parents
driven to the slaughter, their last instants tortured by the thought of
defenceless children left behind, of homes dispersed, of young girls
hurled from sheltered hearths into the maelstrom to learn the truths of
life from the lips of prostitutes, to grow to womanhood in an atmosphere
of blood and vice and violence! This tender girl, who had to steal to
get a bed, whose very speech told of her habitual associates, seemed to
him like a fair flower growing in a weed-choked garden. Her artless
offer of her young body in settlement of a trifling debt spoke of a
warmly generous heart. The pathos of it choked the words in his throat.

'You would be the first ...' she added; and broke off. A little colour
warmed her cheeks.

He put his hands on her shoulders and very gently kissed the smooth,
white forehead.

'There is no question of payment, my dear,' he said huskily. Then he
held her from him and surveyed her critically.

'So this is the new gown?' he remarked. 'Faith, Loison, you look
charmingly. I congratulate you on your _modiste_, mademoiselle!'

She blushed with pleasure.

'I made every bit of it myself,' she announced.

Then, arms outstretched, she slowly pirouetted round that he might view
the dress in its every aspect.

'I have organdie too,' she declared proudly, 'enough to make myself a
summer robe for best. But that is not yet done. This I wear for every
day--the material is good--and for when I go out, after nightfall, to
purchase food!'

He begged her to be careful, told her of his interview with Grand-Duc.
He would not disclose to her his encounter on the staircase; it would
serve no purpose and would surely affright her.

'Have you no one outside of Paris to whom you can go?' he asked.

She shook her head.

'Are you in touch with none of Engstrom's people?'

'None,' she said. 'He never spoke to me of his business, and I knew none
of his acquaintances. Apart from Darras, M'sieu Jean, you are my only
friend.'

'Reward me, then, by keeping within doors,' he pleaded. 'Believe me, my
dear, every time you stir abroad you are in the greatest danger!'

She sighed prettily.

'I'll do as you bid me,' she promised. 'I dare say Darras will buy me
food. But it will be dull sitting here. You must come and see me often,
M'sieu Jean!'

Then she did the honours of the tiny room, showing him her little
purchases, a coffee-pot, a casserole, some blue-and-white bowls, and the
like. All the time she prattled on of her experiences in the shops,
imitating the Flemish accent of the linendraper or the Polish jargon of
the second-hand dealer from whom she had bought her small black shoes.
As Hector watched her flit about the little garret, for the first time
for many days a great peace descended upon his spirit. It was as though
in this city of dementia and slaughter he had found a shelter from the
storm, a home.

'And now,' she cried, when he had done admiring everything, 'you and I
will sup together. _Ce n'est pas grand'chose, tu sais_'--with Republican
freedom she invariably '_tutoyéd_' him--'but at least I remembered that
one day I might have a gentleman at table!'

She bade him shut his eyes and he obeyed. He heard the clink of glass.

'Now open your eyes!' she cried.

Loison stood before him, her cheeks pink, her eyes dancing with
excitement. In either hand she held a glass of wine. The flagon from
which she had filled them was on the table. She gave him his glass.

'Before we eat,' she said, 'a toast!'

He stood up solemnly.

'To all good _ci-devants_!' she cried.

'I'll drink that gladly,' he exclaimed, 'coupled with the name of
Mademoiselle Louise de Mallet!'

She laughed in a little ripple of delight. Then they clinked glasses.
But before he could raise his glass to his lips, a muffled knocking
sounded from below.




CHAPTER XVI

THE CONVOY OF LA SALPÊTRIÈRE


'Darras!' exclaimed Loison, putting her glass down. 'I had forgot about
him, _le pauvre_! He shall sup with us! You don't mind, M'sieu Jean? I
will tap for him to come up ...'

'No,' said Hector gravely. 'That was for me, Loison. I must go to Darras
now.'

'But he can come up here!' protested the girl.

'No,' the young man replied. 'I must go to him.'

She tossed her head.

'If it's a secret ...' she said.

He took her hands.

'No secret,' he told her. 'Monsieur Darras and I have certain matters to
transact, that is all ...'

'Then let me come down with you,' she proposed eagerly. 'I will bring
supper and we will make a feast _chez_ Darras!'

The young man shook his head.

'No,' he answered firmly. 'I must go alone, Loison!'

Something in his tone arrested her attention. Her light-heartedness fell
from her like a cloak. Slowly she clasped her hands together. The colour
died out of her cheeks.

'You have grown so serious, you frighten me,' she said in a low voice.
'You are going to plunge into danger, my friend. Be careful, oh, I
entreat you, be careful! This Darras is reckless! He cares not what he
does or says! He will destroy you and himself as well ...'

He took her hands in his.

'On the contrary, I find your Monsieur Darras to be an admirably wise
man ...' he declared.

The knocking began again, slow and fumbling, but none the less
insistent, urgent in its summons.

'Good-bye, Loison,' he said as gaily as he might: 'I will come and see
you again soon!'

He turned to take his hat; but she caught him by the lapel of his coat
and stayed him.

'Take care of yourself for my sake,' she pleaded, her eyes misty with
tears. 'I shall not breathe freely until I see you again, _mon bon
ami_ ...'

She nestled to him and he put his arms around her slim young body.

'Have no fear!' he said. 'I shall not fail!'

Then he kissed her swiftly on the cheek and, snatching up his hat, was
gone.

Darras was waiting at the studio door as Hector descended the stairs.

'_Vous voilà enfin!_' the big man cried. 'Almost I feared you had gone.
_Faites vite, citoyen_, time presses!'

And he drew him into the room.

In the centre of the floor a long, shapeless object was now lying
swathed in a sack, the mouth of which was secured with rope. The leather
case that Hector had before remarked on the chair was now opened out and
displayed a number of gleaming surgeons' knives. A basin half-filled
with a reddish fluid stood on the table near by. On the truckle-bed a
brown beaver hat topped a pile of folded garments.

'It wants but twenty minutes to midnight,' said Darras, 'and at midnight
we must be at the Pont Notre Dame with that!'--and he pointed at the
sack with his foot.

'But ... whither are we bound?' Hector asked.

'Ask no questions now, but attend to me. We are going to carry that sack
downstairs. Speak no word, whatever happens. If we meet anybody in the
staircase, _tant pis_!--it is an accident against which we cannot
provide. In any case, it is unlikely to occur. Now, listen! When the
concierge pulls the string and opens the front door, you will dart out
and go to the end of the alley to see that the coast is clear. As soon
as you have satisfied yourself that the alley and the street beyond are
quiet, you will return at once to the house-door and tell me! _C'est
compris? Alors, en avant!_'

From the bed he lifted a heavy satchel which he hung across his body.
Then he blew out the candle. A broad glitter of moonlight flooded the
room from the tall window. Darras was stooping over the sack.

'Now,' he said in a low voice and raised up his end. Hector seized the
other. His hands slipped on a blunt, thick surface within the sack. He
groped in vain to get a hold.

'But,' he stammered out in horror, 'he ... it ... there is no head!'

'That also,' Darras replied, 'has its good reason. Come, take my end!'

They exchanged no other word, but, the sack borne between them on their
arms, moved softly out of the studio. There was a brief check while
Darras, stemming the burden against the wall, made a hand free to close
the door. Then quietly they descended the stairs.

With their heavy load they halted again in the darkened gateway while
Darras cried out boldly at the porter's window: '_Cordon, s'il vous
plaît!_' The latch clicked, and Hector sped down the darkling lane to
where the tavern sign swung gently in the night breeze. The rue de la
Cruche Cassée lay deserted in the moonlight. Every house was dark: not a
cat stirred. Swiftly Hector tiptoed back. The coachway was as black as
pitch. Blindly he groped for Darras's hand.

Together they carried out their grisly package. A rope was now attached
about the middle. They laid the sack down at the foot of the wall and
Hector closed the house-door. Darras was measuring with his eye the
height from the ground to the top of the high blank wall that shut off
the end of the _cul-de-sac_.

'You are lighter than I,' he whispered; 'mount on my back and gain the
top of the wall and draw ... him up after you. Wait! Tie the rope round
your arm, thus! Ready?'

He bent down sideways to the wall. Hector scrambled up upon that swaying
back. But he could not reach the top of the wall. He jumped down again.
Darras raised a hot red face.

'In two jumps I can do it, I think,' the young man whispered, 'only I
must take a run. Put down your head once again, I beg!'

He untied the rope from his arm and backed up the alley for a few yards.
With the flying start thus gained, he lightly leapt on the broad back
and sprang for the top of the wall. The rough cement tore his fingers,
but his grasp was sure and did not relax. With a vigorous hoist he
shifted his grip to the iron railings studding the wall and so drew
himself up.

It was at that moment that the sound of footsteps approaching the head
of the alley from the street reached them. Both heard it
simultaneously.

'Quick,' whispered Darras from the ground, 'the rope!'

He whirled it up. Hector missed it at the first attempt. The footsteps
came nearer. The big man's second throw was more successful. This time
Hector caught the rope and, bracing himself against the railings, began
to haul up that shapeless mass waisted like an hour-glass in the middle
where the cord was tied.

The load was immensely heavy. The perspiration rolled down his face as
with straining muscles, the rope cutting deep into his flesh, he hoisted
hand over hand the cumbrous package that came bumping and quivering up
the wall. Voices now resounded from the entrance of the
_impasse_--drunken voices loud in argument. Apparently a party of
revellers had stopped at the street-corner before dispersing homeward.

At last the body had reached the top. With a desperate heave that was
agony to his cut and bruised hands, he dragged that dead weight on to
the narrow ledge. He glanced down the wall on the other side. At the
foot of the rustling trees in the garden at his back the grass grew long
and dank. The brilliant moonlight showed it trembling and swaying in the
night wind. With a last effort he hoisted the heavy sack clear of the
railings and pitched it over. With a soft thud it vanished in the grassy
tangle below.

How bright the moon shone! On his lofty perch he must be a conspicuous
mark to any one who came down the lane. And now, oh, horror! the
invisible group at the mouth of the alley was separating. '_A demain,
les amis!_' said a voice. '_Bonne nuit, le vieux!_' a roistering chorus
made answer. Then came a confused murmur of men speaking together and
again the hollow ring of feet in the echoing street.

And Darras was yet on the ground! Twining one leg round the railings and
stemming himself against the bars, Hector leant forward as far as he
could reach with outstretched hand. Darras grasped it.

As he did so, Hector looked up. A man was coming down the _cul-de-sac_.
Hector could see him clearly in the moonlight, a stoutish figure that
lurched a little in its gait. Pray God the fellow was drunk, that, if he
saw them, he would not have the wit to raise the alarm!

The strain on Hector's muscles was terrific. He thought his arm would be
pulled from its socket. But he was young and vigorous and his grip held.
Steadily he drew Darras up until the big man stood safely beside him on
the top of the wall.

The drunkard had stopped at a door not a dozen yards away. But he did
not look up: he was fumbling for his key. Noiselessly the two men
clambered over the rusty railing and, with never a backward glance,
dropped to the ground on the other side. Once more they picked up their
burden and, breathing hard, staggered forward through a wilderness of
grass and thistles.

It was black beneath the trees; but Darras never faltered. It was not
the first time, the thought occurred to Hector, that his companion had
scaled the wall at night. They were in an old garden, long given over to
neglect, with chipped and battered statues, very ghostly beneath the
moon, that seemed to peer suspiciously through the foliage at the two
men as they plodded forward in silence.

They skirted a high brick wall with the long inky silhouette of some
building beyond and came to a wooden paling which they followed until
they reached a gate. Here they again bedded their burden in the grass
while Darras, signing to Hector to wait, fumbled with a catch. Then the
gate swung back, and he slipped through.

This strange man had the secret of silent movement. Like a shadow he
flitted away. One moment he was there, peering round the gate, and the
next he was swallowed up in the night.

'Ps-st!'

His bearded face appeared at the opening. Once more they picked up their
heavy load.

The gate debouched on a broad flat declivity that ran down to the river.
Beyond great cubes of merchandise--barrels, bales of fodder, and the
like--that dotted the slope in high stacks loomed black the long shapes
of the barges moored to the wharf.

Darras did not halt. He hurried his companion along the wharf, keeping
in the shadow as much as possible, until before them they discerned the
outline of a bridge. The wharf narrowed sharply to pass beneath it.

Not until they were in the Stygian darkness that reigned beneath the
arch did Darras halt and motion to Hector to lay their package down. On
either side of them, in the open, the lights of the bridge diffused a
yellow glimmer of light. The silence was intense. The faint lapping of
the swiftly flowing river against the quay was the only sound.

Hector doffed his hat and wiped his dripping face. But Darras gave
himself no leisure. Squatting on his haunches he untied the rope that
fastened the opening of the sack and, freeing the mouth, swiftly
disengaged the sack from its contents. Something that gleamed whitely in
the dimness appeared, the naked torso of a man, headless, with
red-rimmed neck ...

Hector felt his senses reel. On either side of him the half-circle of
moonlit quay seemed to grow and grow, and the dank odour of the sweating
stones of the arch came to his nostrils like the smell of a freshly dug
grave. But Darras caught his arm roughly. The distant rumble of wheels,
mingled with the protesting shriek of ungreased axles, had broken the
silence of the sleeping city.

'The convoy of La Salpêtrière!'

Darras had spoken, but his voice sounded as from afar in Hector's ears.
With deathly sickness surging over him, the young man leaned back
against the slimy sets of the bridge, staring with eyes of horror at the
white and shapeless thing that sprawled at his feet. He felt a rude
grasp on his shoulder. His companion was shaking him.

'Courage, my friend,' he said. 'In a little you will have need of all
your fortitude. Listen to me well! That cart that even now approaches
will presently pass over this bridge above us. On the bridge it will
halt to allow the driver to get down and take a stone from the horse's
shoe. It will not be for more than an instant, and we shall have to act
swiftly. The moment the cart stops, we will carry _him_ there up these
steps, which, as you see, lead from the quay to the bridge, throw him
over the back of the cart and return here without the loss of a second.
It is our only chance. Unless we are prompt, we are lost. You
understand? And, whatever you may see, keep a cool head and say
nothing!'

He broke off, hand upraised, to listen. But Paris slept on. Only the
mournful drone of the approaching wheels disturbed the warm and brooding
stillness. Side by side the two men waited.

And now, by the sound, the cart was close at hand. The axles sent their
despairing cry far into the jewelled night as though a lost soul,
imprisoned within the hubs, were clamouring for release. The bridge
shook and the arch reverberated to the thunder of heavy wheels. 'Yeoh!'
suddenly cried a gruff voice just above the heads of the watchers
beneath the bridge. The strident axles fell dumb: the noise of the
wheels was stilled. The cart had stopped.

'Now!' said Darras quietly.

The naked body lay upon its sack. Sack and all they raised it, Hector
most grateful for the rough fabric that saved his bare hands from the
chill contact, and bore it out into the moonlight and on up the steps.
Upon the bridge, not half a dozen yards away, a farm-cart stood, its
high wheels splashed with ancient mud, its tail towards them. Forward a
dim figure was seen stooping over the forefeet of the horse.

The cart's high back hid its contents from the view of the two men as
they approached with their burden. But over the side an arm hung limply
dangling and above the battered tail-board, fingers widespread, a hand
pointed straight at the sky. It seemed to be flung out in a supreme
gesture of protest, in mute apostrophe of Heaven.

Whatever the cart contained, its freight appeared to fill it almost to
the level of the sides, for a basket, balanced on the top, projected
above the tail-piece. From the basket a face looked forth, frozen to an
unchanging regard of mournful perplexity, with glazed, reproachful
eyes ...

Then Hector's nerve forsook him. He heard the slithering thud as their
freight was added to that unseen pile; then he turned and ran for the
steps, nor halted until the gloom of the sheltering arch had received
him once more.

'That cart ...' he gasped to Darras, who had followed sedately after.

'... is bound for the dissecting-room of La Salpêtrière!'

'Dissecting-room? Then you are a doctor?'

'Late surgeon at that same hospital. Every night the convoy of La
Salpêtrière goes to the Place du Trône to collect the specimens of the
day for dissection. Pierre, the driver, is an old friend of mine. Man is
mortal, citizen; but science never dies. Only the young and vigorous are
taken: my colleagues will be glad of _him_! And no questions will be
asked! One above, one under the number ... what is one among so many?
And if he should be recognised, _eh bien!_ it is a mistake. It won't be
the first time the wrong man has been presented to "The Widow,"
_allez_!'

Hector gave Darras his hand.

'I shall not forget,' he said.

'I was glad of the practice,' replied Darras. 'My hand loses its skill,
citizen. It is two years since I touched lancet or probe!'

Instinctively Hector's eyes sought the satchel at his companion's waist.
It was empty.

Above their heads with crying axles the convoy of La Salpêtrière rumbled
away into the night.




CHAPTER XVII

A MISHAP, AND WHAT FOLLOWED


It was shortly after his adventure at the Impasse du Paradis that the
crowning misfortune overtook Hector. For two days a press of work kept
him late at his desk at Couthon's. June was nearing its close: the
Terror was at its zenith: and Robespierre was all-supreme.

But the populace was losing its taste for blood. The knife as it crashed
down no longer heard the frantic applause of the dense mobs that, not so
long before, had made the office of 'Sainte Guillotine' a public
festival. Now the ragged _sans-culottes_ and the _tricoteuses_ were paid
to sit at the foot of the scaffold banished to the Place du Trône and
keep up appearances, and the tumbrils packed with victims passed through
silent streets.

Yet opposition to the dreaded dictatorship of the Jacobins was already
crystallizing. Despite their as yet unchallenged supremacy, Couthon's
colleagues were obviously apprehensive of their position in the
Convention. In the Committee of Public Safety the antagonism to
Robespierre had become so marked that he no longer attended the
meetings. There was a constant flow of correspondence to the house in
the rue Saint-Honoré, and Hector had the feeling that the seething
cauldron was showing signs of boiling over. Every day his budget of news
for the absent Couthon grew bulkier.

He saw no more of Grand-Duc. With bated breath he waited for some
visible indication that the spy, Maurice, had been missed. But nothing
happened. It was Hector's habit now, when he went abroad, to pause and
scan the street before sallying forth. But he never could detect any
sign that he was being followed. He began to wonder whether Maurice had
not been acting on his own initiative.

And then, on the second night, as, towards midnight, he stepped out into
the still warmth of the rue Saint-Honoré to walk to his lodging, he
noticed a shadow detach itself from the gloom of a doorway and follow in
his wake. He felt very unconcerned. He told himself he was the
confidential secretary of the Citizen Couthon on lawful purposes bent,
and he determined to wait his opportunity to round on the dim figure
that dodged behind him.

Accordingly he struck off into the cluster of narrow streets that lay
between the rue Saint-Honoré and the Boulevards, quickening his pace
somewhat so as to reach a certain _cul-de-sac_ he had in mind in time to
take cover and pounce out on the shadow when it should draw level. But
even as he reached the lane in question, a man stepped out of a doorway
and blocked the way. Hector moved on one side to let the other pass, but
the man did not budge.

'Citizen Charpentier?' he said.

Hector was not impressed by the speaker's looks. He was a
sullen-featured fellow with a drink-inflamed face.

'Why do you ask?' Hector demanded cautiously.

'Because I have a letter for him,' retorted the man in his hoarse and
beery voice.

Hector started. The letter could be only from Loison or Darras, he
decided. He knew no one else in Paris who would write to him.

'My name is Charpentier,' he said. 'Will you give me the letter?'

Odd, the way the fellow stared at him!

'I had it just now,' he muttered, searching his pockets. '_Nom de Dieu!_
Wherever did I put it?'

He kept glancing at Hector as he spoke. The young man felt vaguely
distrustful. Why did the fellow scrutinise him thus? And then, even as a
light step from behind fell on his ear, he realised the truth. The man
was looking not at him, but beyond him.

Quick as lightning he swung round; but he was too late. A terrific blow
crashed down upon his head, a great blaze of light flashed redly before
his eyes ...

When, twenty-four hours later, he regained consciousness at his lodging
at the Citizeness Fourbe's, he found that he had been robbed of all his
money.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a staggering blow. He had brought with him from England the sum
of two hundred pounds in French paper money, an amount which, Mr. Gray
had anticipated, would amply cover the expenses of his mission to France
and back. As an additional safeguard, however, in case anything should
go amiss, Hector had received a draft for a further two hundred pounds
drawn by a Danish house in London on Engstrom's bank in Paris. On
Engstrom's arrest and execution, however, the business was confiscated.
Hector quickly discovered that any attempt to cash a draft on a bank
under sequestration would involve him in endless and probably perilous
formalities.

And so, feeling like one who burns his boats behind him, he had
destroyed the draft. It was the only compromising paper in his
possession, and he could not afford to keep it, he decided. At the
depreciated value of the French currency two hundred pounds represented
a small fortune. His living did not cost him much; his lodging was
cheap, and though he received no wage from Couthon, he took all his
meals save the first breakfast at the table of the _Conventionnel_. He
was confident that, with careful management, he would be able to make
his money last until such time as he could contrive to find a way out of
France. He had had no qualms in giving away the equivalent of five
pounds sterling to Loison.

But now stark disaster stared him in the face. Without money he was
irretrievably lost. What a fool he had been to carry all his wealth
about with him! But could he have done otherwise? Pilfering was rampant
in the Republic One and Indivisible. In the hotels boots vanished from
the rooms and the very linen was filched off the beds. He had not been a
week at the Citizeness Fourbe's before a plausible rogue gained
admittance to the kitchen and made a clean sweep of the washing there
hung up to dry. His bag had included two of Hector's small stock of
shirts. Before this the young man had kept his money locked up in his
valise, but on this warning he had fashioned with scissors a rudimentary
pocket in the lining of his waistcoat and stowed his bulging pocketbook
there, putting it at night under his pillow. And now his store of money
was gone, and with it his watch, his seals, his keys, and his scarlet
snuff-box as well.

A little bundle of assignats, representing a few hundred livres, was in
a small silk purse he had kept in a drawer of the wardrobe. He had
forgotten to transfer them to his pocketbook. This money was all that
stood between him and blank penury. He staggered across the room and
feverishly ransacked the drawer. Thank God, the purse was still there
and the money in it! Then a wild idea seized him that perhaps his
landlady, when they had brought him home, had locked up his money for
safety. She was an honest woman, the Citizeness Fourbe ...

Wildly he looked about him for the bell-pull. Heavens, how his head did
ache! A gigantic pulse was throbbing in his brain, every beat like a
hammer-stroke upon the cells. His throat was dry, and, though his hands
burned, his whole frame shook with ague.

Suddenly the room seemed crowded with people: there was Darras with his
roguish eyes in the doorway--no, by God! It was Maxeter with a great
beard. And here with his narrow face and thin lips was Couthon crouched
in the armchair, his puny legs dangling, a pocketbook in his hand,
counting bundles of notes. By Heaven, Couthon had robbed him! He sprang
forward, but stopped short in horror. What was that strange,
white-gleaming thing propped up against the curtains of the bed with
livid hands and clutching fingers? It was headless: it was dead: yet
see! it came loping towards him. In a frenzy of fear he flung up his
arms to ward that horror off and shrieked and shrieked again ...

       *       *       *       *       *

Out of the mist two shining lamps emerged. A bright light flashed in his
eyes.

'It is the sixth day he has lain like this,' said a woman's voice. 'And
always he cries for his money, _le malheureux_! To think that honest
patriots should be stripped by footpads in the centre of Paris!'

The gleaming lamps came nearer. Strange that those brilliant discs
should grow smaller as they approached. Now Hector found himself looking
up at the spectacles that dominated the round and hearty face of Dr.
Largier. The room was in darkness save for a rushlight that glimmered in
a basin of water in the fender. But the doctor had in his hand a candle
that he was moving to and fro before his patient's eyes.

'A _conditio febrilis_, but without lesion of the cerebellum,' the sage
pronounced. 'We shall not need to bleed the young man again, citizeness.
See! He has opened his eyes. Well, well, _mon brave_, how goes it?'

'All right!' said Hector, and spoke without knowing it in English.

'What does he say?' demanded the doctor, turning to the landlady.

'God knows!' retorted Madame Fourbe. 'It is, I think, the Danish
language, for the Citizen Charpentier is new come from Copenhagen. In
his fever often he has cried out in this foreign tongue, _le
pauvre_ ...'

Hector heard her with a chill feeling of fear. He felt pitiably weak,
but his head beneath its bandages was cool and his senses were quite
clear. What had he not babbled out in his delirium?

'How long have I lain like this?' he asked faintly.

'This is the sixth evening since they brought you home robbed and
unconscious,' Madame Fourbe replied.

'Six days!' he repeated feebly. 'But what of my work? What of the
Citizen Couthon?'

He tried to struggle up, but Dr. Largier's plump hand stayed him.

'On learning of the dastardly attack on his secretary,' he said, 'the
Citizen Couthon immediately broke off his cure and returned to
Paris ...'

'Twice he has been here in his chair to enquire for you,' put in the
landlady, '_le brave homme_, in all this heat!'

'But I denied him the door,' said the doctor pompously. '"Let no outward
intrusion check the healing work of Nature!" was my decree. "No
visitors" I ordered, and, when Æsculapius commands, the patriot that is
Couthon bows his head!'

'No visitors!' That was the phrase at which Hector's slowly waking brain
snatched. Then only Madame Fourbe and the doctor had heard his fevered
babblings! That they knew no word of English was apparent. In grateful
relief he closed his eyes and sank into the deep sleep of exhaustion.

He awoke to find it was morning. The shutters were closed; but long
pencils of golden light streamed on to the shabby carpet of the bedroom.
He felt immensely refreshed, and it was only when he got out of bed that
he found out how weak he was. He managed to reach the window, however,
and, swinging back the shutters, looked out upon the glittering summer
morning.

His room gave on a large inner court where the house martins swooped and
darted in the sunshine. Though the hour was yet early, all the houses
around teemed with life. The housewives were visible at their windows,
shaking out rugs and mats, watering the flowers or shouting discordantly
to the slatternly group that with buckets and pitchers surrounded the
mournfully clanking pump in the yard below.

It was a scene of peace, and Hector was in the mood for peace. In
emerging from his long delirium he seemed to have sloughed off the
horrors that had beset him. Subconsciously he was aware that his
position was critical, but he felt in a languorous frame of mind,
revelling in his repose, like one who, having swum out from land,
grapples, gasping, the side of a boat before turning to face the waves
of the homeward journey.

He went back to bed. He slept a great deal that day, and the next
morning did not rise until midday, when he sat up in an armchair at the
table and drank a little bouillon which Madame Fourbe served him.

The landlady was in an odd mood. She seemed to be labouring under
suppressed excitement. She was the widow of a small tradesman, a thin,
anxious-looking woman with a pointed nose, always very neatly dressed in
black, whose mind the events of the past five years had reduced to a
state of permanent bewilderment. Like every one else she had tacitly
accepted the new régime. But she invariably addressed Hector as
'Monsieur,' though the title had been abolished to tap of drum; though
the Republic had proscribed religion, she said her rosary; and she
laboured under the fixed delusion that the shortage of butter--a problem
that touched most Parisians in that hot summer of '94 far more nearly
than the hideous, indiscriminate slaughter of the Place du Trône--was
due to the machinations of a certain unrighteous foreigner called
'Monsieur Veto' who had very properly received his deserts.

To Hector she appeared as a reserved and tight-lipped creature as a
rule, but to-day she chatted gaily as she propped the young man up in
his chair. She was not satisfied with the trim of his hair, but must
needs fetch a comb from the dressing-table and arrange it afresh.

'You must not neglect your appearance, M'sieu Charpentier,' she said, 'a
fine young man like you. You've broken many a woman's heart in your
time, I can see that with half an eye. Supposing one of your lady-loves
were to call and visit you with your hair all towsled like that! _Ah,
non_, if the good God gives one beauty, one must make the best of it,
_pas vrai_?'

So saying she arranged his pillows, tied a napkin under his chin, and
whipped the cover off the steaming earthen pipkin of soup.

'You're very gay to-day, _citoyenne_,' Hector commented. 'Have you won
the lottery or has a patriot given you a pound of butter?'

Madame Fourbe threw up her hands and turned up her eyes.

'_Pour ça, non!_' she said decidedly. 'They with their famous _maximum_
have made a conspiracy to compel honest folk to eat their bread dry. If
it weren't for my husband's sister ... Hard times, hard times, M'sieu
Charpentier! But come, your bouillon grows cold! We must feed you up
now. You must eat and grow strong. The beautiful ladies think nothing of
a cavalier who looks as if he had one foot in the grave, _voyons_!'

'And what do the beautiful ladies concern me?' demanded Hector.

'_Fi donc!_' cried the citizenness. 'To speak so when who knows but that
this very afternoon a charming person might be coming to see you!'

'I am allowed to receive visits, then?'

'To-day for the first time.'

'And you say a lady is coming?'

'_Nenni!_ How you run on! I said no such thing!'

'_Voyons_, Madame Fourbe, you torture me with suspense! A lady _is_
coming to see me to-day. Who is it?'

'You will see what you will see!' said Madame Fourbe darkly. 'And if
Monsieur does not know, _parbleu_, the greater the pleasure of the
meeting. But I think he will be content!'

And with sundry nods and becks and wreathed smiles she bustled away,
leaving Hector dreaming in his chair.

A delicious lassitude had overcome him. Loison, he decided, must have
ventured forth to have news of him. Perhaps she was in the house
already? Yes, that was it. Madame Fourbe, good creature that she was,
had taken her in. He would be glad to see little Loison again. She was
so gentle, so soothing ...

He must have dozed, for he became aware of his surroundings again with
that sort of violent panic that befalls one who wakes from an afternoon
nap. Voices, the sound of a door slamming, were in his ears. Heavy with
sleep, he stared about him. The first thing his eyes encountered was
Grand-Duc gazing at him from the doorway.

The sight of the crookback acted like a cold _douche_ upon Hector's
bemused senses. In an instant he had stiffened into watchfulness. With a
rush all his old doubts and fears crowded into his mind. What did the
Commissary's presence in the house portend?

'I rejoice to see you convalescent, Citizen Charpentier,' said Grand-Duc
in his squeaky voice. 'And I bring you an old friend!'

The door behind him stood ajar and he pushed it open with his elbow.
Without taking his eyes off Hector's face, he called out softly over his
shoulder: '_Citoyenne_ Regnault!'

_Regnault!_ Hector felt the last dregs of his optimism drain away. This
was the _coup de grâce_ with a vengeance. For Regnault was the name of
the Commissary in Copenhagen who had recommended Jean-François
Charpentier to the revolutionary leaders in Paris, and this woman, the
object of Madame Fourbe's smirking allusions, was obviously his wife.
The game was up.

Hector struggled to his feet and prepared to face exposure.




CHAPTER XVIII

JUNO OUT OF THE MACHINE


Not for many a long day did that confirmed sentimentalist Madame Fourbe
forget the meeting between these two. Afterwards she gave a detailed
description of the scene to her cronies, Madame Pichet, a bearded and
bottle-nosed harpy who washed for patriots next door, and the rather
bibulous-looking dame known in the _Quartier_ as la Mère Goulott who kept
the wine-shop across the street.

'... A blonde and beautiful person, the _Citoyenne_ Regnault, not in her
first youth, you hear me?--not in the blossom, you understand?--but'--an
expressive gesture--'well-developed, a rose in all its summer radiance.
Such lustrous hair! Skin white as milk and shining like satin! Little
hands! Slender feet! And such elegance of dress and deportment! _Non des
fois_'--withered finger-tip to lips to waft an imaginary kiss of ecstasy
into space--'_la belle créature!_ And I, knowing of the _Citoyenne_
Regnault's _béguin_ for this young man--the romance dates, so she told
me herself, from the days when he worked for her husband, the
Commissary, in Copenhagen--you can imagine with what feelings of
excitement I watched the _Citoyen_ Grand-Duc introduce her into the
apartment of Monsieur Charpentier. You know this Grand-Duc, _les
amies_--this little humpback of the Lepeletier Section? _Eh, bien_, he
came to the house yesterday and "_Citoyenne_ Fourbe," he says, "when can
your young man receive visitors?" he says. "To-morrow, Citizen
Commissary," I tell him; "to-morrow and not before, for such are the
doctor's orders." "Good," says he. "Then to-morrow I shall bring a
visitor for the Citizen Charpentier." "See that you don't fill my house
with your rowdy _sans-culottes_, citizen," says I, "for the young man is
only just over a grave illness." "Is that a way to speak of your noble
fellow citizens?" says Crookback, very put-out like. "Mind how you wag
your tongue, _citoyenne_, or one of these fine evenings you'll have no
head to wag it in!" "Really," says I. "Then permit me to say ..."'

'Stow it!' the Citizeness Pichet put in--her voice was so gruff that you
would have said she had left it in the cellar where she habitually
worked. 'We know what you told him! We all talk like that when they
aren't there! Tell us what he said about the woman, la Fourbe!'

And with great genteelness she handed a greasy tin snuff-box round the
group.

'_Alors_,' resumed Madame Fourbe, after a deep snuffle and an
ear-shattering sneeze, 'when I had given Master Crookback a piece of my
mind, "It's a lady, _citoyenne_," he says, "and a very charming one at
that, a light o' love, as you might say, of the young man's. Don't
mention the matter to him," he says, and tells me how the lady is most
anxious it should be a surprise for the citizen. And surprise it was, I
give you my word!'

La Mère Goulot heaved a vinous sigh.

'Ah! The surprises of love!' she remarked. 'There is nothing to surpass
them!'

Probably by reason of the fact that one of her late husband's
innumerable amorous adventures had led to his untimely demise at the
hands of an infuriated National Guard, her interruption was listened to
in respectful silence.

'And he has an air about him, this Charpentier!' she added in a tone
that implied regret for the vanished days of her youth.

'It is sure!' exclaimed Madame Fourbe, 'and with his dark hair combed
back and the clean white morning gown I washed for him myself, you might
walk from here to the shrine of Saint-Denis and not find a more
proper-looking young man. I stood with the Citizeness Regnault outside
the door--we let Grand-Duc go in first--and when Grand-Duc called the
Regnault in and pushed back the door, the first thing I saw was
Charpentier swaying on his feet as pale as any ghost. Ah, love, love!
It's a droll thing how it takes some people! I remember when Fourbe was
courting me ...'

'Was there ever such a woman!' grumbled Madame Pichet's _basso
profundo_. 'If you're washing, wash: if you're rinsing, rinse: if you're
starching, starch! But don't try and do everything at once or you'll
never have the laundry finished...!'

'What did the _Citoyenne_ Regnault do?' demanded la Mère Goulot, more
practically.

'She stopped in front of Charpentier with her hands clasped in front of
her,' Madame Fourbe continued her story. 'She opened her big blue eyes
and stared at him. She seemed struck of a heap, as you might say. And
Charpentier didn't do anything except just stare, either ...'

'I should 'a thought he'd 'a dropped on his knees at the least, a
beautiful person like that!' remarked la Mère Goulot.

'Or kissed her hands!' boomed the washerwoman.

'If I hadn't 'a been there, I'd 'a said the same,' declared the
landlady. 'But being there, I saw in a twinkling of an eye how things
stood. The love birds had quarrelled. There had been an estrangement
which, doubtless, was the motive that led Charpentier to abandon a
magnificent career in the Danish timber-trade and come to Paris to offer
his services to the Republic. The woman ... _mon Dieu, les amies_, we
are always so weak towards these monsters...! unknown to Charpentier
sought this meeting in order to effect a reconciliation. But even when
she comes to him, he waits for her to speak first. Bah! How like a man!'

'The animals!' growled the Citizeness Pichet, and snuffed abundantly.

'All rascals!' la Mère Goulot agreed, and dipped absent-mindedly into
her companion's box.

The Citizeness Fourbe disregarded these comments. She was warming to her
tale.

'For a little instant they stand and regard one another like two cats of
porcelain. Then the woman turns to Grand-Duc, feigning an air of
perplexity. "But this individual" ... she begins very coldly. The time
had come for the Citizeness Fourbe to play her part. Was I to stand by
and see two such charming lovers sacrificed to a false instinct of
pride? _Mais non!_ "Be not hasty, Citizeness," I said. "The young man
has been grievously sick. See! Even now he scarce can stand on his feet!
Regard a little how pitifully he looks at you! Stay, I beg you, and he
will soon find his voice!" ...'

'And the woman stayed, I warrant?' said la Mère Goulot lugubriously.

'My friends, I will not deceive you--she stayed. Grand-Duc had no hand
in it, though. "Who asked you to speak?" he snaps at me; then, turning
to the woman, "Is this your friend?" he asks. And she, her eyes fixed on
that poor young man's pale face, replies, "But of course!" And on
Crookback pressing her and saying, "Is there no mistake? Are you sure
this is the man?" she up and speaks to Charpentier herself. "You
remember Victorine, your little Zouzou, don't you, Jeannot?" she says,
and Charpentier takes her two hands and holds them, and says, looking in
her eyes, "_Ma chérie_, of course I have never forgotten!"'

'A-ah! _C'est joli, ça!_' crooned la Mère Goulot.

'And what happened then?' the bass chimed in.

'She bade us leave her alone with him. You should have seen Grand-Duc's
face. One would say that this man has a heart as twisted as his back. It
was fortunate for those two poor things that I was there, for had
Grand-Duc had his way, there would have been no reconciliation. We left
them hand-in-hand. A miracle, I say, that they were brought
together ...!'

       *       *       *       *       *

A miracle! It was the word that Hector himself would have used. For when
Grand-Duc had stood aside to let this fair and florid creature claim her
erstwhile friend, the young man had made up his mind to the worst. And,
indeed, he had read blank astonishment in the doll-like eyes of
china-blue that searched his face, and, with the imminence of exposure,
it was as though his heart had turned to stone when the woman, her
disclaimer on her lips, had turned to the humpback closely watching them
out of his slanting eyes.

Then, exuberantly, Madame Fourbe had intervened, and, when the woman had
looked at Hector again, the perplexity had vanished from her face. In
the blue eyes he now saw a sort of amorous interest mingled with
compassion, and a trace, perhaps, of mischief that suggested somewhere
in this soft bundle of blondeness a latent sense of humour.

Her voice was full and charming, every syllable a caress. 'You remember
Victorine, don't you, Jeannot?' she had said, and he had blessed the
womanly cleverness that had given him her Christian name to forestall
Grand-Duc's probing suspicion. For that Grand-Duc had planned this
meeting to expose him was plainly written in the Commissary's face. As
clearly depicted was his bitter disappointment on hearing the
_Citoyenne_ Regnault maintain her identification.

Why had she professed to recognise him? What, in the very act of
repudiating him, had led her to acknowledge him? This was the question
that, like a huge query-mark, seemed to hang above their heads as
Grand-Duc and Madame Fourbe withdrew leaving the two together. Would she
now declare herself? And what would be the price of her silence?

Not yet was his curiosity to be satisfied. When they were alone, she
gently thrust him back into his chair, and, looking down at him, said:

'_Mon petit_, I have come to carry you away to the country out of the
heat of Paris. It is arranged with the Citizen Couthon and _le Docteur_
Largier. For a week you come with me to Neuilly. My carriage is below
and we can start at once.'

Again, then, Fate had intervened in a crisis of his life. At the
eleventh hour reprieve had arrived. With the loss of his money his
situation in Paris had become utterly precarious; but before he was
thrown again upon his own resources, this instrument of fate, this
veritable goddess out of the machine, had descended from the clouds to
procure him a further respite. True, it was for a week only; but the
hand-to-mouth existence he had led since the evening--how far away it
seemed now!--he had descended from the Calais diligence had taught him
that in a week of the French Revolution many things might happen.

Here, at least, was an ally that was not proscribed. Good-nature
radiated from every dimpled roundness of the woman who gazed down upon
him with a faintly quizzing look in her luminous eyes. Her hair, which
she wore in ringlets about her head, was in colour the most brilliant
gold, shading down towards the roots to the hue of ripe corn. Her
fairness, her soft and peach-like complexion, her saucy little
_retroussé_ nose, her small and perfectly shaped mouth, her rounded chin
with its comely cleaving dimple--everything about her was pretty and
appealing. Her throat was full and rounded, and, though her figure was
well-developed, it was, as yet, in no sense matronly. As Madame Fourbe
had said, she was like a rose in all its summer beauty, though, in
looking at her, one might discern that the day of the fading petal and
dropping leaf was nigh.

She put up a soft plump hand and stroked the hair out of his eyes.

'You are so pale and wasted,' she said. 'You want good food and country
air, _mon ami_.'

Then she burst into a gurgle of laughter, and laughed till she was
breathless and the tears stood in her blue eyes.

'Ah!' she gasped, 'what fun! The face of this humpback! Did you remark
it, _mon petit_? Scarcely could I remain serious! He could have wept for
chagrin, I do believe. Ah, _la, la_ ...!'

And she was off again. She had the jolly infectious laugh of the plump
and comfortable of body, and she enjoyed the joke so whole-heartedly
that Hector found himself laughing, too. Helplessly she made a pass in
the air.

'Never shall I forget his face!'

Then, half-serious, she snuggled herself up to the young man and said
softly:

'You are satisfied, at least ... Jeannot?'

'Yes ... Victorine,' he replied, rather at a loss.

'My friends, those I like, call me "Zouzou,"' she put in archly. 'You
can, too, if you wish!'

He put his hand up and patted hers as it rested on his dark head.

'A charming name that suits you admirably, Zouzou,' he improvised at a
venture.

She flashed a brilliant smile at him--her teeth were like two rows of
evenly matched pearls---and twined her shapely fingers in his. She gazed
at him with eyes melting and half-veiled. She made as though she would
have spoken, but changed her mind. Reluctantly, as it seemed to him, she
relinquished his hand.

'I will send the Citizeness Fourbe to pack your valise,' she said, 'if
you can manage to dress yourself. We will start as soon as you are
ready.'

She lingered for an instant at the door. Then she blew him a little
kiss.

'_À tantôt, joli garçon!_' she cooed softly in her musical voice.

'_À toute à l'heure_, Zouzou!' replied the young man brightly.

But he felt that the situation was getting a little beyond him.




CHAPTER XIX

CYTHEREA


To Hector, parched by the reeking heat of Paris, the verdant freshness
of the Villa Mille Fleurs was as a glimpse of paradise. It lay beyond
the village of Neuilly, out of reach of the white dust that rested thick
upon the posting-road, a cream-coloured pavilion crouching low among
trees. A grove of ancient elms debouched upon the little open space
before the house, where, amid a spouting fountain, a marble Pan, moistly
gleaming, played upon his pipes. In rear an open loggia gave on an
old-world garden where clipped hedges of yew and lignum vitæ screened a
gorgeous profusion of roses that perfumed the air with their fragrance.

The villa, built in the form of a shallow 'E' with the middle bar
missing, boasted but a single story. The rooms, arranged _en suite_,
were decorated and furnished in the ornate and graceful style of the
Fifteenth Louis. Its absolute seclusion, its bright frescoes with their
exuberant nymphs and cupids, its lavishly gilt furniture and rich silk
hangings, made clear the original purpose of this nest of love, built to
embower the amours of some great noble in the past. To Hector, coming
upon it from the dust and glare of the highway, it seemed like one of
those enchanted palaces of which as a child his mother had read to him
from the surprising tales of the Chevalier de Perrault.

The domestic staff of the _Citoyenne_ Regnault, assembled beneath the
little porch to greet her, consisted of a bouncing, buxom, black-eyed
woman whom she addressed as Marthe, an oafish, slow fellow with a dull
eye and enormous mouth, who wore a blue apron over his corduroy
small-clothes, and a trembling old man, who seemed, by his broad-brimmed
hat of coarse straw, to be the gardener. Their welcome made up in
heartiness what it lacked in conventionality. Marthe flung her arms
about the plump person of Victorine and kissed her heartily, while the
oaf, as he helped her from the carriage, slapped her affectionately
about the lower portion of her back, and genially murmured: '_Cette
sacrée Zouzou!_' As for the old gardener he doffed his hat and waved it
about his head, croaking, with dripping, toothless gums (rather
irrelevantly, Hector thought): '_Vive la nation!_'

Zouzou stood beneath the cool porch and gazed happily about her.

'My friends,' she said, 'I present the Citizen Charpentier!'

Marthe bobbed, while the oaf extended a hand as big as a spade.

'_Zut!_' he cried heartily. 'One goes to amuse oneself, it seems!'

He spat noisily into his palm.

'Your hand, patriot!' he cried.

Meanwhile Marthe was indulging in audible whispers with Zouzou.

'What a splendid young man!' she said in awe. 'What a distinguished air!
Oh, Zouzou!'--she flung her arms about the Citizeness Regnault's neck
again--'oh, _la, la, la, la_!'

Hector looked so irretrievably bewildered by these demonstrations that
his hostess came to his aid.

'Jeannot,' she said in her pretty way, 'this is Marthe, my _femme de
chambre_, and this Polydore, my major-domo, who makes the best _ragoût_
you ever tasted. _N'est-ce pas, mon_ Polydore!'

The oaf grinned sheepishly.

'One does what one can,' he remarked.

'And this,' Zouzou continued, pulling forward the old man, 'is Alceste,
my gardener. He's stone-deaf and not all there. For him it is as though
the Revolution had not been; when he remembers it, he cries, "_Vive la
nation!_"--_pas vrai, grosse bête_?'

With trembling hand the dotard bared his grizzled head and louted low.

'Madame! Monsieur!' he bowed. 'Does it please Madame that I show
Monsieur the gardens?'

Zouzou tapped her forehead resignedly and turned away, leaving the old
man fumbling at his hat, humble friendliness peering out of his rheumy
eyes.

'Come, Jeannot,' said the citizeness, 'you shall look at my house!'

But Hector, revolted by what he had seen, paused. In the household of
this woman who tolerated gross familiarities from her servants, he felt
that he and the old gardener were the only representatives of the normal
order of things. From his sadly shrunken bundle of assignats he slipped
a note and crushed it in the gardener's hand.

'_Voilà pour toi, mon ami!_' he said loudly. 'And I hope you will show
me the gardens afterwards!'

The old man heard and understood. As he stared down at the greasy bill
lying in his blackened palm, the tears welled up in his sad old eyes.
Then his hands dropped to his sides as he bowed and bowed again,
mumbling something about '_the humble servant of Monsieur_,' or some
such courtly phrase of the France that lay buried in the pit of Picpus.

'_Tu es fou, mon cher!_' exclaimed Zouzou good-humouredly, and, putting
her arm through Hector's, she drew him into the house.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then began for Hector an extraordinary existence. In that topsy-turvy
household he often wondered whether he were standing on his head or his
heels. There was neither discipline nor order nor privacy in the Villa
Mille Fleurs. Meals were served in any room at any time, and as often as
not Marthe, the serving-woman, sat at table with them. Doubtless
Polydore, who was her husband, would have joined them as well, only his
duties as _chef_ detained him in the kitchen. From time to time,
however, in his white cap and apron, he would gladden them with the
sight of his face reddened by the fire and receive, with perfect
_sang-froid_, criticisms on his cooking.

The extravagance was sheerly wanton. Where the money--or what was more
vital, in these lean times, the supplies themselves--came from it was
difficult to say; but there was no lack of either. There was wine in
abundance, and a goblet of choice Burgundy was invariably at the elbow
of Polydore as he sat in the white-and-gold boudoir of a morning
breakfasting off bread and garlic. He and Marthe were always astir
betimes, but Zouzou lay abed till noon, or if she rose before would
wander through the handsome rooms or about the cool loggia in the
flimsiest of night-robes which barely concealed her abundant charms.

But she was quite on her dignity when callers came. She had hordes of
friends. Not an afternoon passed but a pillar of dust, turning off the
distant _chaussée_, announced the arrival of a carriage-load of gay
ladies, painted and powdered, with their attendant swains. They all had
a vaguely 'flash' air. For the most part they were 'companions' of
wealthy adventurers in those curious _ménages_ that, under the Republic,
so often took the place of marriage, or perhaps they were more catholic
and less discriminate in the distribution of their favours. Their
companions, like the rest of Zouzou's men friends, belonged almost
exclusively to the world of finance, that shady realm haunted by every
variety of _chevalier d'industrie_ attracted by the Revolution to Paris.

There were queer figures in the group that would sit through the hot
afternoons gossiping over their wine beneath the verandah, grotesques
like the Citizen Epaminondas Boudin, a burly mulatto who had made a
fortune in West Indian sugar, or Kafkarian, the Armenian broker, or
Eleutherios Gonsenheimer, the mysterious 'Russian' who called himself
'Envoy of the Free Republic of Libau.' And, needless to say, good Dr.
Largier was a frequent visitor. Like the rest of the men, he paid
assiduous court to Zouzou.

'A remarkable woman,' he told Hector; 'a financier to her finger-tips.
When she was with Roussard, of the Crédit Foncier, she accumulated a
small fortune by judicious speculation. When this poor Roussard got into
bad company and finished at the guillotine, she went with Regnault, and
in eight months--_eight_ ... months, only, remark!--she made enough
money in Copenhagen out of investments in wheat and other commodities in
which Regnault, as head of the French buying commission, was interested,
to be able to leave this stupid animal and return to Paris to set her
cap at whom she pleases ...'

He nudged the young man with his elbow.

'See, now she speaks with Lévy, of the Agricultural Bank. She never
misses a chance, _la drôlesse! Bon sang de Dieu_, citizen, if I were
twenty years younger, I wouldn't mind trying to cut you out myself. But
that would be none too easy, _hé, hé_? You're cock of the walk here,
_pas vrai_?'

With odious familiarity he ogled him and prodded him in the ribs again.

The allusion revolted Hector. He had not been twenty-four hours in the
villa before he was fully aware of the ambiguousness of his position.
Zouzou had said nothing to reveal her motives in claiming him, a perfect
stranger, as an old friend. But in the way she looked at him, in the way
she followed him with her eyes about the room, he was uneasily
conscious--though he was loath to admit it even to himself--that the
doctor's horrible innuendo was not entirely unjustified.

Every day, from early afternoon till far into the night, the villa was
full of visitors. Hector realised that the gay life of the capital,
banished from Paris by the Terror, was not extinct, but had merely
transferred its seat to the outlying suburbs. They played tric-trac and
loto for high stakes, and, did they weary of gambling, games of
forfeits, Blind-Man's Buff, or the like. But when the purple shadows
descended over the fragrant garden, many of the couples stole away, and
thereafter the bosky thickets rustled mysteriously to soft whispers, a
smothered laugh, a faint exclamation ...

And yet in this pleasant, easy life Hector Fotheringay found no repose.
Though, for the moment, Paris and its perils had receded into the
background, he was persistently haunted by the thought of Loison. He had
not been able to spare the child much money: she had spent forthwith a
part if not all of what he had given her, and that was a week before he
had come to the Villa Mille Fleurs; surely her means must be exhausted
by now. Yet money was all that stood between her and the guillotine,
for, as sure as she ventured forth upon the street, she was ultimately
bound to fall into the hands of the scouts of Couthon or Grand-Duc.

At last, in desperation, he determined to sound Zouzou as to his chances
of escape. She was essentially good-natured, and he thought that, if she
could help him, she would. It was late one night when he opened the
subject. The last carriage full of noisy guests had melted into the
mellow dusk of the elm drive, and Zouzou, protesting it was too hot for
bed, had led Hector to the end of the rose garden, where, on the skirt
of a little wood, a rustic bench encircled a gigantic beech.

Zouzou leant back her golden head and, stretching her firm white neck,
gazed up into the dense greenery of the ancient tree.

'Oh!' she sighed, '_je suis lasse_.'

Hector, moody and perturbed, was silent.

'Jeannot,' she cooed, 'always you are silent. Why don't you say
something?'

'Because I am worried, Zouzou!'

'Do all these tiresome people weary you, _mon coco_? To-morrow we will
bar the gate of the avenue and Polydore shall tell them we are from
home, _veux-tu_?'

She turned her head and smiled eagerly up in his face. But he shook his
head.

'It's not your friends,' he said.

He leant forward and looked at her intently.

'Zouzou,' he said, 'who do you suppose I am?'

She laughed her pretty little gurgling laugh.

'That's a droll question to put to oneself about any one in these droll
times. Perhaps you are the _ci-devant_ Grand Kham of Tartary!'

And she laughed her merry laugh again.

'No, but seriously ...'

She shrugged her shoulders.

'I know you are not ... Charpentier,' she said, with a sudden trace of
wistfulness in her voice.

'Then why did you claim me as he?'

She pursed up her mouth and feigned to be studying the toe of her little
gilt slipper.

'It amused me to annoy the humpback,' she answered slowly. 'Besides,
your eyes implored my aid. I am good-natured: I like to help people.'

She laid her little hand on his sleeve.

'_Dis!_ You played a trick on this dull fellow Charpentier, _pas vrai_?
You stole his papers, _hein_? Yes, yes, he was my lover, I know, but he
wearied me. He was handsome, he was a fine figure of a man, but, _mon
cher_'--her voice gave each word measured cadence--'he ... was ... a ...
fool!'

With a rush of wings and melancholy hoot an owl whirred over.

'Zouzou,' said Hector bluntly, 'I want to get out of France!'

She looked up quickly.

'Jeannot!' she exclaimed reproachfully. 'And leave me? Where do you want
to go to, pray? Back to Copenhagen?'

'Yes,' said Hector.

'You only have to get a passport: the Citizen Couthon will help you.'

'I can't use these papers any more to leave France,' Hector said in a
low voice.

She caught his hand.

'And what do you want me to do, _moi_?'

'If you could help me to any others ...' he began, but stopped on seeing
her expression.

She had drawn back from him against the tree, one hand pressed to her
pink plump face.

'Oh! You must be mad!' she cried in a low, frightened voice. 'Do you
know what the penalty for _that_ is? It's death! _Bon Dieu de bon Dieu!_
Even to think such things to-day means destruction! Listen to me,
Jeannot. _Je suis bonne fille_: I do what I can to help others: but I
will not mix myself up with the _sans-culottes_ for any one. There are
no half-measures about Fouquier and his band. One-two! You are in
prison! One-two! You are condemned! One-two! You cough into the basket!
Ah! _Ça? Non!_'

She was bristling with indignation and fear. She looked away and
nervously passed her handkerchief across her face. Then, her mood
changing, she snuggled up to the young man at her side and laid her hot
face against his hand.

'_Voyons_, Jeannot,' she crooned, 'be nice to me! Why do you try and
frighten one with your tales of false papers and I know not what? _Mon
ami_, I have a horror of death. If they came to arrest me, I should die
of fright before ever I looked Sanson in the face. You're happy with me
here, _pas vrai_? _Alors_ ...'

He sat in cold despair while she whispered her endearments. He had
failed with her, then. He could count himself lucky not to have told her
more, for she was capable, in her terror of the scaffold, of denouncing
him. For the present, though, of course, she knew he was impersonating
Charpentier, it did not seem to have occurred to her that he was using
false papers. She appeared to think that his impersonation of her old
lover was a business trick or a practical joke. He realised that, like
so many other clever women of a sort, she had only the vaguest notions
of the affairs of State.

He calmed her down as best he could in the half-tender, half-joking
manner which, like a buckler, he always kept between them. In his heart
of hearts he knew that matters could not rest where they were. But he
hoped to stave off the inevitable crisis until he had quitted her house.
He was not a prig, but the Cytherean atmosphere of the villa cloyed upon
him, and to succumb to it would, he felt, be degradation. He could not
buy immunity at that price ...

That night they parted, as usual, at her bedroom door. As Hector went to
his room, the thought occurred to him that twice since he had come to
France women had offered themselves to him, and in each case the strange
force that had taken charge of his life had compelled him to stand
aside. The old life of Saint James's, where his love-affairs had given
him a certain prestige with the ensigns, was but a few weeks away. How
Montgomerie and his brother officers would have chaffed could they have
seen him in his new rôle of the virtuous Joseph...!

As he crossed the _salon_ the next morning, he found Polydore scrubbing
a set of harness on the magnificent porphyry table.

'One makes a little jaunt to Paris,' the handy man told him. 'Zouzou has
ordered the carriage for eleven and we take a cold snack to eat in the
shade of the trees of the Bois de Boulogne. One will drive slowly,
citizen, I promise you. We shall have the heat of the devil to-day!'

And, hissing through his teeth, he bent to his scrubbing again.

His announcement was confirmed a few hours later by the appearance of
Zouzou herself, dressed for the road, in a pretty cerise bonnet and a
cerise cloak over a dainty white muslin frock.

'We sit too much at home,' she declared. 'You must not mope, _mon
petit_. We will drive out to the Bois and eat beneath the trees while
waiting for the heat of the day to pass. Then we will go in to Paris and
call on my _modiste_ to see what progress my new robe makes!'

The versatile Polydore was their coachman, but Marthe was left behind.
Zouzou was in the highest spirits, and her sprightly conversation
diverted even her dull-witted major-domo as they lounged through the
noonday heat under a spreading oak. 'If only she would remain in this
comradely frame of mind,' Hector mused to himself, 'she could be of real
use to Loison and me.'

The edge of the sun's rays was blunted when, about five, they entered
Paris by the Barrière de Neuilly. But the air was oppressively warm as
though a storm were brewing, and after the rural charm of the villa the
city seemed hotter, shabbier, and sadder than ever. They spent an hour
at a dressmaker's in the rue Neuve des Petits Champs, and, as the clocks
were striking the half-hour after six, plunged once more into the
crowded rue Saint-Honoré on the return journey.

The new robe was a great success, and Zouzou was radiant. The carriage
was open, and it obviously pleased her to be seen driving through the
heart of Paris side by side with such a presentable young man. As though
to establish her claim to him, she rested her little white hand on his
large brown one and kept her blonde ringlets in close proximity to his
curly black head.

The carriage was passing the church of Saint-Roch, where the Section
Committee of the Quarter was now established, when Hector started and
made an instinctive movement as though to rise in his seat.

'What is it, Jeannot?' said Zouzou, craning her golden head round. _Mon
Dieu, mon petit_, how pale you are! _Tiens_, who is this young girl who
regards you so strangely? _Hé_, Polydore, _halte là_!'

The major-domo reined in the dust-stained horses. The woman turned and
looked out over the back of the carriage at the knot of loungers sitting
or standing in the shade on the steps of the church.

'She's disappeared!' said Zouzou. 'Was it some one you knew, Jeannot?'

Hector, who had been intently scanning the crowds gathered on the steps,
sank back in his seat.

'No, no,' he answered. 'I suddenly felt a little faint, that's all. I
expect it's the heat! Shall ... shall we drive on, Zouzou?'

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes.

'_En avant_, Polydore!' she ordered.




CHAPTER XX

A FACE IN THE CROWD


For a fleeting instant only he had seen her, two reproachful eyes that
sought his out of the sea of pallid, sweaty faces ebbing and flowing
about the railings of Saint-Roch. He had been thinking of her, for the
sights and smells of the familiar street had brought back to him, with a
pang sharp as homesickness, the memory of their short-lived intimacy
begun that morning when in her tatters she had come to Couthon's house.
Suddenly her face in all its dainty wistfulness had thrust itself into
the foreground of his thoughts, and he had found himself looking into
her eyes. In the moment when, on Zouzou plucking his sleeve, he had
averted his gaze, the girl had disappeared.

As they drove back in silence through the still and muggy evening, he
tried to tell himself that he had been the victim of delusion. But he
knew he had made no mistake, knew, too, that Loison had recognised him
as he sat with Zouzou's gleaming head all but resting on his shoulder
and her bejewelled fingers intertwined in his. No need to ask himself
what Loison thought of him! He had read it all in his brief glimpse of
those reproachful grey eyes ...

For a moment he had had a wild impulse to spring from the carriage and
seek her out among the crowd. But all that jostling throng was in
motion, and it had closed in upon and swallowed her up in the second in
which he had looked away. He could scarcely hope to find her now, and by
dashing after her in pursuit he would only arouse Zouzou's suspicions.
He could not afford to risk it. He must seek Loison out and explain. But
it must be soon. He felt he would hardly sleep again until he had
justified himself to her for his long absence, for his seeming neglect.

Zouzou did not speak again until they reached the villa. She sat back in
her corner of the carriage fanning herself with her gloves and emitting
from time to time a little gasp of protest against the closeness of the
atmosphere. The sky was lurid with an angry glow, and as they turned
into the elm grove not a leaf stirred. Through a blue haze of heat at
the end of the avenue the villa trembled whitely.

As they swung into the open space in front of the house, the back wheel
of the carriage violently struck the marble rim of the fountain so that
the vehicle lurched strongly and was almost overset. Zouzou screamed
shrilly and sprang to her feet.

'_C'est bien, c'est bien_,' grunted Polydore, half-turning a shining red
face from the box-seat. The horses stopped irresolute and panting, the
steam from their glistening coats mounting in the still air. Hector
helped his hostess to alight.

'Descend!' she cried to Polydore the moment she had set foot to ground.
When he had obeyed her, the man's condition was immediately apparent. He
was reeling drunk.

'You dirty animal!' cried the citizeness. 'You drunken sot! Do I keep
you here in luxury that you should break my neck, _imbécile_? How dare
you get drunk when you drive me out, you idle ruffian!'

The versatile major-domo made a vague pass with his whip in the air.

'I feel ... very well,' he hiccoughed gravely, 'not ... drunk, _ma
belle_, not drunk!'

Like a fury she turned on him then and discharged a volley of the vilest
and basest invective at his head, her voice shrill, her gestures
abundant, a veritable virago. She never repeated herself, she scarcely
paused for breath, abusing, insulting, sneering at the swaying lout
before her. In the midst of the tirade, Marthe appeared at the door,
and, after vainly trying to make herself heard, thrust herself, arms
akimbo in a challenging posture, between the citizeness and her victim.

'_Eh bien quoi!_' she demanded roughly. 'Hasn't a man a right to drink a
glass if he's thirsty, _ma petite_? This is a free country, I believe,
_hein_? And who are you to cast insults, _la drôlesse_, I should like to
know?'

With a fresh outburst of rage, Zouzou turned on her maid and overwhelmed
her in turn with abuse. The woman gave as good as she got, and they
shrieked insults at one another, like a brace of fishwives at Les
Halles, until Hector, who had made various efforts to intervene, saw
that in a moment they would come to blows and stepped resolutely between
them. Thereupon Zouzou burst into a torrent of hysterical weeping and
fled into the house, while Marthe, looking for a fresh victim, attacked
her husband, and seizing him by his shirt-collar ran him off to the
kitchen. Musingly, Hector led the carriage round to the stables.

Within and without, the atmosphere of the villa was electric.

They did not sup until late. Neither Marthe nor Polydore appeared; but a
table was spread on the loggia with cold chicken and a salad and a dish
of peaches. The night was warm and uncannily still. The moon had not
yet risen, and in the perfumed dark that faced them the quiet garden
with its wealth of roses seemed to be waiting in hushed anticipation for
the storm to break.

Zouzou would eat nothing. But she drank a great deal of wine. She sat
with her chin propped upon her hands staring into the velvety,
unfathomable night.

'These animals exasperate me!' she said to Hector. 'That drunken clown
might have killed us!'

She stretched herself luxuriantly.

'I think the air's a little fresher,' she said. '_Tiens, mon ami_, fill
up my glass!'

She held out the crystal goblet, and, when Hector had replenished it,
emptied it at a draught. She made him fill it up again.

'I'm like that,' she observed, and began to peel a peach. 'I am an
easy-going person, but sometimes my nerves get the better of me, _et
pan_! there's an explosion! This stupid Marthe ought to know me by now.
It's not the first time we've had a row, _allez_! To-morrow I shall give
her a little present and you will see how she is repentant. It's
pleasant here, _dis_?'

'It's Heaven after Paris!' said Hector.

'How nicely you say that! Come closer, Jeannot, and you shall have half
my peach. _C'est ça!_ Do you like being here alone with me like this my
Jeannot?'

'What a question to ask! Of course I do!'

'Of all the men I know you are the only one who never makes love to me,'
she said simply. 'And yet I'm not ugly, _tu sais_. My skin is soft as
satin and white as milk. And my hair is natural. Never do I use rouge or
dyes. All my charms are my own. It's something to be able to say that
nowadays, _allez_!'

She leant forward. Beneath the thin muslin of her low-necked dress her
bosom glinted whitely.

'_Embrasse-moi_, my Jeannot!'

He dared not falter. He dared not temporise. Her soft red lips were
raised to his. He bent down and kissed her lightly on the mouth. But her
arm was about his neck, and, when he would have drawn away, she held him
fast. Her mouth was pressed to his and she kissed him greedily.

'_Que tu es beau!_' she murmured voluptuously.

Of a sudden a great wind sprang up and set the darkness stretched out
before them all arustling. On the horizon the summer lightning played
fitfully.

With a little sigh she drew away.

'The storm is coming,' she said, and filled up their glasses. In the
distance the thunder now rumbled dully. There was a musical tinkle as
she touched her glass to his. They drank together. Then she drew his arm
about her trim waist and leaned back, her head against his coat.

'One sees well that you are not accustomed to love,' said she presently.
'But I like that, _moi_! These _nigauds_ who storm every fortress and
who think that if they present themselves it is bound to capitulate--_ça
m'ennuie, tu sais_! But if a general invests a _place forte_, he makes
plans, _pas vrai_? He reckons with the possibility of a long siege; for
if a city is worth storming, it's worth taking pains over, _n'est-ce
pas, mon gros loup_?'

There came a sharp patter of raindrops on the leaves outside.

'It's only love that makes the world worth while to-day,' she went on.
'_Tiens_, we two here, what does Paris and its horrors trouble us? We
have one another, just ourselves and our love.'

Her voice trailed off softly. The rain splashed more heavily down. A
long, jagged flash of lightning showed a glimpse of leaden sky. With
long, ominous growling the thunder rang a clanging peal. Hector felt the
yielding form beside him vibrate to the electricity in the air. Zouzou's
arms were about his neck. She clung to him, limp with eager surrender.

'Love me,' she whispered, 'love me, oh, _mon amour_!'

The noise of the rain rang in his ears. From all about the house came a
gurgling and splashing. One could fancy one heard the parched earth sigh
with relief as it soaked up the cooling torrent. The air was pleasant
with a fresh and fragrant smell of wet grass and moss and leaves, a
healthy, purifying smell, the odour of the forest after the rain. This
is the home smell of the English, the smell of rain, their
foster-mother, and it claimed Hector Fotheringay. Cost what it might he
would pander no more to Cytherea ....

But she, feeling him unresponsive under her caress, unloosed her hold
and leaned back to regard him. The surprise in her eyes gave place to
mortification when she saw the stern look on his face.

'Ah!' She flung herself back in her chair. 'You don't love me, I see
well! Am I right?'

'My dear,' he answered, in confusion grappling with the hardest
situation man can be called on to face, 'I must explain ...'

'Explain?' She cut him off with a hard, dry laugh that sounded almost
like a sob. 'There is some one else, _hein, mon petit_? This girl,
perhaps, whose heart looked out of her eyes at you to-day before the
Church of Saint-Roch?'

'Yes,' he said firmly--he was master of himself again now--'though I am
not in love with her. But I am dreadfully anxious about her, Zouzou. She
risked her life to save me ...'

Shuddering the woman drew away.

'_Comment?_' she said in a low and dreadful voice. 'You are in danger?
You are ... suspect?'

He nodded curtly.

'And now I'm going to leave you, Zouzou, with deep gratitude towards you
for what you have done for me. You saved my life--through caprice,
through your kindness of heart, who shall say?--but you saved me and I
shall never forget it.'

Behind the swaying trees that faced them the lightning flared whitely
and the rain rustled down. But the thunder sounded already more distant.
It was clear that the storm was passing over before it had fully broken.
The woman raised her head and looked at him.

'You need not have told me,' she said. 'You could have been my lover and
stayed here forgotten! You need never have returned to Couthon. My
friends could have arranged that.'

He smiled and shook his head.

'The temptation was great, Zouzou, but I have a duty to that poor child
we saw to-day.'

For the space of a minute or so without speaking the woman searched the
young man's face. Her womanly intuition proved an abler sleuth than all
the 'fine blades' of the Committees. Love it was, not always blind, but
sometimes all-seeing like the Divinity that begat it, that penetrated
the mask of Hector Fotheringay.

'Oh!' she exclaimed with a little fluttering gasp. 'Now I know what has
so puzzled me about you. _Tu n'es pas Français, dis?_ You might be a
Dane, or, _attends!_ one of those English naval officers I used to see
walking on the Lange Linie at Copenhagen ...'

He raised his shoulders, dropped his hands to his sides.

'For all the world but you, my dear, I am the Citizen Charpentier!'

'You must be mad!' she murmured. 'The risk is awful!'

'Too great for you to share any longer,' he rejoined. 'To-morrow I shall
leave you and return to Paris.'

'To do what?'

'To resume my duties with the Citizen Couthon, _parbleu_!'

A little shudder ran through her. She laid a trembling hand on her bosom
and swallowed down her emotion.

'If ... if anything should happen to you, I am implicated,' she said.
'Promise me that you, at least, will never admit you are not what you
seem to be. You won't betray me, _dis_? I speak like a coward, but'--her
shoulders heaved and her voice broke--'I am so afraid to die. And yet I
hold you guiltless, Jeannot. I alone am to blame!'

'Why did you pretend to know me, Zouzou?'

'Because,' she flashed back with pride and passion in her voice,
'because I loved you ... from the moment I looked into your eyes that
afternoon at the Citizeness Fourbe's. I know well that I am nothing to
you, but now that we are to part, never to meet again, I will tell you
that, had I my life to live again and I were free to choose, you are the
man I would have taken as my mate. And believe me I should not be the
woman you see me to-day.' She paused and drew a deep, helpless sigh. 'I
don't know why I tell you this,' she added, 'but, I think I am a little
mad to-night and lonely, so lonely ...'

A violent knocking that resounded from the interior of the house
interrupted her. Lifting a white and tear-stained face, she looked at
the young man fixedly. In the moment's silence that followed, the long,
bubbling cough of a horse resounded from outside above the melancholy
drip of the rain.

'What can it be?' she whispered.

'I will go and see,' he replied.

She caught his arm. 'No! Let Polydore open!'

He shook his head.

'He sleeps like the dead. I must go ...'

The knocking came again.

'If you hear me shout out, fly! Fortunately, the night is dark, and if
you gain the main road from the garden you can get to your friends at
Neuilly who will give you shelter ...'

With drooping head she sat at the disordered table.

'Adieu, Zouzou!' he said softly, and turned to enter the house.

'Jeannot!'

She called him back. Risen to her feet, she stood with her face towards
him, silhouetted against the dark sky. He bent down and their lips met.
This time it was he that kissed.

The sound of her anguished sobbing was in his ears as he crossed the
hall.




CHAPTER XXI

THE SUMMONS


A smother of warm rain blew into the little marble lobby as he unbarred
the front door. Outside beneath the porch stood a dark figure swathed up
to the eyes in a long cloak that spilled a steady stream of water on the
stone flags. Behind, with heads bowed to the heavy drizzle, the vague
shapes of a pair of horses were discernible.

'Is it you, Citizen Charpentier?' asked a gruff voice.

The lobby was unlighted, and out of doors it was so dark that Hector
could not immediately distinguish the speaker's face. But the moon
peering out at this moment from behind a screen of flying wrack and the
man in the porch plucking aside a fold of his cloak, Hector recognised
the rugged countenance of Javoir, Couthon's gendarme.

'What a night, _tonnerre de Dieu_!' the man grumbled. 'Br-rr! As black
as the ace of spades. Three hours almost I am on the road!'

He doffed his _bicorne_ hat and shook a trickle of water upon the
ground.

'The _patron_ wants you to come to him at once, citizen,' he added. 'I
brought a spare horse with me for you to ride.'

Hector felt momentarily relieved. This, at least, was normal. Some
emergency of the service claimed him, he imagined. But Couthon, he had
heard from Largier, had taken an interim secretary during Hector's
absence, a young man named Leroy. Hector had yet two days of his leave
unexpired. Why, then, was he sent for thus hastily in the middle of the
night?

'It seems to be urgent,' he remarked to the gendarme.

'_Parbleu_, you have said it, citizen,' retorted Javoir, flinging back
his dripping mantle and scratching his head. 'Never have I seen the
_patron_ of a humour so massacring as to-night; and yet, as you know, he
has his fits of impatience at times, _pas vrai_? "Ride post-haste to the
Citizeness Regnault's at Neuilly," says he, "and fetch me this good
Charpentier who lodges with her. Take your comrade's horse and bring the
young man back without delay, it is understood?" he says. _Bigre!_ I
didn't wait to be told twice. I tightened up the girths on Sully here
and on Muron's mare--we keep our horses ready saddled in the yard--_et
me voilà!_ If you'll take my advice, _l'ami_, you'll lose no time; for,
in the mood in which the _patron_ found himself when I started out, he
is capable of doing a mischief to any one who crosses him!'

An odd friendship existed between Hector and Javoir. A gaunt scarecrow
of a man, the gendarme, awkward as a rake, with a stringy black mustache
and a long, haggard face sprinkled with warts. He had spent twenty years
or more in the service of the police, and, being a soldier first and
last, had made as little fuss about changing the Royal cipher on his
collar for the tricolour cockade as in the past his predecessors had
made about swapping the pike for the flintlock. In matters of discipline
he was a wooden automaton, shrewd in his way and scrupulously honest, a
type that the young man knew well in the Brigade of Guards, though he
had never had the incentive to study it before. They had developed a
marked liking for one another, yet Hector fully realised that Javoir
would, if ordered, make no bones about marching him off to the scaffold,
and, if need were, of himself guillotining him into the bargain. For the
rest the gendarme was a kindly enough fellow, a Norman from the
neighbourhood of Rouen with a full store of the Norman peasant's caution
and intelligence and a remarkably shrewd judgment on politics when his
native reticence allowed him to express himself.

'A little moment to fetch my hat and cloak and pistols,' said Hector,
'and I am with you. And you, _mon brave_, you could probably manage a
dram after your ride, _hein_?'

'I wouldn't say "no,"' returned the gendarme.

Only the gurgling gutters fended the stillness of the house as Hector
passed through the empty _salon_ to gain the loggia, where in the fitful
moonlight the guttering candle-flames were paling on the deserted
supper-table. Of Zouzou nothing was to be seen. She had stolen away
without a sound. Hector picked up the brandy bottle and a glass and
returned to the lobby. Then he went to his room and made a rapid change
for the road. A few minutes later the two horsemen dived into the inky,
dripping blackness of the elm grove.

The rain had ceased, but the night oozed moisture and the air was
steamy. All around the raindrops pattered stealthily down from the
trees, and the moon, in her fitful appearances through the scudding,
fleecy clouds, was mirrored in great pools of water that lay upon the
broken surface of the _chaussée_. They met never a soul as they rode
forward in silence, their horses' hoofs plashing in the mire, nor, as
they clattered over the cobbled street of Neuilly, did any house show a
light to greet them.

'One will be content to see you back at work, citizen,' remarked the
gendarme suddenly, when, after a canter of a mile or so, they had
checked their horses to breathe them. 'These _coquins_ who robbed you
played the _patron_ a scurvy trick, _allez_! Do you know what Couthon
says?'

'No,' said Hector.

'That it was a plot to get you out of the way so that his enemies could
plant a spy in his house ...'

Hector grew thoughtful. He had been followed the night he was attacked:
had Grand-Duc tried in this fashion to get rid of him? Perhaps; but not
with the motive that Couthon suggested, for Fouquier-Tinville had no
reason to suspect that the Citizen Charpentier, Jacobin spy, would not
be at any time amenable to his wishes.

'When did the _patron_ say this?' Hector asked.

'To-night, _pardi_, when we arrested Leroy!'

'Leroy arrested?' cried Hector.

'So well and truly arrested that he passes before the Revolutionary
Tribunal in the morning,' retorted Javoir. 'And you know what that
means, citizen!' he added significantly.

'But what has he done?' Hector persisted.

The gendarme shrugged his shoulders.

'Things have moved swiftly since your accident,' he said. 'The Citizen
Robespierre has quarrelled with the Committee of General Security, it
appears. He will have no more dealings with the _gens de l'expédition_:
he now has his own agents in the Committee of Public Safety. One no
longer sees the Citizen Robespierre: he has withdrawn to a country-house
at Maisons-Alfort, I have been told. It is the _patron_ who looks after
everything, and so, as he holds to Robespierre, their enemies, the
despatchers, fearing that their hour approaches, sent this jackanapes,
Leroy, as a spy to our house, profiting by your absence.'

Hector nodded reflectively. The meaning of his talk with
Fouquier-Tinville was not clear to him. He was to have been the tool of
the _gens de l'expédition_ in the house of Couthon to encompass the ruin
of the _Conventionnel_ as soon as he became inconvenient to their plans.
The psychological moment had arrived during Hector's absence. Obviously
Leroy had filled the rôle that Jean François Charpentier had been
destined to play. And where did Grand-Duc figure in this meshwork of
intrigue? Clearly on the side against Couthon, since he had first taken
Hector to Chrétien's. This would explain his caution in building up his
case against the secretary.

Javoir shook up his reins, and they fell into a trot which, save for a
brief halt at the barrier where the gendarme's passes obtained them
instant admittance, they kept up till, hot and muddy, they drew rein
outside the _Conventionnel's_ house in the rue Saint-Honoré. Torches
flickered in the yard. A party of gendarmes surrounded a young man who,
with his hands tied behind him, was just being led away. His eyes were
haggard, and his face was grey with terror.

Resolutely Hector mounted the staircase. Couthon's front door stood
wide. From within he heard the rasping voice of the _Conventionnel_,
hoarse with anger, rating some one who answered in a squeaky,
high-pitched voice that Hector knew all too well. On the threshold of
the apartment the young man paused, suddenly apprehensive of the events
that stood before. But the remembrance of that cowardly blow dealt from
behind which, he now felt sure, he owed to the humpback, steeled him to
the encounter. He pushed open the door of the sitting-room and walked
in.

The humpback stood before the empty hearth. With his topaz eyes burning
hotly in his sallow face, he was methodically biting his nails, one
finger after the other, with a nervous fury that bespoke the fires
consuming him within. Opposite him on the familiar couch the cripple
sprawled, a white cotton night-cap on his head, a grimy night-shirt,
open at the throat, displaying his scraggy neck beneath a shabby coat
cast across his shoulders. Out of his livid face shining wet with
perspiration his eyes flashed spite. He shook a bony, menacing finger at
the man before him.

'I read you like a book, you rascal!' he screeched. 'You would corrupt
my household, would you, you reptile, you and your friends? Did you see
your protégé below? Why didn't you bring your Collot, your Barère, your
Bourdon, your Amar, your Jagot'--his voice mounted shrilly as he
declaimed the string of names--'to see what you and they will look like
when vengeance that draws near overtakes you all? Fouquier will rid me
of this wretched tool, this Leroy, but, look to it, Grand-Duc, look to
it I say, that he does not warm the plank for you! _Bon Dieu!_ Is there
no measure to the effrontery of traitors? Not only do they send a spy
into my house, but when I replace him by an honest man, _sapristi_, they
make plots to accuse him!'

As he broke off breathless, he perceived Hector at the door.

'Ah! Here is Charpentier,' he cried. 'Now bring your charges, Citizen
Commissary!'

Grand-Duc plucked his fingers from his mouth and began to crack his
knuckles nervously. Desperately uneasy he appeared. With his small eyes
narrowed down to mere slits beneath his jutting brows and his thin upper
lip drawn up over his teeth, he wore the sneering, snarling air of a
hunted rodent, like a stoat at bay.

'No charges, citizen,' he stammered. 'No charges. I only want
information from the citizen about his connection with a certain
dangerous conspirator'--he paused and looked peeringly towards
the couch--'one Louise de Mallet, _ci-devant_ aristocrat, of
Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne.'

'Stop!' trumpeted Couthon--he had jerked himself to a sitting posture on
his sofa. 'Do you allege that Charpentier is implicated with this girl?'

The humpback writhed and gnawed his nails.

'I allege nothing. There are certain indications, however ...'

'Tell your story!' the cripple ordered. 'And don't beat about the bush!'

Grand-Duc shot a long, spiteful glance at Hector who had been an
impassive witness of the scene.

'On the night on which the Citizen Charpentier arrived in Paris,' he
said, 'the police raided the apartment of the conspirator Engstrom, who
that evening had paid the penalty of his crimes. A young man named Simon
was shot dead in trying to escape from the apartment, and a second man,
whose identity is unknown, was found to have committed suicide inside. A
certain van Brink, another of the conspirators, who was arrested earlier
in the evening and on whose indications the police visited Engstrom's
lodging, stated that the banker was expecting the visit of a young man
from abroad: he did not know his name. The unidentified suicide,
however, was not young.

'Now, mark what I say! Engstrom's apartment had a second entrance at the
back, a secret stair that led to a mantle-maker's known as "Au Cupidon"
in the rue de la Loi. On the night of the raid this young girl, Louise
de Mallet, commonly known as Loison, remained behind in the shop after
the other sempstresses had gone home. Two days later she absented
herself from her work, and then a black silk cloak was found to be
missing. Late on the evening of the raid I found that cloak in the
possession of the Citizen Charpentier. One minute'--he raised his hand
to enjoin silence on Couthon, who was about to speak--'one minute,
citizen, and I have done.

'Some days after the disappearance of the girl, a young man called at
the mantle-maker's and asked for news of her.

'Unfortunately, the shop has since closed down, and we have not yet been
able to lay hands on the person who received this caller. But it is my
theory that the young man whom Engstrom awaited--a young man from
abroad, Citizen Charpentier--the young man who obtained the cloak--for
the purpose of disguise, evidently--and the young man who afterwards
sought out Loison at the mantle-maker's are one and the same person.
_Who was he?_ I should like to hear what the Citizen Charpentier has to
say to _that_!'

Now from Grand-Duc's narrative Hector had elicited two cheering facts.
The one was that the humpback had as yet no direct evidence that Hector
had ever been at Engstrom's; the other that Grand-Duc had failed to find
the elderly forewoman who was the only person who could identify the
young man that had asked for Loison. His plan of campaign was ready: a
brief defence, then swift to the attack.

'My answer is "Nothing!"' he said. 'As to the cloak, I took it by
mistake for my own from the Café des Mille Colonnes in the
Palais-Égalité where I dined on the evening of my arrival in Paris. From
what the Citizen Commissary says it is clear that this young man he
speaks of deliberately stole _my_ cloak in order to get rid of the
other. For the rest, the Citizen Commissary's innuendoes bewilder me. He
knows I took the cloak from the Palais-Égalité, for I asked him to
return it for me the very same night.'

'Is this so?' Couthon demanded.

'I took charge of the cloak because I did not believe his story,' the
humpback retorted sullenly. 'But I found no confirmation of it at the
Café des Mille Colonnes.'

'Because, of course, my cloak was no longer there,' cried Hector.
'Rather than waste the Citizen Couthon's time by these idle accusations,
Citizen Commissary, why not produce the girl Loison and let _her_ say
what she did with the cloak and whether she gave it to me?'

On his couch the cripple was stroking his chin with short, swift pats, a
habit he had when thinking, and darting quick glances from one man to
the other.

'Yes,' he said, and nodded approvingly, 'produce the girl, Grand-Duc!'

The humpback hunched his rounded shoulders.

'We have not yet managed to lay hands on her!'

'Ha!' cried Hector, greatly daring. 'Because you know well that she will
demolish this tissue of falsehoods you have built up against an honest
man whose only fault is his devotion to the great patriot, Couthon!'

The attack was succeeding. The humpback wilted visibly, and Couthon
looked with approval upon his secretary. Hector was beginning to enjoy
himself.

'Release me from your service, citizen,' he exclaimed, 'if to serve you
is to be accused of conspiracy against the State!'

'Do not excite yourself, my good Charpentier,' said the _Conventionnel_,
and then addressed Grand-Duc.

'Citizen Commissary,' he remarked in a freezing tone, 'the leisurely
procedure of the Engstrom _instruction_ will be forthwith examined by
the Committee of Public Safety. You will be called upon to justify your
failure to clear up this great conspiracy. Go now, and when you have
accusations to bring, support them by proofs!'

Biting his lip, the humpback settled his hat very deliberately on his
head and walked across the room to the couch.

'Proofs, _hein_?' he snarled. 'You shall have them, citizen! But in the
meantime--_keep an eye on the Citizen Charpentier_!'

On that he strutted out, but, as he passed Hector, he threw him such a
look of triumph tinged with malice that the young man involuntarily
recoiled.

His onslaught had carried the enemy positions. But what of the
counter-attack?




CHAPTER XXII

THE GATHERING OF THE STORM


And so Hector came back to Couthon's. He had been absent for only a
fortnight, but in that time the whole atmosphere of Paris had altered.
Outwardly the aspect of the city remained unchanged. The same haggard,
hopeless queues stood all day before the shuttered shops, with drums
rolling the same ragged battalions of the sections marched through the
streets to and from their drills, the same line of muddy farm-carts,
longer than of yore, waited, morning and evening, in the flagged
courtyard of the Palais de Justice, where, with bewildering rapidity and
deadly monotony, the Revolutionary Tribunal despatched to their death
batches of sixty at a time.

But below the surface the city seethed and bubbled like a volcano
stirring to life. Javoir's diagnosis was just. The long smouldering
jealousy between the two Committees had burst at last into flame,
subterranean still, but ready, at any moment, to spout forth in a fiery
eruption that would inevitably overwhelm either Robespierre or his
enemies.

There were mysterious movements of troops, from Paris to the frontiers,
which, above all things else, preoccupied Couthon, for, even in the
Utopia of him and his friends, force remained the ultimate sanction of
the law. But Billaud-Varonnes, Collot d'Herbois, and Barère, who now no
longer slept at home, conscious that their names were noted on
Robespierre's 'little list,' played a waiting game. Methodically,
secretly, they were denuding Paris of troops against the day when the
cabal they were forming in the Convention should rise up and topple over
the Dictator.

More than ever the city swarmed with spies. There were spies in the
street, spies in the political clubs, spies in the Convention, spies in
the prisons, and spies to spy on spies. The quietude of Couthon's
household was banished quite. A piquet of citizens from the local
Section Committee was now on guard, day and night, in the courtyard of
the house in the rue Saint-Honoré, and when the _Conventionnel_ went
abroad an armed escort surrounded the hunched figure in the whirring,
rattling chair.

More prodigious than ever was the cripple's capacity for work. He
scarcely slept. He grudged the time for meals even, though, while he
ate, he studied reports or scribbled down, in his crabbed, untidy hand,
notes for the orations which, almost daily, he thundered from the
tribune. With his bloodless face and sunken eyes he looked like a living
corpse; but his energy, like his vindictiveness, was unflagging.

In this labyrinth of violence and intrigue, Hector walked miserably like
a soul in torment. His first care had been to seek out Loison. She had
refused to see him. It had not been easy, for Grand-Duc's spies were
watching him again, and Couthon, by declaring that henceforth the
secretary must sleep at the rue Saint-Honoré on a truckle-bed prepared
for his use in the dining-room, had considerably restricted his chances
of visiting the Impasse du Paradis.

However, on the morning of his return from Neuilly, he had been
despatched by Couthon to the Conciergerie with a letter for the Citizen
Fouquier. Javoir was given him as an escort, and Hector was in doubt as
to whether this was to be interpreted as a measure for his safety or an
indication that the _Conventionnel_ had taken the humpback's advice. A
furtive-looking individual detached himself from the crowded pavements
as Hector, with the gendarme at his heels, emerged from under the
carriageway, and thus, in a little procession of three, they traversed
Paris.

Hector's instructions were to wait for an answer. But Fouquier was not
in his gloomy office. The Public Accuser was fulfilling his functions in
the Revolutionary Tribunal adjoining, and could not be disturbed. Hector
paced the corridor for a time. Then it occurred to him that here was a
heaven-sent opportunity for visiting Loison. The Impasse du Paradis was
not far. Javoir was gossiping with the guards at the main entrance of
the prison and the spy was doubtless hanging about in the vicinity; but
both could be eluded if Hector could leave the Conciergerie by a
different door.

Nothing, in the upshot, was simpler. He asked a guard if he could pass
through to the Revolutionary Tribunal, the man indicated the way, and
eventually, debouching from a dark passage, Hector found himself in the
vestibule of the Palace overlooking the courtyard where the tumbrils
stood ready in the sunshine. Boldly he crossed the yard, and, plunging
into the greasy mob that lined the railings in expectation of seeing the
morning batch depart, headed off in the direction of the slender spires
of Notre Dame.

In ten minutes he had reached the Impasse du Paradis. He dawdled a while
before entering the lane to make sure that, this time, he was not
shadowed. But no one appeared, and he gained the house of the Citizen
Braille without challenge, or, as far as he could detect, remark.

He was aware of a sense of pleasurable excitement as he climbed the
well-worn stair. For him that house held a terrible memory; but, on this
day of days, it did not come into his mind. He was thinking of a quiet
room fragrant with mignonette and of a dainty figure with dancing eyes,
one finger lightly poised on scarlet lips, that had peered mischievously
at him from the threshold. He felt that he had been familiar with this
old house many, many years, and his excitement grew as he went up like
one who, returning home after long exile, rejoices to identify each tree
and hedge of his boyhood days.

He mounted swiftly to the top. He did not even pause to try Darras's
door on the floor below. Outside Loison's room he paused and listened.
He heard a light footfall within. He tapped, and at once the movement
ceased. Once again he tapped, and thrilled to hear a young clear voice
reply:

'What is it?'

'Loison,' he said softly in a voice that he could scarcely control,
'Loison, it's I, Charpentier!'

She must have been very close to the door, for he heard the little gasp
she gave. Feverishly he waited for the door to swing back. But nothing
happened.

'Loison,' he said again, 'open to me. It's Jean!'

Still the door remained pitilessly fast and no sound came from the room.

He tapped again.

'Loison,' he cried, 'let me in. Don't be angry, my dear! I can explain
everything ...'

But no answer came. From the lane floated the melancholy cry of the
groundsel-man, peddling his wares in the street: '_Vo-o-oyez mon mouron,
le beau mouron, du mouron pour les p'tits oiseaux!_'

Despair now overcame the young man at the door. Frantically, more
fiercely than he knew, for his nerves were frayed to ribbons, he beat
upon the blankly inhospitable panels.

'Let me in,' he pleaded hotly. 'I must speak to you! Loison, let me in!
Answer me! Are you ill?'

The sudden creaking of a door two floors below shamed him into silence.
When the sound had passed, a forlorn little whimper on the other side of
the keyhole where he stood and listened caught his ear.

'My dear,' he entreated, 'don't cry. Hear me! I've been ill: I couldn't
come before ...'

Now he could hear her quietly sobbing. But then, with a great jarring
vibration that seemed to crowd the whole staircase with noise, the big
bell of Notre Dame tolled noon. Hector sprang erect. He had been half an
hour away. Already he had delayed too long. Hastily he scrawled a line
upon a scrap of paper and thrust it under the door. Then he descended
the stairs.

He stopped for an instant on Darras's landing, where he had killed the
spy, but his hasty rapping brought no answer. The doctor was asleep or
from home. With a bursting heart he went back through the sun-baked
streets to the Conciergerie.

Thereafter for three long days he knew no repose. Sleeping and waking
Loison's pale face, as it had stared at him out of the crowd about the
steps of Saint-Roch, was his constant companion. It gazed up at him from
the documents he handled, blurring the Phrygian cap of the Republic
engraved at the head; it floated in the air when he looked from the
window; it was with him day and night.

The work was crushing. There were swarms of callers. Almost daily now he
was summoned to gather up his papers and retire to the dining-room to
leave Couthon free to confer in private with his political friends. Once
Robespierre came, a vivacious, vital man, reserved and imperious with a
snapping black eye, and on another occasion the handsome and dapper
Saint-Just, hastening from a mission to the armies on the frontier,
whose open, engaging features were in such violent contrast with his
perpetual talk of blood. A continual procession defiled through the
white-and-gold apartment where the cripple, huddled on his couch, raved
and gesticulated from dawn till dark, a gallery of types, some of
_bourgeois_ mien, others tatterdemalion grotesques, alike only in the
strain of hysteria that ran through words and gestures of every one.

He went to the Convention, where, day and night, the great hemicycle
roared like a den of wild beasts; he escorted his employer to the dismal
monkish chapel of the Jacobin Club and, lifting him from the roll-chair,
bore him through the seething crowd to his seat below the three pulpits,
one above the other, draped in scarlet cloth, where torches flickered
eerily. He waited with a note for Fouquier in the benches reserved for
Government officials at the Revolutionary Tribunal beneath the podium,
where amid the clamour of the thronged galleries Dumas, the President,
from his high chair glared ferociously between the drooping feathers of
his plumed hat at the packed dock. And in all this shifting background
of faces, brutish, frenzied, epileptic, cowed, terror-struck,
despairing, one he always saw, the pale face of a young girl with serene
and candid eyes.

He yearned for her with a longing that was pain. Perhaps it was pity,
the pity that rose suffocatingly in his heart when he tossed at night
upon his truckle-bed and endured again in memory the anguish of her
sobbing. Perhaps ... but then his heart was given to Lady Betty who had
spurned it. He had lost all sense of danger to himself; but his terror
for Loison drove him almost frantic.

And then, one glorious July day, the whole fabric of life crumbled about
him and left him dazed and almost defeated, beaten to the ground and
broken-hearted.




CHAPTER XXIII

IN THE REGISTRAR'S OFFICE


As ofttimes before, he had gone to the Conciergerie with a note for
Fouquier on some confidential business of Couthon's. On this occasion it
was later than usual and an hour past noon when, with the faithful
Javoir at his side, he presented himself at the little wicket.

'The Public Accuser?' said the gendarme at the gate. '_Au greffe,
citoyen!_'

This meant to say that Fouquier was at the registrar's office, where he
sometimes used one of the two rooms of which _le greffe_ consisted. It
was that same dingy apartment, separated by a glazed partition from its
fellow, where Hector, on a memorable night, had identified the friend of
the Citizen Charpentier.

There was an unwonted stir about the corridors when Hector, on the
rasping '_Entrez!_' that greeted his knock, passed into the Public
Accuser's presence. Through the begrimed panes that formed the upper
part of one wall he saw that the adjoining room was full of people.
Fouquier stood between the door and the partition, restlessly picking
his teeth and staring with his besotted air through the glass into the
room beyond. With him was a man with a bloated face whom Hector
remembered to have seen in the company at Chrétien's on the Place du
Théâtre Favart.

With his toothpick the Public Accuser pointed through the glass.

'_Morbleu_,' he sneered, 'that's a resolute rascal! Mark how he jokes
with the barber! I must see if he weakens before the end. I'll watch his
head fall if I have to go without my dinner!'

His companion laughed loudly. Then Hector presented the letter which,
not without some show of irritation at being interrupted, Fouquier sat
down at the desk to read. Thus abandoned to his own devices, the young
man, his interest quickened by the other's gibe, glanced through the
long and shallow window that commanded a view of the adjoining room.

It was a narrow slip of a place, bare and dingy as the outer office at
an attorney's. Hector had already noticed that it was full of people; a
single glance at their faces told him on what dread errand they had been
brought there.

They sat on benches placed a foot or so from the discoloured wall, about
a score in all of men and women of different ages and stations in life.
Behind them, fumbling and tugging, four solidly built young men in red
caps moved briskly along, pinioning their mute and unprotesting victims
with short lengths of dirty rope which they chose from a collection hung
about their shoulders. Their work was supervised by a silent,
self-effacing man who watched them closely from his place near the door,
sometimes stepping forward to test a bond himself. He never spoke. He
gave his orders by signs which his assistants appeared to understand
without difficulty. They worked swiftly with quiet efficiency.

At the end of the room another red cap, with a large pair of shears, was
clipping the hair away from the nape of the neck of a man who, with his
hands fastened behind his back, sat on a three-legged stool placed so
that his face was turned from the room. On the floor stood handy a tall
wicker basket already more than half-filled with tresses of human hair,
golden and brown and black and grey and white. The man with the shears,
who worked with lightning dexterity, was laughing at some witticism of
which the individual on the stool had seemingly just delivered himself.
Hector saw his white teeth glitter in his brown face as, the
hair-cutting operation at an end, he drove the point of the scissors
into the other's shirt and snipped out a deep round opening so as to
expose the neck.

There was a kind of ghastly unnatural primness about that pallid company
as, with their hands behind them, they sat bolt upright on their
benches, like a class of young ladies with backboards, and watched with
dreadful fascination the toilet of the scaffold. The partition muted all
sounds that rose from their midst; but some of them were weeping, and
now and then a faint moan or a little fluttering sigh came to Hector's
ears.

Presently there was a shuffling on the benches. The man with the shears
had tapped his client jovially on the shoulder and cried barber fashion,
'_À un autre!_' and a fresh candidate was thrust forward. The man on the
stool stood up and turned round.

And Hector saw it was Darras.

They had shorn away part of his bushy beard and cropped the shaggy mane
that had dangled about his broad shoulders so that he looked younger and
less uncouth. Otherwise he was quite unchanged in his shabby old coat
and his ragged, patched breeches, his mocking eyes unflinching as though
they scoffed at death as they had always scoffed at life, his broad,
humorous mouth wearing its habitual expression of good-tempered
raillery.

As their glances met through the window, Hector felt the colour drain
from his face, his throat contract, and his eyes fill with tears. It was
Darras's cool and smiling courage that unmanned him more, even, than the
thought that this man, who had risked so much to save him, was about to
die.

Fouquier had risen from his desk and, pushing past Hector, opened a door
in the partition.

'Bring that rascal in here!' he commanded, and Darras was thrust in.
Fouquier's companion, who had been lounging in a corner, lurched nearer,
an anticipatory smirk on his loose and mottled face.

Arms akimbo, a straw between his teeth, the Public Accuser leaned back
against the desk and surveyed his victim.

'Well, my learned doctor,' he said, 'in a little while you will make the
acquaintance of a colleague who can cure all ills!'

Darras smiled good-humouredly.

'Then I ask myself why _you_ should not have sought out his
ministrations, citizen!' he rejoined.

'I!' exclaimed Fouquier. 'I have no traitorous pestilence that needs the
knife of Dr. Guillotin!'

'And yet,' said Darras drily, 'France will never be cured while she is
cankered by such ulcers as you and your kind represent!'

'_Peste!_' cried Fouquier, and sprang erect. 'Is that the way to speak
to patriots?'

And with his open hand he struck the doctor a stinging slap in the face.

A scarlet mark stood out on the other's wan cheek. But the smile never
left his face and his eyes were mocking as before.

'The _ci-devant_ Jesus was also buffeted when His hands were tied and He
could not defend Himself,' Darras remarked impassively. 'But His
captors, at least, were representatives of law and order, not the
hirelings of anarchy, citizen!'

For a moment Fouquier looked as though he would strike him again. But he
mastered himself with an effort.

'The Republic has abolished the superstitious beliefs with which you
seek to drug your mind before death,' he snarled.

'Beliefs?' said Darras, and shrugged his shoulders. 'You wrong me,
citizen. I go out into the _néant_ in an enquiring frame of mind, just
as, when a student in the dissecting-room, I made my first incision in a
corpse to see whether, as the books assured me, I should find heart,
lungs, and liver in their appointed place. And yet I find some wisdom in
the sayings of the Nazarene. _Tiens_, if I remember rightly He spoke a
phrase which would apply to you. "_Those that live by the sword_," He
said, citizen, "_shall perish by the sword!_" The day will come,
Fouquier, when you will pass the same way as I!'

Into the mind of Hector Fotheringay, as he stood and listened to this
odd duel of wits, came the remembrance of a great dim room and of an
eager, strange young man with weary eyes and a pallid face, who cried,
'Mark what I say, Robespierre will surely fall as all men of blood like
him have fallen!' Did he, did this quiet, smiling man, speak with the
tongue of a seer?

Fouquier laughed discordantly.

'You, at any rate, won't be there to see it, my cockerel!' he sneered.

The man with the bloated face guffawed and spoke a foul blasphemy.

'But _he_ will be late for his dinner,' he snarled, pointing at
Fouquier, 'rather than miss seeing _you_ die!'

Darras smiled brightly.

'It is really scarcely worth the trouble!' he remarked apologetically.

The Public Accuser thrust his face into the speaker's.

'Your turn comes last,' he muttered fiercely, 'so it is arranged, _mon
beau monsieur_! With those already in the _charrettes_ and these rascals
in there, the tally, counting you, is forty-one this morning. Forty
times you will hear the knife scream down, forty times you will hear
them grunt, before you pick your way among forty headless corpses to
take your place upon the plank. You have no fear of death, _dis_?'

Darras paused to reply, and when he spoke his eyes were fixed on
Hector's.

'My only regret in dying,' he said slowly, 'is that I leave behind a
young girl, alone and unprotected, whose faith in one she trusted has
been sadly shaken. I, who have a knowledge of men, have assured her that
this friend is worthy of her trust, and that, though appearances are
against him to-day, he is not, he cannot be, so base as he seems. And I
die happy in the certain expectation that, knowing I have been called
away, he will hasten at all costs to her side!'

Proudly the gallant eyes met Hector's, and so in silence they exchanged
their last farewell. But Fouquier's jackal was shouting, in the manner
of a hawker of broadsheets:

'See the last will and testament of Dr. Darras, the famous physician of
the Hospital of La Salpêtrière! His instruments he leaves to the
celebrated surgeon, Sanson, guardian of the nation's health, his
breeches to a worthy _sans-culotte_, orphan of the guillotine, his
mistress to ...'

For the first time Darras displayed signs of emotion. He shook his big
head restlessly and his eyes flashed anger.

'_Pour ça non!_' he declared. 'Daughter, perhaps, but mistress--no!'

A comic face under a red cap was popped in at the door.

'The carriage of Monsieur waits!' a jolly stentorian voice roared.

Fouquier and his jackal were much amused by this witticism. A glint of
humour came back into Darras's eyes. He bowed ceremoniously to the
Public Accuser.

'I will take the liberty of going first!' he said, and so, head erect,
with merry eyes and proudly smiling lips, Dr. Darras, late of La
Salpêtrière, passed through the partition door to meet his Maker.

The narrow room was in a turmoil of despairing farewells. There were
shrill cries and shuddering sobs and heart-broken groans as the burly
young men in the red caps drove their flock into the corridor. But
Hector heard nothing. He stood like a graven image looking out through
the little door by which Darras, of La Salpêtrière, had disappeared.

Suddenly he became aware that Fouquier was speaking to him. The
adjoining room was empty, and through the open window overlooking the
sunlit courtyard of the Palais mounted the sonorous murmur of a great
crowd like the drone of the sea in a shell. And above the murmur rose
the hollow rumble of wheels.

'Say to the Citizen Couthon on my behalf ...': Fouquier gave him a long
verbal message. Hector had to make an effort to memorise it. His brain
seemed to be oscillating, swinging to and fro between that brave and
upright figure even now being borne through the streets, and Loison,
abandoned and defenceless, without money and without friends, crouched
on the bare boards of her little room ...

Javoir was waiting at the wicket. He had been round to the front of the
Palais to see the tumbrils start, and told Hector a long story about
some comic fellow in torn breeches who had made jokes as he clambered
into the cart. Hector paid no heed. He was thinking that he must go to
Loison at once; but first he must return to Couthon and deliver
Fouquier's message which he knew to be important. Why hadn't Fouquier
given him a note that Javoir might have delivered? Hector could surely
have contrived a pretext to get the gendarme to take a letter in his
stead. But he would never get a verbal message into the Norman's thick
head. He must deliver it himself. But, that done, how could he manage to
get away for an hour or two?

Two o'clock was long past, and the sun was high in the heavens as they
walked slowly back through the grilling afternoon heat. The streets were
like an oven, and the heaps of rubbish that bestrewed the neglected
roadway reeked foully. As far as they could they kept in the shade, and
so, towards the hour of three, by the Place du Carrousel and the rue de
l'Échelle, gained the rue Saint-Honoré.

They had gone some hundred yards along it and were not far from
Couthon's, when, suddenly, on the other side of the way, Hector espied
Grand-Duc. The humpback was but a few paces ahead of them and walking in
the same direction. He was accompanied by a female figure, a thin and
angular apparition in sober black. To his blank dismay Hector recognized
the acid and elderly forewoman of the mantle-maker's in the rue de la
Loi.

It was the counter-attack.




CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH TWO YOUNG PEOPLE MAKE AN OLD DISCOVERY


Then Hector Fotheringay knew that he had reached the end of his tether.
Here before his eyes was the concrete meaning of the humpback's boast
that he would bring proofs. The forewoman had been found at last.
Probably she would remember him, for a young man must have been a rare
visitor at the mantle-maker's; but, whether she remembered him or not,
she would have no choice but to identify him to save her own skin.

Her evidence would be enough for Couthon. Too well Hector knew the
suspicious mind of the _Conventionnel_; nor had he forgotten the
frenzied hatred Couthon had displayed towards Loison. The game was up.
He could not return to Couthon's. Henceforth, like Loison, like poor,
gallant Darras, he was an outcast.

Strangely enough, he felt something like relief at the prospect. The
strain of his position had become well-nigh unbearable. He could
shoulder the ever-present anxiety of his assumed rôle, he could face
with courage the knowledge that, in the background, industriously and
methodically Grand-Duc was spinning his web to enmesh him. What wore him
down and filled him with nausea, physical and mental, was the daily
intimate association with these homicidal maniacs, these ghouls of
blood. Surely the freedom of outlawry was preferable to intimacy with
these vampires! The sense of liberty filled his being, sweet in his
nostrils like a draught of mountain air.

But not yet had he won his freedom. His watch-dog had to be got rid of;
moreover, any minute Grand-Duc might turn and see him. Somewhere in
their wake, too, was one of those hangdog figures that always shadowed
him now when he went abroad. Insensibly Hector slackened his pace until,
espying the friendly awning of a small wine-shop, he slipped behind it,
out of the humpback's sight when he should leave the opposite pavement
to cross to Couthon's.

Hector doffed his hat, wiped his damp brow.

'My friend,' he said to Javoir, who had halted, 'I die of fatigue. I
cannot take another step, I vow. I must sit down and repose myself in
the cool for a little moment. Remember I have been ill and have not yet
fully regained my strength. But I will not keep you from your duty. Go
on to Couthon's, I beg, and should the citizen ask for me, say I am
following on immediately.'

The gendarme hesitated, looking down his long nose. Then he gazed at
Hector, and from him at the street swimming in the heat and from the
street to the imposing array of bottles that gleamed invitingly through
the gloom of the darkened shop behind.

'If the citizen be ill,' he said slowly, 'it were better I stayed with
him. Maybe a drop of wine ...'

Ruminating, he gnawed his drooping mustache and longingly licked his
thick lips. The tavern-keeper, who had stirred himself from his siesta
among the swarming flies at the back of the shop, bustled out and wiped
over a table with a grimy swab.

'_À vot' service, citoyens_,' he muttered, and paused enquiringly.
Resignedly, Hector bade the man bring a pitcher of Vouvray. Swiftly, he
accepted defeat--for the moment, at any rate. Javoir had checked him at
his first attempt. Nor was he sanguine enough to imagine that he might
yet succeed with the aid of the thin wine dispensed at the drinking-kens
of the rue Saint-Honoré. Javoir, he was well aware, had the strong head
of the cider-drinking Normans.

The _patron_ pattered away and reappeared with an earthen jar of wine
and two glasses which he set down on the table and retired. The two men
drank their wine in silence, Javoir fanning himself at intervals with
his tufted _bicorne_. Hector's mind was busy, and, when the pitcher was
empty, he slapped his pockets hurriedly and exclaimed:

'My good Javoir, I must, after all, trouble you to precede me to
Couthon's. I find I have come out without my money. Fetch me my purse, I
pray you. You will find it in the pocket of my blue coat that lies
across the bed in the _salle à manger_. I will stay here as a pledge to
the _patron_ until you come back.'

Now, the Normans are a near and grasping race, as Hector knew. The
alternative which his words presented to the gendarme's mind would, he
was confident, so appall his companion that, in a contest between his
sense of thrift and his sense of duty, the former must inevitably win.
But he had overlooked the fact that in all human beings there is an
unknown quantity, ever ready to obtrude itself and upset the most nicely
balanced equations.

The gendarme cast Hector a slow look, the doubtful, mustering glance of
the horse-dealer who receives a first bid. Irresolutely, he stood up and
sat down again. Then, after a protracted period of thought, with the
utmost deliberation he thrust a red hand into his breeches pocket.
Hector's heart sank.

'As for that, citizen,' Javoir remarked, staring hard at his companion,
'I believe you to be an honest man. I will settle the shot and you shall
repay me when, presently, we go home.'

He produced a battered leather purse.

'A measure of Vouvray? 'Tis fourteen livres,' he said. And he pounded
the earthen pitcher on the table to call the host.

Check again! Hector felt the cold perspiration break out on his brow.
They called the Normans tenacious; but this man was a very leech. The
young man pushed back his chair and gazed warily round the awning. There
was no sign now of Grand-Duc in the street. The rue Saint-Honoré was
deserted, and the shadow who erstwhile had dogged their steps was no
longer to be seen. Javoir kept hammering on the table, but the
tavern-keeper did not appear. A last wild hope flickered up in Hector's
breast.

'You are a good fellow, Javoir,' said the Citizen Charpentier, 'and I
shall not fail to settle our debt. But where is this _animal_ of a
_patron_? He sleeps, no doubt. Time presses and we must return home. Go
in, my good Javoir, and pay this man what we owe!'

So saying he stepped out into the brilliant sunshine of the street and
stood an instant as though waiting for his escort. Still the
tavern-keeper did not come. Unsuspectingly the gendarme got up and
entered the shop, turning his back on the street. In that moment Hector
darted off to the left.

He took the first turning that presented itself, running as he had never
run before. Fortunately, the streets were almost empty; for in that
great heat as many Parisians as were able remained within doors during
the midday hours. But Hector was reckless now. He cared little what the
rare passers-by thought of this odd young man who went careering along
with the sweat pouring down his face and his stockings falling about his
dusty shoes. His sole idea was to outdistance pursuit--and to find
Loison.

She would still be at the Impasse du Paradis, he thought. Darras had
told him as clearly as might be that the girl was yet at liberty. It
seemed, therefore, as if Darras had been arrested away from home;
otherwise, to have mentioned her name might have gravely compromised
her, since her friendship with the doctor was probably known in the
house.

Not until he found himself beneath the leafy chestnut trees of the
Boulevards did Hector drop into a walk. Apparently, he had got clean
away. The gendarme must have assumed that his companion had gone on to
Couthon's without waiting for him and had followed him thither without
raising the alarm. The young man followed the line of the Boulevards
until he saw the high pylon of the Porte Saint-Martin rising above the
green trees. Then he plunged down the narrow and squalid rue de la Lune
and, through the network of streets that lay between the Fishmarket and
the Tanners' Hall, gained the Marché des Innocents and so the quays. As
the bell of Notre Dame was striking four, he entered the old house of
the Impasse du Paradis.

A hand-cart piled with mean furniture stood at the door, and before him
a red-and-white mattress mounted the dirty stairs mysteriously above two
solid stockinged legs. The door of Darras's old apartment stood wide
giving a glimpse of a huddle of furniture on the floor of the studio.
Though the doctor had but died that afternoon, already his apartment
had a new tenant. Truly the span between life and death was short in
those days of revolution!

Loison stood on the landing before the open door of her room, her small
hands resting on the hand-rail of the stairs, immobile, inert. She was
dazed and listless like one who has waited long. Her eyes were fixed on
the well of the staircase, and Hector had to touch her arm before she
perceived him. Then she looked at him blankly.

'Where's Darras?' she whispered like a frightened child. 'Why hasn't
Darras come back?'

Very gently Hector led her into her little room. She followed
unresisting. He closed the door. It was stifling up there under the
tiles. The stagnant air that came in through the open window was hot
like the breath from a furnace. He pulled forward one of her two chairs
and she sat down. The expression of absolute despair on her face seared
the young man's heart. The pity, the great overwhelming pity, he felt
for her spoke so clearly from his eyes that, when she turned her head
and looked at him, she read the tidings he had not the heart to speak.
Slowly her head drooped forward on her breast and she was shaken by a
torrent of passionate weeping.

He stood aside and left her to her grief. Tears, he told himself, were
better than her stony despair. After a spell, she lifted her face, her
eyes lifeless through a mist of tears, the tragic mask of the Mater
Dolorosa.

'He went out to buy food,' she said. 'Since the night before last I have
waited and he has not come back. When they arrived to take possession of
his room, I feared ... I feared the worst.'

She looked at him with painful intensity.

'When ... when was it?'

'This afternoon. He went to his death smiling like a brave man would.
And his last thoughts were of you.'

Again the tears fell fast; but she was calmer now. And presently she
drew out a little square of linen and dried her eyes. She stood up and
with perfect dignity held out her little hand.

'I thank you, M'sieu Jean, for coming to tell me,' she said. 'There was
grave danger in what you have done and, believe me, I am grateful.
Good-bye, my friend, and _bonne chance_!'

He took her hand, but retained it in his.

'Would you send me away, Loison?' he asked.

With face averted, she nodded.

'I am a danger to all my friends,' she said in a low voice. 'In your
position you cannot afford to know me. The spies of the Jacobins are
everywhere, and you, too, would finish at the scaffold.'

With a sudden impulse she plucked her hand away.

'I implored you before to let us part,' she cried tensely. 'You have
your life to live and I would not drag you down.'

He did not seek to recapture her hand.

'Do you think I would abandon you like this after you saved my life?' he
exclaimed passionately. 'Darras's last words to me were to commend you
to my care. Can you believe I would betray a trust like that?'

'I don't want your pity,' she rejoined with a little catch in her voice.

'Loison,'--he caught her arm and brought her round to face him--'you do
me wrong in thinking I abandoned you. Did you not have my note? I was
attacked by footpads and for six days I lay unconscious. I should have
kept my word else to visit you again!'

She turned her head away and nodded. Her fingers plucked a fold in her
dress.

'I wronged you in my thoughts,' she said in a low voice, 'and I ask your
pardon, my friend. You saved me from Couthon, you gave me food when I
was starving, and you clothed me when I went in rags ...'

'I had no thought of that!' the young man expostulated.

'I know, I know!' she returned gently, and smiled. 'But it makes us
quits, my friend, and so we can part!'

She held out her hand. But he brushed it aside and caught her by the
shoulders.

'Listen to me!' he cried. 'It was no sense of obligation brought me
here, either to you or to Darras. I came because ... because ... Oh,
don't you understand?'

She was looking at him now, her lips parted, her bosom heaving quickly
under the lace _fichu_. But she did not reply. And desperately,
passionately, he went on:

'Ever since that first evening at Engstrom's I have thought of you.
Night and day you have dwelt in my mind. I'm ... I'm not what I seem,
Loison. One false step in all these weeks since first we met would have
sent me straight to the guillotine. But what has haunted me, waking and
sleeping, has been _your_ danger, the realisation that you were alone in
Paris unprotected and that I was powerless to seek you out and care for
you. And now that I am free I have come straight to you. Ah, Loison,
tell me that you knew I would come!'

Her face was very close to his now and he saw a shimmer of colour stain
the wan cheeks.

'That ... that other woman with whom you were driving that day,' she
murmured. 'Did you say these things to her, too?'

He stared at her in astonishment. He had entirely forgotten about the
fond and blonde Zouzou.

'My dear,' he cried, 'that woman was brought to brand me as an impostor.
She was the friend of the man whom I am impersonating. But instead of
repudiating me, faith, through a womanly caprice, she claimed me as her
lover and carried me off to the country for a week! I was in her power,
and could not free myself at once, for she could have denounced me.
She's a good wench, but she's nothing to me. You don't think I'm in love
with _her_, do you?'

One little hand stole out and toyed with his neckcloth. The tears welled
up in her eyes.

'_J'ai été bien malheureuse, allez!_' she whispered.

He drew her to him. Slowly her arms went about his neck.

'Loison!' he murmured.

She raised her eyes to his with love shining through the tears.

'What is your real name, _dis_?' she asked.




CHAPTER XXV

THE DRAUGHT-PLAYERS


Night was falling over the Seine. The last fires of sunset had been
quenched and the brilliant colours that trailed behind had paled to a
wan and lurid light. The day yet lingered in the sky reluctantly, as
though jealous of the proud radiance of the yellow half-moon that,
propped on its side, a shining star below it like a spur, rode in the
wide arc of heaven.

Across the Pont Neuf the vast pile of the Old Louvre was black and
sombre, but all around it and on the bridge lights were beginning to
twinkle. In the foreground the red lanthorns of a string of hay barges
cast a blood-red reflection on the water, and at the corner of the quay,
where it made an angle with the rue Dauphin, a yellow lamp threw a dim
ray of light over the terrace of the Café Conti.

It was pleasant sitting outside the café on this warm July night. A
breath of freshness came from the river, bearing with it the
intoxicating perfume of the old limes, bordering the bank. From the
little tables set beneath the striped awning came the gentle murmur of
voices, and, now and then, the jar of a glass on marble, the click of
dominoes or the rattle of the dice on the backgammon board.

At the end of the terrace, at a table placed on the edge of the sidewalk
below the flap of the awning, two men sat and played Polish draughts.
They were an ill-assorted pair. The one, with a grizzled head and
hard-bitten, battered face, wore a shabby military uniform, the facings
discoloured, the felt worn and stained. A touch of swagger, the clay
pipe he smoked, and his general out-at-elbows appearance imbued him with
the air of a soldier of fortune. His companion was a little fellow,
nervous and alert, with a pursed-up mouth and bright gimlet eyes and a
forehead deeply lined. He was certainly not a soldier; but he might have
been a follower of any settled and unexciting calling from a
tax-gatherer to a country apothecary or a horse-leech. His whole
attention was concentrated on the game. His companion, on the contrary,
as he puffed his clay, kept looking round the terrace as though he were
expecting some one.

'I huff you, Arthur,' said the little man, his hand on a piece.
'_Sapristi_, you must have seen it!'

'Nine o'clock past,' remarked his companion moodily in a French that had
a little singing lilt to it. 'He'll not come to-night either, I'm
thinking, Richard!'

The little man advanced his foot and gently pressed his companion's
beneath the table.

'Look round presently,' he said in a conversational tone of voice as he
moved his piece. 'I think it might be our man.'

The soldier withdrew his pipe from his lips and, turning, tapped out the
dottle against the table at his back. As he swung round to the
draught-board once more, he casually lifted his eyes. Two tables away an
unkempt, black-bearded man was sitting. At his elbow was a cup of wine,
and before him, spread out on the table, was the _Moniteur_, which, chin
propped on hand, he was reading. His face was very thin and its pallor
was accentuated by his black scrub of beard. His hair, jet-black and
curly, fell thick about his shoulders. But, under his well-worn grey
coat, his form was lissom and well-knit, and there was an elasticity
about his movements that suggested he was younger than his shaggy
appearance indicated.

A shadow fell athwart the draught-board. A waiter was gathering up the
empty flask that stood between the two men.

'The same again, Jules,' said the soldier.

'_C'est bien_,' replied the waiter softly, and added in the same tone:
'that is the young man, reading the newspaper behind you!'

He whisked up the empty flagon and pattered off.

'Put up your filthy pipe, Arthur,' the little man suddenly remarked in
clear tones, 'and take a pinch of snuff!'

He whisked out a snuff-box, flicking up the lid with his thumb, and
extended it to his companion. But his eyes were riveted on the
black-bearded stranger behind them. The latter, immersed in his reading,
paid no heed. Then, with a jerk of the wrist, the little man sent the
snuff-box flying. It fell to the ground between the draught-players and
the table behind.

The little man leaned over the back of his chair.

'Citizen,' he called; and, seeing that the other did not look up from
his newspaper, called again, 'hé, citizen!'

And now the stranger raised his eyes. They were hollow with dark rings
about them and his gaze was mournful and suspicious.

'I have dropped my snuff-box,' remarked the little man affably. 'Might I
trouble you? That's it at your foot!'

The stranger lowered his eyes. A scarlet snuff-box lay half-open at his
feet, its contents gushing out on the sawdust of the terrace. He
flashed a mustering glance at the two men watching him, then bent and
gathered up the box.

'Won't you do me the favour...?' invited the little man with a gesture
towards the _tabatière_.

The stranger bowed.

'Gladly, citizen,' he answered, 'for _my_ red snuff-box is lost.'

And with elegance he took a pinch of the brown _rappée_ and conveyed it
to his nose. Then he rose and, with a bow, handed the snuff-box to its
owner.

'Jules will instruct you what to do,' said the latter. 'Wait for Jules!'

He spoke between his teeth so that his lips scarce seemed to move as,
with a friendly nod, he took the box and slipped it in his pocket.

'Come, Arthur,' he said to his companion, 'we will pass the time of day
with _la patronne_ before we go to our beds. Jules shall serve us our
wine within.'

The stranger returned to his newspaper, and arm-in-arm the two men
passed inside. Gradually the café began to empty. Parisians went early
to their homes in those days; for after 11 P.M. the flying patrols of
the sections examined all citizens' cards, a practice that had been much
abused and had led to complaints at the Convention. One after another
figures drifted out into the night and melted into the purple shadows of
the lime trees fringing the quay. At last, looking up, the stranger
discovered that the terrace was deserted save for himself. But then at
the door of the café, the waiter Jules appeared and beckoned.

'Take the door that faces you through the café,' he whispered, when the
stranger stood beside him; 'descend by the stairs to the cellar and
follow the passage until you come to a door. Knock on it five times,
three knocks, and then two! _C'est entendu? Allez!_'

Within the tavern all the lights were extinguished now save one, an
oil-lamp that flared on the counter. The chairs were piled on the
tables, and a woman, with her skirts pinned up, was swabbing the floor.
The stranger passed through the café, and, after descending the narrow
stair, groped his way along a pitch-dark passage until he felt his way
impeded by a door. He knocked as directed and the door immediately swung
back. The little man stood there.

'Follow me!' he said briefly, and led the way across a coal-cellar,
dimly lit by a grating from the street, and through a door along a
passage which ended in another door. This he opened in turn and they
found themselves out under the stars on the lower part of the quay a few
yards from the water's edge. A barge lay along-side, a long plank
stretched from her deck to the shore. The little man glanced about him,
then tiptoed swiftly across the plank. His companion followed, and
between them they drew in the plank and deposited it on the deck. The
little man whipped aside a screen of canvas and showed half a dozen
steps that went down to a little black hole of a cabin. Here at a table
beside a smoky lamp the grey-headed officer was sitting. The little man
motioned to the stranger to go down and waited to pull the curtain
across behind them before joining the others in the cuddy.

'For more than a week,' began the little man, addressing their bearded
visitor, 'you have frequented the café, Jules tells us. Who are you, my
friend, and whom do you seek?' His gimlet eyes bored into the other's
face. But the newcomer did not flinch.

'I am the friend of all oppressed,' he answered stoutly.

The officer and his friend exchanged a glance. They drew to one side and
conversed in whispers. Presently the man in uniform broke away. 'D'ye
think now ...' he began in English. His companion sought to restrain
him. But he motioned him away with his hand.

'Ah, Richard,' he said--his accent was broadly Irish--''tis as good a
way as anny to test him. An' it's two to one, we are, below here, and
ne'er a sowl to hear us. Let our friend rimimber that and moind his
answers! D'ye think ye could talk English for a spell?' he asked,
turning to the stranger.

'Most gladly if at last we may speak straightly and not in riddles!'
that individual replied in English with a heartiness that contrasted
strongly with his former attitude of restraint. 'Either of you gentlemen
know Mr. Gray?'

'That depends,' observed the little man cautiously.

'Arrah, don't moind him and his pernickety ways!' the Irishman broke in.
From his waist-belt he pulled out a pistol, cocked it, and laid it on
the table within grasp of his great hairy hand. 'I'll tell you I do know
that same Mr. Gray,' he went on. 'And now--who the divil are _you_?'

The stranger smiled and showed his clean white teeth. The smile lit up
his face and made him suddenly seem much younger.

'Mr. Gray sent me to meet Engstrom,' said he simply. 'But I arrived too
late!'

The Irishman clapped his hands together.

'For the love o' Mary, 'tis the missin' young man from London! By the
hokey, an' wasn't we sart'in, Richard here an' meself, that your bones
was long since bleachin' in the pit o' Picpus!'

With formal dignity he bared his grizzled head.

'Permit me, sir,' he said, 'to present me friend, Mr. Richard Savory, of
London, commonly known, for raysons ye will apprayciate, as the Citizen
Savarin, forwarding agent of this city.'

The little man rose and bowed ceremoniously.

'For meself,' the officer added, 'I am Arthur O'Farrell, of Gertnamona,
in the barony of Clontarf, sometime Major in the Royal Regiment, but now
of the artillery of the Armies of the Republic, attached to the
Department of War. 'Tis in mighty quayre company ye find me, sir; but
there! a man must live, and to a soldier it matters not greatly who
gives the order. Fortune, I've heard tell, makes strange bedfellows, but
I niver thought that the grandson of Count O'Farrell, who died for King
Louis at Fontenoy, would share a pallet with this ould harridan, the
Republic! An' now, sir, to whom have I th' advantage of addressin'
meself?'

The stranger inclined himself gracefully.

'Mr. Savory, Major O'Farrell, your servant, sirs. My name is Hector
Fotheringay, Lieutenant and Captain, of His Majesty's Third Foot
Guards!'

       *       *       *       *       *

Yes, it was Hector Fotheringay, this tattered vagabond, whom, in his old
life, the very dogs would have chased away from the barrack-gate.
Sometimes, as he slunk at night through the quiet streets, he would stop
beneath a lamp before a shop-window, and, surveying the shaggy wretch
who looked at him out of the diamond-pane, ask himself if this was truly
the same trim gallant, who, but a few weeks since, in his brave
scarlet-and-gold, had slow-marched the colour out of the courtyard of
Saint-James's to the strains of the old Brandenburg march? Was this
harassed phantom, bearded like a Barbary corsair, the elegant and
disdainful coxcomb who had yawned his idle way through the well-ordered
life of rich and luxurious Saint James's? Could it be that, under that
bristling beard, that filthy neckcloth, that dusty, threadbare coat, was
the same young Guardsman whose arrogant expression--yes, _arrogance_ was
the word Cousin Betty had used--the old mirror at Buttrell's used to
reflect?

He was learning his lesson now--every day a fresh one. Each morning, a
basket on his arm, he would start out, he who, before, had ordered his
very gloves from humble tradesmen bidden to his bedside--early, so as to
get a good place in the queue at the baker's or, twice weekly when the
meat ration was issued, at the butcher's. The shops were open only in
the daylight hours, of course, and every moment he spent abroad in the
daytime was, he knew, fraught with the utmost peril. Only now did he
realise what an inestimable boon Couthon's powerful influence had been
to him. In the quarter of the rue Saint-Honoré he had been known and
deferred to as the secretary of the all-puissant _Conventionnel_; but
here, in this strange neighbourhood, he was a cipher, forced to share
his lot with the common herd--and a bitter lot it was.

He dared not apply for ration-cards in his own name or Loison's. For his
purchases he used a stock of tickets that Darras had from some odd
acquaintance procured for the girl and himself in the name of Poteau,
Hippolyte, Locksmith, and Spouse. There were means of supplementing the
rations. Mysterious pedlars flitted down the lane at night with a small
stock of soap, precious rarity, or butter, even harder to come by, and
the like, and there were certain shops where, at back entrances, after
nightfall, the initiated might, at a price, buy a scrag-end of mutton, a
skinny fowl or a small piece of cheese. These addresses were whispered
from mouth to mouth in the queues during the long hours when they stood
huddled together, men, women, and children, waiting for the distribution
to begin.

In those hungry, ill-tempered mobs Hector Fotheringay learnt something
of the life of the very poor, their helplessness towards extortion and
robbery, their little prides, their kindness to small children, their
infinite charity to one another, their awe-inspiring, unrestrained gusts
of collective passion, or brutality or cowardice, their suspicion of
authority, their hatred of the police. Day after day, the whole
cosmorama of life among the submerged was unrolled in those long and
restless queues, and there was often wonder as well as compassion in
Hector's eyes when he returned to Loison.

Her garret was now their home. He, more far-seeing than the girl in her
ignorance, had wished to seek out a lodging close at hand for himself.
But she had cried out at the idea, and, clinging to him, had begged him
not to leave her again. To find a room he must procure a _billet de
logement_ at the local Section headquarters, where by this time the name
of Jean-François Charpentier must certainly figure on the long list of
those proscribed by the dread Committee of Public Safety. He could not
gainsay the truth of her warning. And so he stayed.

In revolutionary Paris there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
unhappy people like themselves, men and women, mere children often,
driven by an inexorable fate to share a hovel in an irregular union,
sometimes sentimental--for of misery shared in common love is often
born--sometimes economic, sometimes platonic. That first night, when on
them, as they sat hand in hand in the window, darkness fell, he had
packed her off to bed behind the curtain, taking for himself only a
blanket wherewith he had made his bed upon the floor across the door.
The arrangement held good, and so their relations shaped themselves into
a loving companionship and nothing more. But sometimes at night, as he
lay sleepless in that airless room, he smiled to himself to think how
his friends of the old days, the companions of his frolics about the
town, would have shrugged their shoulders incredulously at the symbol of
that drawn curtain.

In their wretched life Loison was his only solace. When his spirits
flagged, he found moral support in her uncomplaining acceptance of their
misery. She had the Frenchwoman's divine genius of companionship, and,
if she shared his incessant anxiety about their black future, deepened
by the progressive dwindling of their slender stock of money, she never
showed it.

He did the heavy work. Every day he descended to the pump in the yard
and fetched water. The shortage of soap was his greatest trial, for he
had the Guardsman's hatred of dirt; and the meagre supply he was able to
procure rarely sufficed for more than to enable them to wash their faces
and hands. So he swabbed down the floor each morning without soap and
cleaned and lit the little stove on which Loison prepared their food.

For clothes, he, the beau, who had presses full of suits and uniforms
at Buttrell's, had only the garments in which he stood. His thin suit
soon began to show traces of his work, and he did not possess even a
brush to remove the dust of the street. He would have bought at least a
shirt to give him a change of body linen, but the price was prohibitive.
So one morning the young Guardsman buttoned his coat up to his chin and
sallied forth shirtless while Loison washed his only shirt.

Loison was always cheerful. Only when he went out to the queues did she
grow pensive. But his return found her radiant, though the heat of their
room was stifling and she had spent the morning cooking over the stove.

Each day he found new delights in her. Only she could banish the
unutterable squalor of their daily life. When the warm dusk was dropping
over the panting streets, and a little air from the river stirred the
mignonette blossoms at the window, was their favourite hour. Then they
would sit and gaze out over the swarming traffic of the Pont Neuf to the
majestic pile of the Louvre and talk.

He had unbosomed himself to her. She had been enthralled to find that he
was an Englishman, fascinated with a touch of fright like a child that
sees an elephant for the first time. She made him tell her about London
and the fogs and that resplendent personage, of whom her old Nana used
to read to her from a book, 'le lor' Maire.' And she, in her turn, would
tell him little anecdotes of her childhood, of a wild-boar hunt at her
father's château, of how she had seen the Comte d'Artois, the King's
brother, driving through Clermont in a gold carriage with lackeys with
wands running beside. Or she would croon to him little songs of her
childhood, like '_Rosette à l'âge de quinze ans_' and '_Où vas-tu,
bergère?_'

At their attic window, as the darkness deepened and the stars came out
above the unhappy city, Hector would feel again that sense of liberty
that first had come to him as, from the Deal coach, he had seen the dawn
redden the sky. It seemed as though another man were looking back down
the vista of the past at a shadowy figure in scarlet-and-gold marching
behind a band. In these moments he realised that the old Hector
Fotheringay was dead and that, however brief the span of life accorded
to the new might be, he at least had lived his little hour.

But when he thought of Loison, he felt his courage melt.




CHAPTER XXVI

IN WHICH HECTOR SENDS A MESSAGE AND RECEIVES ONE


And then, while Paris slept and the slapping of the water against the
broad sides of the barge was the only sound, Hector told the
draught-players of the Café Conti the adventures of the Citizen
Charpentier. As a precaution they lowered the lamp to a pin-point, and
in the dim light they squatted on stools about the little table of the
cuddy, O'Farrell, sprawling back, puffing at his eternal pipe, Savory
with his head cocked forward like an intelligent terrier, his beady eyes
fixed on the speaker's face. In silence he heard the young man's tale;
but when Hector began to describe his life at Couthon's, the sheaves of
despatches, the throngs of visitors, and the _Conventionnel's_ doubts
and fears about the political situation, the little man abandoned all
his usual restraint.

''Fore God,' he cried, 'you dealt with Couthon's private correspondence,
you say? You saw and spoke with Robespierre; you read Saint-Just's
reports from the armies; you have definite information about this
project of Barère's to strip the Provisional Government of troops? Man,
it's prodigious! This is news from the fountain-head, indeed! Tst, tst,
tst, that we had met before! But alas, we knew not your name; for
Engstrom had kept it to himself. And for weeks after his arrest--a fine
fellow, that, a noble fellow, Mr. Fotheringay, Maxwell he was rightly
called, an English wine-exporter of Bordeaux, ruined by the war--the
Café Conti was under observation and we could no longer frequent it.
'Tis but a week since Jules passed us word that the coast was clear.'

He dipped a groping hand into the tails of his maroon-coloured coat and
laboriously drew forth a folded copy of the _Moniteur_. He opened it
wide and, laying the paper down upon the table, proceeded methodically
to smooth out the creases. Then from an inner pocket he produced an
ink-horn, tightly corked, and a quill pen.

'And now to work!' he cried. 'There's no time to be lost. At five
o'clock this morning an express leaves the Messageries for London and
the mail shall carry important tidings for a good friend of ours at
home. Come, Mr. Fotheringay, have the goodness to give me a lead and
between us we shall make shift to set down your news.'

He uncorked his ink-horn as he spoke and paused, biting the end of his
quill. After a short reflection he settled down over the newspaper and,
dipping his pen into the phial, commenced to write between the close-set
lines of print. Hector, who was watching him, saw that the phial
contained an almost colourless fluid and that Savory's tiny and
exquisitely neat characters faded from view almost as soon as they were
penned.

'Paris,' the little man droned and wrote, 'this 25th of July, 1794, by
the Revolutionary Calendar, 7 Thermidor, Year Two. General review of the
situation ...'

For two hours or more, until the grey light of the coming day pierced
the coarse chinks of the canvas curtain at the head of the cabin stair,
the spluttering quill scratched over the rough paper. Savory was a
merciless questioner with a gift of intuition swift and direct as a
dagger-thrust. His mind was a veritable encyclopædia of information
about the Revolution, its leaders and its tendencies. Hector marvelled
to see how, in plain, lucid English, he drew a faithful picture of the
French catastrophe and whither it was heading. This agile brain leapt to
conclusions which the young man from his experience recognised to be
exact, but at which, in his ignorance, he had never before arrived;
these adroit questions inexorably discarded the trivial, but hunted down
and pounced upon the salient facts.

At length the report was done. The newspaper was folded flat in a sheet
of foolscap, sealed up with wafers which Mr. Savory produced from a
little comfit-box and addressed in the small, neat hand to:

    'Mr. Jno. Smithers,
    Corn-Merchant,
    At Dover.
    Opposite the Post-Office.'

This done, the little man put up his writing-materials, yawned
discreetly and stretched himself.

'Mr. Savory,' said Hector then, 'if you have not a courier for this
report, I fain would take it myself!'

The little man cocked an eye at O'Farrell across the table and laughed
drily.

'The Citizen Charpentier would scarcely get as far as the office for the
Calais Diligence,' he remarked.

'I would not travel under that name,' Hector urged earnestly. 'Have you
no other papers I could use?'

This time it was O'Farrell who laughed. He removed his pipe from his
mouth and chuckled softly.

'There's upwards of thirty uv us workin' on this lay,' he announced,
'an' ne'er a wan has a chance uv lavin' the city at all! They've got
Paris bottled up that tight, so help me God, ye wouldn't get a bodkin
past the barrier widout a direct order from the Committ_ee_ uv Public
Safety!'

He grunted and returned to his pipe.

'I do not ask for myself,' the young man pleaded, 'but there is a girl,
a friend of Engstrom's, that is dependent on me. She is as compromised
as I and wholly on my account. There is a moral duty upon me, gentlemen,
to save her from the guillotine. For three weeks now I have lain in
hiding in her garret. Our money is almost gone. In a little while we
must choose between starvation--or the scaffold!'

His voice shook. In the harsh light of dawn his face looked drawn and
haggard.

Savory passed his hand over his thin locks.

'Mr. Fotheringay,' he said in his dry, formal way, 'it is with us all
but a question of time. If this government of monsters endure, scarce
one of us can survive. This is at least the tenth secret meeting-place
that the Major and I have contrived within two months, but who knows
whether to-morrow, to-night even, a spy may not denounce us to the
Committee--_et puis, bonsoir_! To seek to leave the city, as the Major
says, is madness. It is only thanks to the Committee that we can send
our reports to England at all. For this we are indebted to a friend of
the Major, the secret courier who travels weekly to London with bundles
of this pernicious revolutionary literature for distribution at home
among the poor dupes of Tom Mann and Doctor Priestley. As for money, our
funds--I won't conceal it from you--are low and are but irregularly
replenished. 'Twill cost me ten thousand livres presently to grease the
palm of this scoundrel of a courier and that will all but empty my
purse. But if you will pass this way again to-night I will gladly be
your banker, Mr. Fotheringay, at least to the extent that shall serve to
keep the wolf from the door.'

He glanced up the cuddy steps.

'Morning is on us and I must away to the yard of the Messageries. Your
pardon, Mr. Fotheringay, for having kept you from your bed. It is our
wont to leave singly at an interval of five minutes. With your
permission I will go first, you shall follow, and the Major, who is
well-favoured in the eyes of _la patronne_ of the Café Conti, may retire
at his convenience by the way we came, through the cellars of the house.
It will be better for you and me to leave by the quays. Mr. Fotheringay,
your servant, sir. We shall see you this evening!'

Precise and formal, as imperturbable as a merchant walking on 'Change,
Mr. Savory passed out into the coloured light of dawn.

'A hard file,' commented the Major, and, standing up, blew out the lamp,
'but honest as God's own daylight. An' stout-hearted! 'Tis not a man at
all, begor, 'tis a lion he is! But he's a howly terror for dooty! "The
sarvice of Mr. Gray before all else" is his motto.'

He looked round at Hector.

'I'm tellin' you this the way you won't think him unsympathetic, ye
understand? 'Twixt you an' me an' the little ass-cart, Mr. Fotheringay,
the situation's well-nigh des'prit--des'prit's the worrud. They're
rakin' the city through, an' I wouldn't give a _Reichsthaler_ for the
chances uv e'er a wan uv us!'

With which cheering opinion, delivered with the utmost good-humour, the
Irishman held out his hand.

'Good luck to ye, Mr. Fotheringay,' said he. ''Tis a notable sarvice
ye've rendered and Mr. Gray is not the wan to forget it. I wish ye
good-day! Ye'll find us on the terrace this evening'--paused and added
humorously, 'always barrin' accidents!'

Then, noticing the young man's dejected air, he added quickly:

'Savory will do what he can. Ye may trust Savory!'

They shook hands, and Hector went up into the morning freshness. He was
in the depths of despair. The hopes which the sight of the red snuff-box
had kindled into flame were now finally quenched. His visit to the Café
Conti had been his last throw, a gambler's chance, and when Jules, the
waiter, in reply to his cautious soundings, had hinted that the scarlet
_tabatière_ was not unknown amongst the frequenters of the café his
spirits had shot madly up. For a week he had haunted the terrace on the
chance of this meeting. Now that it had come, he was only to discover
that Engstrom's successors were powerless, or practically powerless, to
help him. Again he found himself thrown back upon his own resources; but
he realised that these were now at an end.

Savory's money might stave off the inevitable crisis for a spell; but
their ultimate fate was certain. Already the neighbours in the house
were beginning to gossip; Braille, the landlord, though his rent was
faithfully paid, was forbiddingly dour when they met; and Hector did not
relish the way in which the tenant below, a fanatical revolutionary from
the provinces who had taken Darras's apartment, mustered him as they
passed on the stairs. Unless they could leave the Impasse du Paradis,
denunciation was certain--he could feel the atmosphere of the house
thick with suspicion--but where could they find another refuge?

He hastened on his homeward way, for he knew that Loison would be
frightened to death at his protracted absence. Their compact was that
never, on any pretext, should she leave the house; but he was beset by
the constant fear lest her anxiety for his safety should tempt her, as
had happened on the day when he had seen her outside Saint-Roch, to
sally forth in quest of him. He had quitted her as soon as darkness fell
on the previous evening, promising to be back before midnight. He prayed
God that she had fallen asleep before she had marked his absence and
that she would not discover it until she awoke to the morning light; for
ere the sun had fully risen he counted to be within doors.

Early though it was, the rue de la Cruche Cassée was astir as he hurried
down it. Housewives, girt up with sackcloth aprons, were shaking mats at
doors and windows, and outside the dairy the head of the queue was
already beginning to form. The air was full of cheerful sounds, the
clack of voices, the barking of dogs, the rattle of pails, the clatter
of wheels, and to the nostrils rose the odour of wood-fires.

As Hector swung round the corner of the street to enter the Impasse du
Paradis, he felt a tug at his coat-tails. A diminutive urchin with a
crutch stood there, clasping to his frail and wasted body a tin pannikin
full of broken scraps of food.

Hector smiled down upon the pinched and hungry face.

'_Tiens_, Armand,' he said, patting the child's close-cropped head,
'hast thou been out thus early buying the dinner for thy _maman_?'

It was the small son of a widow who lived in their house, the Citizeness
Blaise, that selfsame woman of whom, on the memorable occasion of his
first visit to Loison, Hector had enquired for Darras's apartment and
had had the door slammed in his face. She was pitiably poor, always
hovering on the brink of starvation, earning a few sols a day for
herself and her ailing, rickety boy by a little washing and a little
mending for the neighbours. Armand was a docile and affectionate child,
and Loison and he were firm friends. More out of compassion for him than
anything else, for the mother was an embittered, harassed woman, Loison
gave them from time to time such scraps of food as she could spare.

The child did not answer Hector's question, but, loosening his little
hand from the crutch, held out a scrap of paper, his large, solemn eyes
fixed on Hector's face. With a sudden sense of foreboding Hector took
the fragment--it was a piece of coarse wrapping-paper--and unfolded it.

Scrawled in ink, in a French so ungrammatical, so fantastically phonetic
in spelling as would have baffled any one who had not had the advantage
of handling the private correspondence of the Citizen Couthon, Hector
read this message:

'Don't go home. They have taken Loison.'

It was signed 'Femme Blaise.'




CHAPTER XXVII

THE FORTY-EIGHTH


The street went black about him. His anguish must have shown itself
distorting his face, for the child gave a cry of fear and, whipping
round, made off headlong down the lane, his crutch tapping briskly on
the cobbles. The wisp of rough paper crushed in his hand, the young man
closed his eyes in agony while all around him, heedless of his pain, the
busy life of the city revolved. The hurrying throngs, the slow, rumbling
carts, the hoarse, sad cries of the street-sellers, as, hand to mouth,
they backed sideways along the street with upward glances to right and
left at the tall old houses, mocked at his grief. The very sun that
threw its golden shafts across the opalescent sky behind the red-tiled
roofs to him was as a blasphemy. Loison was taken, and he--O God!--he
was at liberty.

The temptation to push on and climb the well-known stair, to dull the
edge of his grief by looking once more on the scene of their misery and
their happiness, was overwhelming. But it would serve nothing. They were
watching the room to seize him when he should return--the woman Blaise's
note had said as much; even where he stood, at the head of the alley, he
was in danger.

He slipped away into the crowds of the rue de la Cruche Cassée, his mind
in a whirl. His awful sense of helplessness numbed him. To save Loison
he would venture anything. But what could he _do_? If only he could
have hurled himself, unarmed as he was, into the fray and plucked her
with his bare hands from the grasp of her captors! But no men of flesh
and blood confronted him. He was face to face with a system, a vast,
impersonal machine, ponderous, relentless, irresistible, that swallowed
up its victims like those dragons of old that claimed their maiden
tribute. He thought of the silent efficiency of the red-capped aides in
the registrar's office, of that quiet man testing the thongs, and he
shuddered.

If he could but avoid arrest, he might yet save her. It was a chance in
a thousand, nay, in a million. There was but one quarter to which he
could turn for help--to Savory. He would confront that machine-like man,
break down his iron reserve, inject by force some loving-kindness into
those chilled arteries and compel him--aye, by threat of denunciation,
if needs be--to snatch this girl from death. But he could not see Savory
until nightfall: why had he not demanded his address against an
emergency such as this? Twelve, nay, more, fifteen hours, to pass in
maddening, heartbreaking anxiety!

The Revolutionary Tribunal met at ten each day. If she were for
immediate trial, she would be conveyed to the Conciergerie, to the
dreaded common prison, the foul and pestilential _Souricière_, the
mouse-trap, and taken into the Tribunal in the adjoining Palais de
Justice for the morning session. He wandered aimlessly about the streets
until that hour, and then joined the pushing rabble that swarmed about
the entrance to the public seats of the Tribunal. All through the
sweltering heat of the morning he sat among the dregs of revolutionary
Paris, cheek by jowl with cut-purses and prostitutes who shrieked filthy
abuse at the dock.

The court-room and its precincts were peppered with spies; but Hector
knew no sense of danger. Perhaps his ragged beard was an effectual
disguise even against the piercing glances of Fouquier, who addressed
his brief oratory mainly to the public; perhaps the Goddess Chance, who
so often favours the reckless, smiled on the haggard stranger; at any
rate, when the Court rose, he passed out unchallenged into the
blistering noonday heat. He had scanned the serried ranks of prisoners
in vain: Loison was not in that day's 'batch.'

All through the afternoon he roved about Paris. To urge on the leaden
hours that separated him from nightfall, he imposed upon himself the
task of visiting as many as possible of the city's twenty prisons and
houses of arrest. From the Luxembourg to the Cannes he wandered, and
from the Carmes to L'Abbaye and La Force, hanging forlornly about the
walls and scrutinising with his despairing glance the blank, unrevealing
windows. At one of the women's prisons, Les Anglaises-Lourcin, he
attempted to get into conversation with a turnkey who sat and sunned
himself on a bench against the wooden gate. But the man would not answer
him, and Hector turned away, realising that to the prison-guards of
Paris wretched strangers that prowled about gaol precincts were nothing
new.

Sunset--and he was on the north side of the Pont Neuf, one of a string
of idlers that lined the quays and watched the women pounding out the
clothes on the laundry-pontoon moored above the bridge. For
four-and-twenty hours he had neither eaten nor drunk; yet he felt
neither hunger nor thirst. He was conscious only of a raging fever of
restlessness that seemed to burn him up and for hours at a time to
efface all sense of his surroundings. Then he would regain
consciousness like a man awaking from a broken sleep, to find himself
muttering as though in delirium.

Another hour to wait, he told himself, as he watched the sun sink in
crimson majesty in the west beyond the empurpled river. Another hour to
think of Loison starting up in terror after a night of fruitless waiting
to hear heavy footsteps without and the summons at the garret door: '_Au
nom de la nation! Ouvrez!_' Another hour to upbraid himself for leaving
her alone ...

One by one the cold clear stars began to glimmer in the blue-black
heavens. A lamplighter went trotting on to the bridge, his ladder on his
shoulder. Points of fire appeared at the parapet, and, as though in
reflection, others winked back from the far side of the river. The hour
had come to seek out Savory.

All day long Hector had avoided the Café Conti. His rendezvous was for
nightfall and he would not jeopardise Savory or O'Farrell and their
friends at the café by appearing before his time. But now he crossed the
bridge rapidly, his thoughts busy with the impending interview. Savory
was an honest man, a lion-hearted friend, the Major had said; surely he
would let himself be touched by the tale of a young girl's agony? The
Major, too, in his impulsive Irish way, would, he felt certain, lend his
aid in winning Savory over if Hector's appeal did not accomplish it
alone. He did not expect them to be able to rescue the girl out of
prison; but, if they could contrive to have Couthon approached and
Hector offered in place of the girl, might they not be successful in
saving her from the scaffold?

He had left the bridge to cross the quay to the café when, glancing
across the road, he came to a full stop. What was that? The terrace was
unlighted. The windows below the awning were dark. The tavern was
silent, deserted. Then, silhouetted against the darkling sky, he saw on
the terrace, facing the river, among the abandoned chairs and tables,
the figure of a guard resting on his flintlock, the tip of his bayonet
glinting in the moonlight. And on the other side, facing the rue
Dauphin, another guard was pacing to and fro in the street.

His last hope had gone. The café had been raided.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had a recollection, afterwards, of having come to himself in a
clammy, vaulted place, under the ground, where the walls and roof were
made of crumbling, uncovered brick and huddled forms sat at tables
drinking by the guttering light of tallow dips. A pannikin of liquid was
at his elbow, and, suddenly aware of a burning thirst, he put it to his
lips and drank. It was neat spirit, coarse and fiery stuff, that seemed
to flame in his throat; but he drained the pannikin to the last drop.

The dram revived him and cleared his brain. He could remember now.
Loison was arrested and he had gone to the Café Conti to get that little
man--what was his name?--to help him save her. But the café had been
shut and guarded and he had strode away blindly into the night. But how
had he found his way into this sombre drinking-ken?

He looked about him. There was a furtive, lurking air about the cellar.
Only a few of the tables were occupied, and at these men spoke in
undertones or sat silently over their hollands. One or two were asleep,
their heads pillowed on their arms flung out across the table. The whole
company wore the dull and brutish look of drink-sodden peasants;
indeed, by their blouses and _sabots_, thickly smeared with clay, they
appeared to be farm labourers.

One or two women were present, tattered drabs, prowlers of the barrier.
Most of them had a cavalier whom they were busy plying with drink. But
at Hector's table a girl sat alone. She smiled at him as she caught his
eye.

'So you've woken up at last,' she said. 'You're a cool hand, aren't you?
Don't you know better than to sleep in a place like this?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'What does it matter where one sleeps?'

'And have you no fear of being robbed? Your purse, have you got it
still?'

His hand went to the pocket where he had kept his last roll of
assignats. It was empty.

'It's all the same to me now!' he rejoined.

The girl looked at him keenly. She was a poor, faded thing, rouged and
painted, a wench off the streets like the rest of the women in that
place. She patted his hand.

'They are after you, _hein_?' she questioned. '_Pauvre petit_, you are
frightened ...'

'Not for myself. For some one who is dear to me,' he said.

He could not have told why he thus unbosomed himself to a chance
acquaintance, this wretched woman of the streets, her cheeks hollow
beneath their coat of rouge. But he had suffered so long, so greatly, in
silence, that it eased his breaking heart to speak.

The girl made a little vague gesture of the hand.

'There is only that remedy'--she pointed at the empty pannikin--'only
that to make one forget. They come in like you, with the face of death,
the eyes of a madman--I have seen so many, _allez_--and they take their
dram and, little by little, _pouf_! the heartache passes. _Tu es joli
garçon, tu sais!_ We will drink together and I will pay!'

She called to the _patron_, a stolid man who sat and smoked his pipe
behind a little counter. He brought a jug over and filled up their
pannikins. A number of men, muddied like the rest, came clattering down
the stair. Each carried a pick or a mattock that he added to a pile of
implements which, Hector now observed, were stacked in a corner.

'_C'est fini?_' the tavern-keeper demanded of the last arrivals.

'Aye,' retorted one of them curtly.

'And what was the tally to-night?'

'Sixty-four!'

'_Morbleu!_' remarked the _patron_ with his thumbs in the string of his
apron. 'One works, it seems!'

'_Pas mal!_' the other rejoined. 'Quickly, a dram here, _le patron_!'

The host hustled back to his counter and Hector turned to the girl.

'Where are we? What is this place?' he demanded.

'_Dame!_ "At the Widow's" they call it. I never heard another name ...'

'But where is it?'

She looked at him oddly.

'_Mais voyons_--in the crypt of the _ci-devant_ Convent of Picpus ...'

Picpus! At the sound of that ill-omened name he gazed at her in horror.

'Who--what, then, are these men?'

'The grave-diggers, naturally!'

He sprang to his feet, overturning his chair, and, leaving his drink
untasted, fled from the place. He came out in a tangled garden where a
leaden day was breaking sullenly. A grass-grown path led to a deeply
rutted road that brought him out upon a broad _chaussée_. Through a
wilderness of wasteland and tumbledown shacks with rare houses
intervening, the highway ran into the city. He hastened blindly through
endless streets whose echoing silence was disturbed only by the sound of
his footfalls, the passing of a rare market-cart or the crowing of a
cock. He was trembling at the thought of those muddied men refreshing
themselves in that sombre cavern from their ghastly labours of the
night. He walked until, literally dropping from fatigue, he crept into a
field at the foot of Montmartre Hill and dozed brokenly for an hour or
two under a hedge.

But ten o'clock found him once more in the public seats at the
Revolutionary Tribunal. The hall was packed again, the atmosphere
unbreathable, though, all along one side, the windows stood open.
Outside the day was dull and overcast without a breath of wind; and an
angry sky rested low over the city.

Paris was oddly restless. The whole city seemed to be stirring on this
airless morning, heaving to some unseen force like a ship at anchor that
suddenly rocks and shivers to a passing vessel's wash. The beating of
drums, the clang of bugles, now near, now far, kept drifting in through
the open windows, and once, with jingling harness and thunderous wheels,
a battery of guns jogged past. The rabble behind the barriers was more
turbulent than ever, a seething, hectic mob, that scuffled and swayed
and gesticulated and bayed in deep-throated unison. The atmosphere was
electric; the storm was about to break.

Then, of a sudden, a great hush fell on the tossing court-room. The
turmoil died away into a long-drawn-out hum of expectation as the little
door beside the void of the immense dock swung back and a gendarme
appeared. He led the first of the morning's batch, a heavy, thick-set
fellow. To a bearded man with ghastly face and hollow eyes who craned
forward from his seat amongst the public, that awkward, loutish figure
seemed familiar.

The prisoner cast a glance round the court. As he turned his face
towards the tribunes, Hector recognised Polydore, Zouzou's famous
major-domo. What was he doing in the dock? And here, after some other
prisoners, came Marthe, deadly pale, scarce able to drag her feet along,
and behind her a little, in his best suit, very bewildered, the
grey-headed old gardener, Alceste.

And then, after a host of others--Zouzou! The crowd gurgled its
appreciation of her soft prettiness as she came forward, simply dressed
in muslin, radiant in her blondeness, and calm--incredibly calm. With a
gentle nod of thanks to the gendarme escorting her, she took the place
indicated to her among the prisoners.

A yell of anger from the mob, and a pasty-faced fat man stumbled blindly
into the pen. The word flew about the benches that he was a speculator
in wheat. '_À mort_' the rabble howled. Again the shout died away in
their throats, 'A-ah' they droned on a deep _bourdon_ note, and on
tiptoe the swaying press of people behind Hector straggled and strove
to get a view of the last prisoner to be ushered through the little
door.

'Forty-eight!' yelled a woman in Hector's ear.

But he did not hear her. Loison was entering the dock.




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LAST TUMBRIL


Brave he had known she would be; but he had not thought to find her so
serene. Her eyes were calm, her smooth young forehead was unruffled,
and, indeed, upon her face there rested such a look of peace that one
would have deemed her happy. True, on the threshold of the little door
she quailed, thrust from the sombre twilight of her prison into that
bedlam of heat and noise, and stood an instant shrinking back from the
sea of faces that rose up at her from the tiers of seats with a booming
bell-like note. But the reaction was instinctive and immediate. There
was wonder, but no trace of fear, in her face as, with a firm step, her
golden head held high, she followed the gendarme into the crowded dock
and took her place in the third row of prisoners.

The court shook with noise. The public shouted and sang, and excited
voices resounded from the dock where the accused were loudly talking
among themselves or crying to friends behind the barriers. Stentorian
shouts for silence rang out unavailing above the din and there was a
great shuffling of feet as people rose to greet the entry of the judges.

As in a dream Hector heard the hush descend reluctantly upon the crowded
hall, saw a red mottled face beneath a black-plumed hat stoop forward
from the judge's throne to where at a large table behind a frieze of
_dossiers_, the Public Accuser sat among his clerks. Then came the drone
of a voice gabbling through an interminable document, and on all hands
the uproar broke out afresh.

But Hector heard it not. The squalid court-room with its mildewed walls,
the four bored judges sprawling indifferent on their chairs, the
standing figure of the _greffier_ peering through his spectacles at his
manuscript, as he raced through the indictment in a snarling sing-song,
the row of backs in the dock, the blue coat and buff pouch of a gendarme
with each prisoner--the whole stage faded away. The shifting scene
melted into a blurred mass of movement, leaving one face only that stood
out sharp and dear.

Loison was scanning the public seats. She was in the back row of the
prisoners, and, with one slim arm propped along the edge of the dock
behind her, turned half round, was gravely surveying the agitated crowd
behind the barriers. Hector leaned forward transfixed. He knew she was
looking for him. Out of all that multitude of staring faces could it be
possible that she could distinguish his?

He wanted to spring up and cry, 'Loison, I'm here, your Hector, watching
over you, planning for you, praying for you, hungering for you!' But he
felt powerless to speak or move. Perhaps some vague hope of rescue yet
flickered in his heart; perhaps he was stricken by the numbing fear of
the tragedy that stood before. Once he thought her eyes met his; but at
that moment the gendarme at her side touched her on the shoulder to
motion her to face the judges.

He felt like one who, in a nightmare, flies in sleep, from peril to
peril always with the hope, half-conscious, scarce indulged, that
perhaps after all it is but a dream. He was conscious of an air of utter
unreality about the scene he witnessed. Could it be that this dry and
formal procedure, with these nonchalant officials and stolid gendarmes,
this gabbling drone that took his mind back to the Court of Petty
Sessions where Uncle John lorded it at home in Somersetshire, could all
this be the prologue to the sharp and awful drama about to be played out
there in the barren wilderness of the Place du Trône? Had he to realise
that in an hour, two hours, this girl he loved would lie under the
whirring, screaming knife, that in a little those calm, grey eyes would
close forever...?

Now the President was questioning the prisoners, putting one short
question, slightly varied according to the indictment, to each.

'Cornay, Jean-Baptiste'--he was addressing the pasty-faced corn
speculator--'do you plead guilty to conspiring against the safety of the
nation?'

'_À mort!_' boomed the crowd with fists brandished in denunciation.

'Citizen President,' the accused began, a sheaf of papers trembling in
his hand, 'I wish to submit to this Court that ...'

'Answer the question!' the cold, hard voice from the high chair
insisted.

'I am in a position to call witnesses to prove ...'

'The prisoner's reply is "No,"' announced the relentless voice. 'Next!
Woman Regnault, Victorine, do you plead guilty to conspiring against the
safety of the nation at the instigation of the spy Charpentier, hireling
of the assassin Pitt and accomplice of the infamous Engstrom?'

The corn-dealer was still protesting, and his outcry was so loud that it
all but drowned Zouzou's quiet 'No.'

The Public Accuser had risen at the table.

'I am prepared to admit,' he said, 'that the woman Regnault was misled
by the false papers of the villainous Charpentier who represented
himself as the friend of her worthy companion, the patriot Regnault,
Envoy of the Republic at Copenhagen! The Citizen Jurymen will no doubt
bear this in mind!'

A torrent of hand-clapping burst from the public benches.

'_Élargissez!_' stormed the rabble. 'Release _la belle citoyenne_!'

'Silence! Next: Parvus, Laurence Charles, do you plead guilty ...'

The voice, inexorable as doom, droned on. Zouzou was to be acquitted,
Hector realised. She knew it, and could afford to be calm. His mind
snatched at the thought. Her influence had secured her immunity. Could
she--would she--do as much for Loison? With a fast-beating heart he
turned his attention to the dock again.

Loison sat with her hands in her lap. He could see her thin fingers
protruding from her mittens. There was a little red mark on the
forefinger of her right hand where she had burnt it on the stove a few
days before. When he had come in with the day's supplies, she had tried
to hide the blister so as not to grieve him. But he had discovered it
and washed out his only handkerchief forthwith to bind up the burn.

The old gardener's turn to be examined had arrived. Twice the President
had to repeat his question. Slowly the old man let his dim eyes rove
round the court. Then, '_Vive le roi_,' he piped, and the crowd stood up
on the benches and shrieked for his blood. 'Next,' said that ominous
voice.

Alceste had forgotten his cue.

'Femme Mallet, Louise!'

The President had come to Loison now, the last of the 'batch.' The crowd
was growing indifferent. A man on the other side of Hector was eating an
onion, and, with cheeks bulging, was trying to pull a bottle out of the
grasp of his companion, a gross woman, fat as a slug, with small and
cruel eyes, who was drinking noisily.

'Do you plead guilty to conspiring with the spy Charpentier, and his
accomplice Engstrom, against the safety of the nation?'

The President, his fingers toying with the medallion that hung by a
tricolour ribbon on his chest, looked up at Loison.

'No!'

She spoke her answer clearly in a voice that did not tremble.

The presiding judge raised his plumed hat, displaying a flame-red thatch
of hair, and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. Somewhere
outside, beneath the window of the court, a horse stamped with a rattle
of harness. The faint thudding of drums was again audible in the still
air.

'No witnesses for the prosecution,' remarked the President casually.
'The Public Accuser has the word.'

And he flung himself back in his chair.

A splash of wet fell on Hector's hand. The sweat was pouring off his
face. He was bathed in perspiration so that his shirt hung dank on his
skin; but his hands were like ice, and he shivered. Fouquier was on his
feet, his face towards the long benches where the jury sat, his narrow
eyes with their curiously upward-slanted brows restlessly flitting from
the jury to the dock. He spoke without fire or conviction, a couple of
sentences that Hector scarce heard. He stopped suddenly and sat down;
the President's metallic voice added a few words and read out something
from a slip of paper. One of the gendarmes in the dock sneezed loudly.
'_À vot' santé!_' cried a waggish voice, and the crowd was convulsed.

The jury benches began to empty. The judges stood up. The dock was in a
turmoil. Nearly all the prisoners were addressing the bench, waving
their hands about in a frenzy of protest. The corn-factor, in
particular, was gesticulating like a man possessed, brandishing his
sheaf of documents above his head and roaring out words that were lost
in the general hubbub. But the little door stood open again, and the
gendarmes were stolidly edging the accused towards it. As Loison passed
out of the dock, the first to leave as she had been the last to enter,
she turned her head towards where Hector sat and smiled. Her eyes were
brave; but they carried no message of hope.

Amid that shambling file of prisoners she disappeared from view and with
a groan the young man buried his face in his hands. It was the end then.
The heads that were to fall, he knew, were counted in advance, and only
Zouzou, and perhaps her servants, would benefit by the Public Accuser's
appeal for clemency. The rest were irretrievably lost, and from the
court, for such was the invariable custom, would be taken to the
scaffold to die. And he could not share with her the pangs of death;
even a last farewell was denied him, other than such a brief message of
the eyes as he had exchanged with the gallant Darras. All he could do
now to assuage her last moments would be to follow her to the scaffold
and let her see him when her moment came. To that final, anguishing
ordeal he must steel himself.

Unless Zouzou would help him! At all costs he must speak to her before
she left the court. It was a forlorn hope at best; for Couthon had
willed this girl to die, and what influence should prevail against his?
And there was so little time, a bare hour at the outside! What if Zouzou
declined to help him? He had not forgotten her agonised terror of the
guillotine. And supposing she were not acquitted!

The jurymen were filing back into their seats. The President and his two
associates, who had been gossiping at Fouquier's table, resumed their
places. A slip of paper from the jury was handed up to the high chair.
The President glanced at it, rapped out an order. The little door swung
open; the prisoners reappeared.

They were a silent company now, white-lipped and dejected. As Loison
stepped into the dock, her eyes sought Hector's. She tried to smile
again; but he could see that she had been weeping.

'The jury having answered in the affirmative the _questionnaire_
submitted to them on all points of the indictment with regard to all the
accused except three, the under-mentioned to wit ...'

The President had donned his plumed hat and, standing up, was reading
the sentence. His rasping voice hurried through a string of names.

'... Nadin, Marcel, and the woman Mallet, Louise,' he concluded, 'having
been found guilty of conspiracy against the safety of the nation, are
condemned to the penalty of death.'

A despairing chorus of cries and groans and maledictions burst from the
dock answered by stormy applause from behind the barriers.

'The accused woman, Regnault, Victorine, and her servants, Matthieu,
Polydore, and the woman Vignon, Marthe, are acquitted, the jury finding
that the good faith of the said woman Regnault was abused by the spy
Charpentier, and that her servants acted under her direction. This
clemency is not extended to the aforementioned accused, Prades, Alceste,
whom the jury regard as a dangerous agitator and a supporter of the old
_régime_.'

The hard voice shut off with a snap, and the President, turning about,
disappeared through the door behind his chair. A great buzz of
conversation ascended to the roof of the court. The spectators were
flocking to the exits to post themselves outside to see the tumbrils
start. Once more the stolid gendarmes pushed their reluctant flock
towards the little door that for forty-five of that pale company marked
the threshold of life and death.

Through the jostling rabble Hector fought his way down to the front of
the barrier. Not a dozen yards away, Loison was stepping from the dock.
With the grace that he had always admired in her, she turned her blonde
head towards him. Her face was deathly pale and her lips, that seemed to
form his name, were trembling. She smiled a little wan smile, but then
the tears burst from her eyes and, bowing her head, she passed swiftly
through the door.

A gendarme had motioned to the _Citoyenne_ Regnault to stand aside until
the dock was cleared. With her two servants she remained in a corner of
the great pen, her plump white hands clasping the edge of the box. The
last gendarme clumped out behind the last prisoner and the little group
moved to the door of the dock. They stepped out and were crossing the
floor of the court when Hector, leaning forward, cried softly:

'Zouzou!'

She swung round quickly and, for an instant, gazed in stark bewilderment
at that gaunt and bearded figure with the wild eyes and the pallid,
hungry face. Dully, hopelessly, he waited for the shrill cry that should
denounce him or the coldly ignoring shrug that should give him his
dismissal. At that moment an elderly man hurried up to her.

'_Belle_ Zouzou!' he exclaimed fervently, 'my heartiest
felicitations ...'

'_Cher ami_,' she broke in hurriedly, 'there is a poor fellow here, a
humble friend of mine, who wants to speak with me privately. Is there a
room where I could see him?'

'_Mais comment!_' the newcomer replied. 'The little room for witnesses
is empty. Come, I will show you!'

In the dingy _Salle des Témoins_, which the famous law of 22 Prairial
had rendered tenantless, they were left together. The tears stood in her
blue eyes as she turned and stretched out her hands to him.

'Oh!' she murmured softly. 'To see you thus! How you must have
suffered!'

'Zouzou,' he cried, 'my friend, help me. Within the hour the woman I
love must die!'

She started back. With frightened eyes she pressed one white hand to her
cheek.

'_Bon Dieu!_' she whispered. 'It is the little one who went before the
Tribunal with me. I thought I knew her face. So it was the girl we saw
that day before Saint-Roch'--she smiled sadly and shrugged her
shoulders--'the girl you did not love!'

He caught her hand.

'I did not know it then, I swear it to you. Only afterwards I realised
it. Now this child is more than life to me. I do not care to live if she
must die. I do not fear death, can I but save her life.'

She turned away, her little foot tapping the ground.

'Why should I imperil myself to save your mistress?' she said, frowning.

Helplessly he shrugged his shoulders.

'Not even that,' he answered, 'nor can I say, indeed, if she loves me.
But for three weeks we have been in hiding together; for three weeks we
have shared in common the misery you see depicted in my face. And'--his
voice broke--'without an effort I cannot see my friend die. Zouzou ...'

He dropped on his knees and clasped her waist.

'I implore you, help us. You know Fouquier: go to him and say that I
will gladly give myself up if he will reprieve this child. He will be
glad to lay hands on me. Zouzou, go to Fouquier, I entreat you!'

She had grown strangely pensive. Slowly she put her hand to her forehead
and brushed her fingers across her burnished hair. Then she stooped down
and gathered him up in her arms.

'It is almost hopeless,' she said. 'But I will try. One never knows!
_Mon pauvre cheri, mon pauvre, pauvre cheri!_'

Her head dropped forward and she fell sobbing on his shoulder.
Presently, with streaming eyes, she drew back and regarded him.

'I will do what I can,' she promised. 'Listen! At eight o'clock
to-night be outside the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois and I will
send a messenger to you! And now--_du courage_!'

Bravely she gave him her hand. Taking it, he drew her to him. He would
have spoken his thanks; but the words would not come. Impulsively she
yielded him her lips, then, with bowed head, she stole from the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside the Conciergerie, under a lowering sky, discoloured like a livid
bruise, a great crowd heaved and jostled. Only the iron railings of the
Cour du Mai separated them from the waiting tumbrils. The rabble was
seething with excitement. Strange rumours, incredible rumours, flew from
mouth to mouth. The Deputy Tallien had been assassinated at the
Convention; the Citizen Robespierre had been shouted down; the Citizen
Robespierre had been impeached; the Commune was sitting permanently at
the Town Hall. Long files of troops, drums beating and colours flying,
tramped along the quays on their way to the Place du Grève, and from
time to time a group of officers with feathered hats and tricolour
sashes clip-clopped past over the cobbles.

A vast murmur seemed to rise from the whole city spread out breathless
under that pitiless leaden sky. The faubourgs were up, so the rumour
ran, and the roll of drums beating to quarters came down the wind from
the eastward. From minute to minute, as the afternoon wore on, the
sweating throng grew denser, pressing about the railings, their eyes
fixed upon a certain corner of the courtyard, upon the grim gates which
presently should open to fill the waiting carts.

Those immobile portals fascinated Hector. He had elbowed his way to the
very forefront of the crowd and now stood with his eyes level with the
top of the high wheel of the first tumbril beyond the railings. He ached
in mind and body. To think was anguish, not to think an impossibility,
and he seemed to look back over a lifetime of mental torture. Again and
again, as that airless afternoon dragged on, he told himself: 'Presently
those gates will open. And I shall count. There will be forty-four who
will enter the carts, forty-four, not forty-five.' Maddeningly the
figures hammered his brain: 'Forty-four not forty-five.'

And then from behind the doors there came a sudden sound, a vague,
undefined noise, that stiffened the vast multitude into instant
attention. A dull crash resounded from the prison and the gates shook.
They were taking down the bars. Some one plucked his sleeve.
Impatiently, he shook the intruder off. Again his arm was shaken. He
turned round angrily, and found himself staring into a face that he
knew, the passionate face of a dark young man.

'_Citoyen_,' the stranger said in a pleasant, cultured voice, 'it is in
my mind that, at our last meeting, you made an appointment with me that
you failed to keep!'

For an instant his mind snatched at a passing recollection of the Saint
James's Coffee-House, the low, long room with its sanded floor and
coloured prints and racks of pipes, and out of an impressive hush this
same voice crying: 'I'll kill you for this!' But he thrust the memory
from him. What did he care for the Vicomte de Solesmes and his honour
now? The doors were opening and he must watch, he must count ...

'_Pardon, citoyen_,' the suave voice at his ear insisted, 'but there is
one with me who also craves the renewal of your acquaintance.'

Hector shook himself impatiently. What was this man to him? They had
flung the doors back now. The head of a file of gendarmes appeared. All
about him the crowd was rocking with excitement. Suddenly an iron grasp
tightened on his arm; he swung about in a fury; but the grip did not
relax and now his other arm was seized. On all sides uniformed men
surrounded him.

He plunged violently, seeking to free himself; and the swarming crowd,
with screams of terror or cries of rage, fell back in a panic-stricken
haste, billowing all round. He could not shake off that vice-like
clutch, and almost before he realised that he was a prisoner, his two
arms were forced behind his back and he felt the sharp rasp of cord upon
his wrists. In a supreme last effort to shake off his captors, he leapt
into the air and as he flung back his head he saw Grand-Duc planted
before him, a malicious gleam of triumph in the yellow lizard eyes. At
the humpback's side, an easy smile upon his bold, dark face, was the
Vicomte de Solesmes.

'We will not try to take him through this crowd, _mes amis_' said
Grand-Duc. 'Hold him fast, _mes braves_, and when the tumbrils are away
and the crowd dispersed, we will clap him in "The Mouse-trap."'

He looked steadfastly at Hector.

'At least, Maurice will not go unavenged!' he said.

Proudly their captive's gaze swept past them and sought that black void
in the prison wall. Slowly, painfully, the condemned were issuing forth.
Already two of the seven waiting tumbrils were charged and had moved up
to make place for their successors. Swiftly his glance ran over them,
but Loison was not among the occupants; nor did he see her in that sad,
shambling _cortège_ that between two lines of guards poured steadily
forth from the gates.

A great sense of peace descended upon him. Suddenly he was conscious of
an utter overwhelming weakness so that he felt his body hang limp for an
instant in the grasp of the men who held his arms. With an effort he
recovered himself. Not yet must he collapse; for the line was still
advancing.

They were charging the sixth tumbril now. Above his head the
executioner's assistants were hoisting the flabby, trembling form of the
corn-factor into the cart. Then the crowd surged forward to the railings
and for an instant engulfed him and his captors. But his guards fought
the rabble off and forced Hector against the bars, their bodies making a
phalanx about him. When he looked into the courtyard again, the sixth
cart, now full, was creaking forward; and the last tumbril, the seventh,
drawn by an old white horse, moved up.

Something was happening on the outskirts of the multitude. There were
wild bursts of cheering and shouts that rent the air. But Hector's whole
mind was centred on that gap in the wall. The gendarmes had mastered the
crowd at last and were forcing the people back.

Then Hector heard a little despairing cry. The sixth tumbril as it
advanced, revealed Loison. Her hands were tied behind her and with her
golden hair cropped close to her head and her white neck rising bare
from the rounded opening that the cruel shears had snipped from her
little blue gown, she looked like some pale young boy.

She must have issued from the prison-gate while the mob had swept him
from his observation post at the railings. He saw her now only when she
had reached the tail of the seventh cart, standing so close that, had
his hands been free, he might have touched her through the bars.

At the sight of him held pinioned between his guards, she faltered. She
would have fallen had not one of the red caps gathered her off her feet,
light burden that she was, and landed her in the last tumbril. She
staggered to the side and peered piteously down upon a ragged figure
that lay prone in the dust.

For Hector, realising that Zouzou had failed him, had dropped senseless
to the ground.




CHAPTER XXIX

THE MOUSE-TRAP


With brazen voice a great bell went clanging through the death-like coma
in which he lay. In stuttering, affrighted clamour it rang out, flinging
its stentorian summons forth in an unending crescendo that again and
again broke in upon his half-slumbering consciousness.

He opened his eyes and listened. Far and wide the whole city was in
rumour. The wheels that thundered through the echoing streets, the
rolling drums that never ceased their din, the swelling diapason of
voices, a door that, with a loud clang of metal, slammed and slammed
again, proclaimed it.

A fetid odour, like the reek of the lions in the Tower, was in his
nostrils. The air was dank and unwholesome in this cavernous twilight
place in which he lay. It was almost dark; but high above his head,
through low, barred windows, deep-set, a reddish glare came tossing upon
the stained stone walls and with it the tramp of marching feet and the
rhythmic roar of men singing in unison. He could hear the hoarse voices
rising from the street. It was the song of the men of Marseilles:

    '_Aux ar-r-mes, citoyens!_
    _For-r-mez vos bataillons!_'

How they shouted! Their voices were loud in his ear as, with thudding
feet, they trailed by. Above the clamour of their passage the low growl
of distant thunder resounded menacingly. And still the great bell pealed
on.

He looked about him. It was a long bare room like a barn, the floor
covered with straw, the walls of discoloured stone, and, at the end, an
iron door studded with nails, above it a dingy fanlight through which an
oil-lamp shed a funnel of feeble radiance. The room was full of people
who stood about in groups, their faces raised to the windows in a
listening attitude.

Again the door clanged. A burly fellow came in with a steaming bucket in
either hand. The knots of listeners dispersed in all directions and
formed up in a line, tin pannikins in their hands. With a wooden ladle
the man with the buckets dipped into his pails and filled their cups as
they shuffled by. When the last of the file had passed him, he shouted
down the room:

'_Hé, mon beau monsieur_, has your lordship no appetite this evening?'

A dark shape stepped between Hector and the feeble light from the door.
The young man looked up. A ragged figure with a pale face framed in
matted grey hair stood before him.

'It is the evening meal,' he said in a soft and pleasant voice. 'You are
a newcomer, my friend, and have no cup. Permit me to lend you mine!'

And with infinite courtesy of manner he extended his battered pannikin.
With a word of thanks Hector took it and scrambled to his feet. The soup
was thin and greasy; but its odour reminded him that for more than
twenty-four hours he had not eaten. He swallowed its contents greedily,
then, shaking out the last drops upon the filthy straw, handed the cup
back to its owner.

The latter received it with a bow.

'Permit me to name myself,' he said. 'It is the custom in our little
society of the Mouse-trap. I am the Comte de Mailly. Your servant,
sir.'

'The Mouse-trap!' By that name Hector knew where he was: for so men
called the common cells at the Conciergerie for poor prisoners who had
not the means to purchase for themselves the use of a room and a straw
pallet.

The laced coat the speaker wore was in tatters, and it was obvious that
he had no shirt, for his flowered waistcoat, grimy beyond description,
was tight-buttoned across the yellowish skin of his chest. A close,
greyish stubble adorned his cheeks and chin.

'Might I have the favour of your name?' he requested.

Hector introduced himself.

'Of English or Scottish extraction?'

'I am an Englishman, Count. But my mother was French, of the house of
Sainte-Valentine.'

De Mailly nodded.

'I am acquainted with that great family by hearsay, sir. If you would
now allow me to present you to our friends.'

He raised his voice.

'Gentlemen, a new member!'

The straw rustled as the prisoners flocked together at the summons. All,
Hector remarked, were in the last stages of destitution. All classes of
society were represented among that ragged company--a bishop, a marquis,
a dealer in pigs, an actor, 'servant of his _ci-devant_ Majesty,' were
some of the titles he heard--but one resembled the other like two
scarecrows in a field of oats.

'You fall well, sir,' remarked the bishop. 'We are hoping that the last
tumbril has been despatched.'

He called it '_charrette_,' and the word sent a wave of agony across
the young man's heart. Seeing his blank look, de Mailly put in:

'Surely you know that Robespierre has fallen? The tyranny beneath which
all France groaned is at an end. The dictator and his supporters were
outlawed in the Convention this very afternoon and their arrest decreed.
At this moment they lie in those same prisons where so many hundreds of
their innocent victims waited for death. In a little while, _allez_, we
shall all be free!'

Hector, remembering the afternoon's stir, the shouting, and the cheers,
started forward.

'They were arrested this afternoon, you say?' he demanded eagerly,
catching the other's hand.

'Towards the hour of five!'

'That is, before the tumbrils started for the place of execution?' ...
his hand trembled on de Mailly's tattered sleeve. 'Tell me, was the
sentence of death suspended?'

De Mailly sighed and turned away. The bishop, a quiet man with a bald
head, rested his hand on Hector's shoulder. Slowly he shook his head.

'The convoy was met by crowds announcing the arrest of the tyrant,' he
said, 'and clamouring for the release of the prisoners. Who knows what
might have happened, but at that instant Hanriot, who commands the
Sections, galloped up and ordered the executions to proceed. The
tumbrils went on their way ...'

'You are sure of this?' said Hector in a broken voice.

The prelate gravely nodded.

'I had the tale from the head-gaoler himself. It is, alas! I fear, too
true!'

The young man bowed his head and closed his eyes in agony. She had died
alone, uncomforted, and Fate, that might have saved her, had stayed its
hand. For one brief moment de Mailly's disclosure had banished the awful
dull despair that gnawed at his heart, but now that he knew his hope to
have been vain, the revulsion of feeling stunned him like a blow. He
groaned and sank down again on the foul straw.

But he could find no comfort in himself. The prisoners had broken up
into knots again and stood below the windows, listening to the clamour
of the city.

'Hear the tocsin!' said one.

'The Sections are gathering before the Hôtel de Ville,' another
remarked. 'Those were the men of the Grange-Batelière Section who passed
just now singing the song of the Marseillais. The turnkey was at the
gate and saw them!'

The dealer in pigs, a brawny fellow with broad, creased face, was
laughing.

'Did you mark the _délateurs_ to-night when they came to list the names
for to-morrow's Tribunal?' he asked. 'This scoundrel, Antoine, had the
face to whisper to me that, three times already, he had passed me over.
Ah, _les scélérats_! they mark which way the wind is blowing!'

'To-morrow, undoubtedly, we shall be free,' observed the actor, a round,
flabby little man with quick eyes and a grey face. There was an air of
nervous enquiry about his remark as though he sought corroboration. 'Ten
o'clock is past,' he added, 'and we have not yet had to-morrow's list.
That appears to me to be an excellent sign. Why, usually the ushers
bring it round before we quit the men's courtyard at eight!'

'You talk like a fool, Groseille!' exclaimed a pale and restless man,
who, like some caged animal, had been pacing up and down the straw. 'You
know that we were not released for exercise to-day. Your theory, then,
proves nothing!'

'It shows, at least, that they were apprehensive of how events might
shape at the Convention,' another put in. 'They feared a rising in the
prison if we learnt that Robespierre had been overthrown. Hark, how the
drums beat to quarters!'

'I like not the turmoil without,' said the pig-dealer. 'If verily
Robespierre and his accomplices be lodged in gaol, who should the
Sections rally? _Sacré bleu!_'--he sprang back as a vivid flash of
lightning illuminated the stained and dripping walls--'the storm is
beginning!'

With an angry mutter the thunder rolled. The prison was in darkness now.
There was a slight stir at the door. It slammed noisily. Again the glare
of lightning lit up the place. In the brilliant flash Hector saw de
Mailly advancing hastily across the straw. Darkness fell again like a
pall.

'What is it, what is it?' cried several frightened voices.

'I have just spoken with Richard'--de Mailly's cultured voice came out
of the gloom. 'The situation in Paris is confused, gentlemen. But one
thing is certain. The Commune has declared against the Convention!'

'In favour of Robespierre?'

The question, uttered by several lips, sounded like a groan.

'In favour of Robespierre!'

With a deafening crash the thunder clanged, and between the noises of
the restless city they heard the swish of heavy rain. Some one was
praying. Out of the clammy blackness Hector heard the fervent voice:
'_Je vous salue, Marie, tu es pleine de grâce_ ...' Once more the
lightning flickered and showed for a second the haggard, pitiful figures
grouped beneath the windows, some standing, some kneeling, striving to
fathom the secret of the night. The droning prayer was silenced by a
noisy peal of thunder that seemed to shake the very firmament.

A key grated in the door without and a light shone into that dismal
cavern. A hurricane lamp in his hand, a great bunch of keys at his belt,
a massive man bulked large in the doorway. It was Richard, the head
gaoler. Hector remembered having seen him that first night in the room
of Fouquier-Tinville. The gaoler grasped a sheet of paper. Behind him
were two turnkeys in red caps.

With a grunt he deposited his lanthorn on the ground.

'_Voici le journal du soir, les amis_,' he announced in a throaty voice,
jovial with a sort of gallow's-tree humour, and he read out glibly from
the paper:

'Summoned to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal on the Tenth
Thermidor, Year Two of the Republic, the under-mentioned, to wit,
Beauvais, Auguste; Chantemesse, Alexandre; Épinglier, Robert;
Fot--Fot--'--he broke off and scratched his head. '_Peste!_ If I can
read these foreign names! _Enfin_, the Englishman brought in here this
afternoon!' He returned to his list. 'Hennequin, Armand ...'

'You waste your breath, my good Richard,' de Mailly's quiet voice
interposed. '_Voyons, mon ami_, put up your list and tell us what
happens in Paris!'

'Yes, yes!' the eager circle vociferated. 'The news, Richard, the news!'

The gaoler held up a hand, big as a spade, for silence.

'You will learn the news quick enough when the carts arrive in the
morning,' he retorted.

De Mailly laughed.

'_Farceur!_' he exclaimed; 'you will have your joke. By to-morrow
morning the prisons will be opened and we shall be free.'

The gaoler looked down his list.

'That will be as the Citizen Robespierre decrees,' he replied casually.

'The Citizen Robespierre!' cried the actor, fierce as any fighting-cock.
'The Citizen Robespierre is safe behind the bars. I don't care _that_
for the Citizen Robespierre!'

And he added a gross expression of contempt.

'Perhaps not,' returned the gaoler imperturbably. 'You may not know
that, by order of the Commune, he was released from the Luxembourg an
hour since!'

A hush of blank consternation greeted his announcement. It was the
bishop who broke it.

'Then God help us!' said he resignedly in his gentle way.

'And what of Robespierre's brother?' cried de Mailly. 'And Couthon?'
added a second. 'And Saint-Just?' a third put in.

'All are at liberty,' was the reply, 'and assembled now at the Hôtel de
Ville to concert measures for the defence of Paris against rascals and
conspirators.'

And the reading of the list was resumed. In mournful silence they heard
it through to the end while the lightning played and the thunder growled
and the rain gurgled in the gutters. All but two in that foul cage were
for trial--that is, for death. Then the lights withdrew, the iron door
banged, and they were left alone to the darkness--and their thoughts.

Hector heard his fate unmoved. Loison in that realm where men's eyes
shall be opened would know that he had done his best to save her. She
would be waiting for him in the little blue gown with a welcome smiling
from her clear grey eyes. He would take her in his arms and be at rest.
He felt very placid, now that he knew what stood before, very peaceful
and very tired. He turned over on his arm and, bedded on that sodden
straw, where so many before him had passed their last night on earth, he
fell asleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

The pressure of a hand on his face awoke him. The morning sun fell in
long shafts of light through the grated windows high up in the wall. All
about, the straw was dotted with prostrate figures that stirred and
groaned in their sleep. One of the turnkeys was bending over him.

'Get up and follow me!' the turnkey said. 'They have come for you.'

He staggered to his feet. He was drunken with sleep, and his limbs felt
heavy as lead. None of his fellow prisoners was awake. The stale sour
odour of that pest-house was revolting. The air was full of stirrings
and groans and inarticulate cries. At the end of the room the iron door
stood open with a gendarme on the threshold, his cockaded hat barred by
a narrow band of golden light that fell from a window at his back.

'Quick!' said his escort. 'Am I to wait all day, _nom de Dieu_?'

Wondering that he should be summoned thus, to face his judges alone,
Hector followed the turnkey across the spongy straw. Though beyond the
threshold they were yet within the prison, once out of the dungeon's
tainted air he felt his vigour return. They mounted a winding stair and
threaded a corridor to a door at the end. The turnkey opened it and
ushered him into the registrar's office, the _bureau du greffe_, whence
Hector had watched them make Darras ready for the scaffold. The head
gaoler was standing at the table talking to a burly man in military
uniform, with a great cocked hat and a broad tricolour sash girded about
his ample waist. At the sound of the door opening, they turned about and
Hector saw that the officer was O'Farrell.

The Irishman made no sign of recognition.

'I identify the prisoner,' he said to Richard. 'And here'--he produced a
slip of paper--'is the order of release. You will find it _en règle_!'

The gaoler took the form and scrutinised it. Then he stuck it on a
spike. He pushed a book over towards O'Farrell.

'Will you sign the register, Commandant?' he requested.

The Irishman obeyed.

'And at what hour shall I expect our important guests?' asked Richard,
dusting the sprawling signature with sand.

'About the hour of ten,' the Major replied--'in time for the meeting of
the Tribunal. There will be no trial, they say, since the Convention has
proclaimed them _hors la loi_. They will merely be identified--and then,
_houplà, la charrette_! Robespierre, they tell me, is to suffer last. I
shall be there to see him under the knife, _parole d'honneur_!'

'_Je te crois, citoyen!_' remarked the gaoler pleasantly. 'I would I
could be there myself!'

Sternly the Major touched Hector on the shoulder.

'_En route!_' he commanded.

The turnkey held the door open, and they stepped into a little yard
which they crossed to a dark carriageway on the farther side, where a
gendarme swung back one batten of some wooden gates and they emerged
into the Cour du Mai.

Hector trembled. He recognised that sombre archway. These were the gates
through which Loison had passed out to die.

'Hould up your head, man,' whispered the Major as they moved away
towards the Pont Neuf. 'Don't you realise you're free?'

'I wish to God you had let me die in peace,' said Hector savagely.




CHAPTER XXX

IN WHICH, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS CAREER, MR. GRAY, OF THE TREASURY,
IS STARTLED


In a private room of the Rose Inn at Dover the mysterious stranger,
whose coming had set Mrs. Barclay and her little staff of servants in
such a stir, sat alone at dinner. Outside in the small yard--for the
Rose, though a reputable hostelry, was a house of no great account, not
like one of the roaring coaching-inns one met with on the London road--a
post-chaise had been waiting for upwards of half an hour. Its postilion,
now sitting in the tap, was the smartest and most reliable boy on the
Dover-to-London route, and good for a drink on the house at any of the
great inns between the Lord Warden and the Elephant and Castle.

His horses, now enjoying an unexpected feed of oats, were the fleetest
pair to be discovered in Dover that evening--and, the Lord knows, Mr.
John Smithers, the corn-merchant, who had engaged them, a Dover man born
and bred, was able, no man better, to lay his hand on a piece of good
horseflesh when he required it in a hurry.

It was he who had brought the distinguished-looking young man to the
Rose.

'A private room, Mrs. Barclay,' he had said to the hostess, 'and dinner
for one right sharp. My friend here must leave for London within the
hour. An omelette, a broiled chicken, a morsel of cheese, and a pint of
burnt sherry--that will serve my friend, I believe!'

The strange young man, who scarcely spoke, had acquiesced in everything.
Mr. Smithers had lingered as though he would fain have joined his
companion at table. But the young man, who had a singular grace of
manner for all that he looked so sad, had protested he must not keep Mr.
Smithers longer from his family, declaring he would dine alone and take
the road for town directly after.

On that Mr. Smithers had bowed himself out with a parting injunction to
the landlady to let his friend lack for nothing. This Mrs. Barclay with
solemn impressiveness had readily promised. For one thing, she was eager
to oblige the corn-merchant, who, on former occasions, had brought her
unexpected custom like this; for another, she had not failed to remark
that, on leaving, Mr. Smithers had handed a bag of guineas to his
companion.

She went herself to spread the table in the private room. It was a snug
little place, wainscoted in oak, so darkened with age as to be almost
black, with the oaken dresser she had brought from her home at Reculver,
highly polished so that it threw back the gleam of the tall brass
candlesticks that lit the room.

She found the young man already seated at the table, his chin resting on
his hand, sunk in a profound reverie. Now that she could study him
closer, she was astonished to see that, under the black travelling-cloak
that, encrusted with sea salt, hung about his shoulders, he was in rags.
His neckcloth was clean and neatly tied; but his coat was tattered, with
a great rent on the shoulder.

'Mercy on us!' she cried and clasped her hands, 'your coat, sir! Did a
body ever see the like? Doff it, sir, I beg, and one of the maids shall
mend it whilst you are at meat!'

He looked up at her, a little wan smile on his handsome, clean-shaven
face. There was no mirth in his eyes, however; they were unutterably
tragic, as though, even in that pleasant, homely room, with the Kentish
roses nodding at the casement window, they contemplated some nameless
horror.

'It matters nothing,' he said. 'I ... I have had an accident and could
not stop to change. 'Twill wait now until I am in London.'

'You are from France, sir, the porter said?' she remarked, sorting out
the table silver from the basket on the dresser.

'Yes.'

The affirmative was like a sigh.

'Dreadful doings in Paris, they do say!' she observed, rubbing up a
fork.

This time he made no answer. He was staring before him. The panelled
walls were dissolving, and he saw again the pointed towers of the
Conciergerie, and in the foreground, on the open space before the Pont
Neuf, the jeering rabble that, two days before, had blocked the way of
the carriage in which he was setting out on his journey to London. The
mob was gathered about a little group halted at the base of the
dismantled statue of Henri IV, and, as the wall before him
receded, the young man saw again the dreadful objects at which they
gibed--Robespierre, a bloody rag about his jaw, shoeless and his
stockings tumbling down, reclining with eyes closed in a chair; Couthon
on a stretcher, his frail form torn incessantly by long shuddering
convulsions, a bandage about his head, his livid face distorted with
fear, his pale watery eyes, glazing with terror, casting beseeching
glances to right and left; and with them, inside the fringe of guards,
other pallid men, the mottle-faced, red-haired judge whose rasping voice
had sent Loison to her doom, and Saint-Just, elegant as ever in a
buff-coloured coat, with nervous fingers twitching at his voluminous
cravat.

But see! The red-capped porters who have borne Robespierre and his
friend from the Tuileries are rested now. They pick their burdens up
again, and slowly the grotesque procession crosses the open to the
Conciergerie, that halfway house of death. The sombre gates swing back,
those gates whose image will never fade from one haunted mind, and close
with a jar behind the little band ...

The picture faded. From far away a voice was speaking.

'Now, if you would let me spread the table ... Lord have mercy,
sir'--the voice grew shrill--'you are weeping!'

He rose and wearily passed his hand across his eyes. 'Let me be!' he
said. ''Tis nothing! I have traveled hard and I am ... very tired!'

He dropped into the oaken settle before the empty hearth, and
wonderingly the landlady stole away.

       *       *       *       *       *

England, this kindly, gentle land! She took him in her arms and soothed
his breaking heart as he journeyed on his way. It was a night of
majesty, moonless, but with such a glittering profusion of stars that,
in the Kentish lanes, lovers walked in silence, awed by the splendour of
the heavens. Between the villages the air was richly sweet with the
scent of newmown hay, and in the old gardens the roses and the tall
hollyhocks sent up their fragrance into the balmy air.

Little by little, the peace of the night entered his soul, the peace of
these restful hamlets slumbering beneath the stars, these swelling
uplands and dipping valleys where streams glittered darkly among the
birches. Gratefully he yielded himself up to the embrace of his native
land, lying back in the cushions of the chaise, his face to the stars,
his head bared to the wind of their passage, his eyes half closed, in
his ears, hour after hour, the rhythmic ring of hoofs upon the good
English road.

After the squalor and poverty and dementia of the ruined land he had
left, his eyes dwelt with quiet pleasure on little things that, before
he went to France, he had accepted as his birthright. It was good to see
the splendid highway winding ahead smooth as a billiard-table, the
civil, bustling hostlers at the clean and well-kept inns where they
changed horses, the dash and elegance of the outward mail from London
that, with glaring lamps and pounding hoofs, flashed past them on the
other side of Maidstone. He had been wont to picture himself bringing
Loison back to this land of peace, Loison, who, since her childhood
years, had scarce heard a friendly word, whose youth has been spent in
that bedlam atmosphere of hysteria and violence and blood, Loison, who,
at eighteen, had had to die. He imagined her now enthroned among the
stars, peerless and shining even as they, smiling down at him as he
journeyed home alone.

Through Kennington village, where, from the sleepy houses, the dogs ran
out barking; through clattering Lambeth where the housewives in their
pattens were swilling down the pavement before the red-roofed houses,
over the slope of Westminster Bridge they bowled into London all
glittering in the morning light. As they entered Whitehall, the squeak
of fifes and the rattle of drums resounded, and a column of troops
debouched in the direction of the Green Park. What a flood of old
memories their stirring quick-step unloosed! He signalled to the
postilion to rein in his horses, and, leaning over the side of the
chaise, watched the column draw near.

Yes, they were the Guards! Behind the tall drum-major and the drums in
their scarlet jackets laced with blue fleur-de-lys, he could see the
bobbing line of bear-skin caps with brass plates flashing in the sun,
the grenadier company. By God! They were the Third, the old regiment!
That tall figure, with the haughty, impassive face and the blond
mustache riding at the head of the light company, was Montgomerie. And
there was MacDonald! And young Carfax! And old Sergeant Biggin and
Corporal Findlater--a host of familiar faces! What a swing they marched
with, their white-gaitered legs stepping out as one, pig-tails tossing,
the sun glinting on their brightly polished buttons, their pipeclayed
cross-belts white as snow! Even thus, but a few short weeks since, had
he been, one of a host, identical in dress and mind! But now, what a
gulf of blood and tears lay stretched between him and the pipeclay and
the button-stick! 'Drive on!' he bade the postboy and fell abrooding
again.

Though it was not yet seven o'clock, he found Mr. Gray drinking his
morning chocolate in his modest lodging in Bolton Row. Hector scarcely
recognized the little man without his wig. The sleek, grizzled head
emerging from his flowered chintz dressing-gown gave him a less precise,
a more human aspect.

Hector came upon him by surprise, for the loutish maidservant, who
opened to his knock, contented herself with pointing silently to a door
at the head of the stairs and then vanished swiftly into the basement.
For the first time Hector saw the little man startled out of his
habitual imperturbability of mien. As the door opened and he descried
Hector, the dust of the road thick upon his stained travelling-cloak, he
scrambled to his feet with an exclamation.

'Mr. Fotheringay as I live!' he cried. 'For the love of God, man, you
are as one that returns from the grave!'

As he spoke, he kept boring his bright little brown eyes into the young
man's face, shaking his hand up and down, with a movement that was
purely involuntary, as though he were working a pump.

'The Terror is at an end!' said Hector gravely. 'Robespierre, Couthon,
Saint-Just, and their accomplices were to go to the scaffold three days
ago when I left Paris. I saw them in the hands of their guards as I came
away!'

Mr. Gray's mobile face changed swiftly. He dropped the young man's hand
and sprang to the bell.

'Morrison!' he shouted. 'Morrison! Curse you for an idle ...'

A manservant showed an astonished face at the door.

'Ah, there you are! Quickly, my wig and my coat! And send the maid to
order the carriage forthwith! I start for the country at once.'

He whipped off his dressing-gown.

'Mr. Pitt is at Holwood. He has had another access of the gout. He must
be acquainted with your tidings at once. The tyrant fallen! Dear, dear,
this is news indeed!'

Morrison handed him his neat brown wig, which he carefully adjusted
before the glass. Then he drew on his plain snuff-coloured coat. With a
wave of the hand he dismissed his man.

'Acquaint me the instant the carriage is here!' he bade him. Then he
clapped his thin hands together and gazed at Hector.

'I find you something leaner,' he remarked, 'and your expression is
altered, too. I fear you have been through anxious times. Tell me, did
you get in touch with my people in Paris after poor Engstrom died?'

'It was Major O'Farrell ...' Hector began.

'O'Farrell?' queried the little man. 'Aye, I mind him. Number 33, we
call him here!'

'It was he, armed with an order from the Deputy Barras who has assumed
control in Paris, that secured my release,' Hector said.

'Your release?'

'I was in the Conciergerie Prison awaiting trial. But for the fall of
Robespierre I should have gone to the guillotine on the morning I was
set free! For the rest, these despatches ...'

He produced a bulky packet from his pocket and handed it to the little
man. Eagerly Mr. Gray pounced upon it and broke the seal. He dropped
into the chair before his cup of chocolate cooling on its tray, and for
five minutes was absorbed in his reading.

At last he looked up.

'Mr. Fotheringay,' he said solemnly, 'you have rendered a signal
service. I apprehend from Mr. Savory's despatch that you furnished the
inestimably important information that the last courier brought from
France. By your hand he sends me further to-day the draft of the
proposals of the Citizen Barras and his friends to Mr. Pitt. He
explains, what I had already divined, that the arrest and execution of
Engstrom broke off the negotiations which our poor friend had already
opened with this group. The overthrow of the tyrant has enabled these
pourparlers to be resumed, and to this end the French Government agreed
to release you to serve as the bearer of these despatches. As Major
O'Farrell explains in a covering note'--he looked up with a quizzing
smile--'he is not absolutely certain that, in the confusion of the
moment, his political friends, from whom he extracted your order of
release, were aware of your identity with that dangerous spy, the
Citizen Charpentier!'

'Fouquier would have known,' said Hector, 'but the Major chose his
moment when the Public Accuser was away from the Conciergerie arranging
for the transfer of the guillotine from the Barrière du Trône to the
Place de la Révolution for the execution of Robespierre and the others.
In any case, Fouquier's hours are numbered.'

A manservant appeared on the threshold.

'The carriage is before the door, sir.'

'Come,' said Mr. Gray, gathering up his hat, 'we will drive out to Mr.
Pitt. The Minister must hear from your own lips, Mr. Fotheringay'--he
broke off and smote his forehead--''faith, I had clean forgot to tell
you! Your uncle is dead, sir ...'

'My uncle dead?'

'Of an apoplexy three weeks since. The lawyers have pestered the
regiment for your address. They were referred to me. And here have I
been calling you "Mr. Fotheringay" when, of course, it should be "Sir
Hector." Come!' But Hector shrank back.

'I am in rags, sir,' he protested. 'I am not fit to appear before the
Minister.'

'Tock, tock, 'twill but add force to your tale. Mr. Pitt, I insist,
shall hear from you yourself how nobly you have redeemed your name. He
will gladly adjust this matter that we wot of Mr. ... Sir Hector, and
also this affair of the duel, which, I am bound to confess, created no
small rumour in the clubs.'

'For that,' said Hector, ''tis settled!'

'Settled?' exclaimed Mr. Gray. 'You mean you met this Frenchman?'

'Aye and ran him through at the third _reprise_ an hour before I quitted
Paris.'

Mr. Gray blinked his eyes rapidly.

'Dear me,' he remarked, 'such a fine young man as he was, too, this
Vicomte de Solesmes!'

'A scoundrel, sir,' retorted Hector hotly, 'a paid spy of Robespierre
that I saved from the guillotine. O'Farrell had him in custody at the
Department of War and we met in the gardens at the back!'

''Faith,' observed the little man, 'you're very thorough. Will you go
down to the carriage, Sir Hector?'




CHAPTER XXXI

INTO THE LIGHT


In the fifteen-acre field below the Dutch terrace they were gathering in
the harvest. A lofty screen of elms hid the sun-tanned harvesters from
view; but over the drowsy afternoon air the pleasant burr of Somerset
voices rose to the new squire of Cranwell as he sat in the shade of the
house, a book on his knee.

They were carting the wheat to the threshing-floor. He could hear the
drivers urging on their horses and the waggons creaking as they rocked
over the stubble. Beyond the smiling August landscape, the blue line of
the Mendip hills grew blurred before his eyes, and out of the haze he
seemed to see emerging the long slow line of tumbrils, each with its
swaying load, rumbling with groaning axles over the cobbled street. He
snatched up his book and read again these words of Marcus Aurelius,
soother of aching hearts through all time:

     _Whatever the Gods ordain is full of wise providence. What we
     ascribe to fortune happens not without a presiding nature, nor
     without a connection and intertexture with the things ordained by
     Providence._

A footstep on the crazy flags made him look up. Old Thomas, the butler,
was crossing the terrace.

'Lady Betty Marchmont, Sir Hector,' he announced. Then apologetically:
'Her ladyship would take no denial, sir!'

As he rose to his feet, his cousin came round the corner of the house.
She was a vision of summer, all in filmy white, her big straw bonnet
dangling from her hand by its flaunting strings, very elegant and
modish.

'So,' she cried gaily, 'I've run you to earth at last! La, sir, to think
you are a se'nnight in England, with the Steyne and the Pantiles buzzing
of nought but your exploits in Paris, and your own cousin has to seek
you out to offer her congratulations. Fie, sir, I am ashamed of you!'

Old Thomas, on his parchment face that look of happy pride that the
sight of youth and beauty so often inspires in the old, had pattered
away. They were alone on the terrace among the bees droning about the
flowers. A sundial stood between them, and, of a sudden, as though to
support herself, she grasped the lichen-grey pillar.

'Hector,' she said, in a changed voice, 'what makes you look like that?'

'The sight of great suffering makes no man gay,' he answered. He took
her hand. 'I crave your pardon, my dear, for not having been to see you
ere this; but I have fled society since my return from France. I needed
rest. I made sure that August would find you at Brighton or at Bath. Had
I known you were at Stoke Norton, as I think you must be, I should have
paid my respects before.'

He led her to the wooden bench where he had been sitting.

'My aunt Orifex has been but poorly through the summer,' she remarked,
sitting down. 'The doctor recommended her country air and quiet; so we
changed our plans and travelled down betimes to Somersetshire.'

She spoke casually; but all the time she stole little glances at his
impassive, weary face. A silence fell between them, and they sat and
listened to the creak of the waggons in the field beyond the elms.
Suddenly she put out her hand.

'Hector,' she said impulsively, 'I have to ask your pardon. I wrote you
a cruel note. I did not know then that what you did was done in defence
of my good name. Can you forgive me ... Hector?'

He took the hand she proffered him and, stooping, kissed it.

'My dear,' he said, 'what is past'--he broke off and his eyes grew
dreamy, clouded with sorrow--'is past. There is nothing to forgive.'

There was another pause.

'Do you remember,' she said presently, 'the last time we met? I rated
you a coward then, a worthless _fainéant_. There, too, as you have
proved, I did you less than justice.'

He stopped her with a gesture.

'What you said was true,' he broke in earnestly, 'every word of it,
Betty. You angered me at the time; but in my heart of hearts I always
knew you to be right. God knows how any man with red blood in his veins
could have lived the life I did! But I have learnt my lesson. Yes, but
at what a cost, my dear, at what a cost!'

He turned his head away and his eyes sought the purple hills. He felt
the touch of her hand on his sleeve.

'There was something else you said that day ...' she began.

He nodded to show that he understood. But he would not meet her look.
She waited for him to speak; but he uttered no word. She sighed; and so,
with all unsaid, as is the English way, they buried their romance.

'Lord Maxeter has asked me to be his wife,' she announced presently.

Hector looked up quickly.

'A fine fellow, Betty,' he said, 'and a loyal friend!'

'He thinks the world of you,' she answered.

'A most faithful friend,' he repeated. 'He never doubted me when things
looked black against me. He would make you happy, my dear. Will you take
him?'

'Yes,' she answered simply. Her eyes were fixed on his. 'And you,
Hector?'

He looked away.

'My heart is buried deep in France,' he blurted out brokenly, and strode
blindly to the stone rail that commanded the view of Cranwell's broad
acres.

When he turned round, the bench by the sundial was empty and Betty had
gone. Old Thomas stood at his elbow.

'Begging your pardon, Sir Hector, a lady is asking to see you, sir.'

'Lady Betty Marchmont?'

'No, sir! Her ladyship has already driven away by the back drive--it is
the nearer way for the carriage folk from Stoke Norton. This lady came
by the front avenue, a furrin' lady, sir.'

'Where is she?' he asked, staring strangely at the old man.

'In the blue drawing-room, sir!'

Hector darted away, leaving the butler gaping. It was Zouzou. He found
her seated in the cool twilight of the smaller drawing-room where canvas
covers primly veiled the gilding of the Louis Fifteenth chairs. He
caught her hands and looked at her, unable to speak. As for her, her
feelings overcame her quite. The cool, plump hands in his clenched
convulsively as the tears sprang from her eyes.

'_Mon ami, mon ami_,' she kept on saying brokenly.

'Zouzou,' he said at last, and repeated: 'Zouzou!'

She drew her hands away.

'I am foolish to cry,' she protested prettily, 'but your eyes, my
friend, your terrible eyes! As though you lived with ghosts. Sit down
now and calm yourself and we will talk.'

She placed him beside her on the sofa.

'That afternoon when I left you,' she said, 'I went to
Fouquier-Tinville. I know this _animal, allez_--for months he covets me.
I demanded the reprieve of the little Mallet. "Impossible!" he cries.
"Couthon has said she must die." "But, Couthon," I tell him, "is since
an hour under arrest at the Convention." He says this and I say that,
and all the time he looks at me like a hungry wolf. _Enfin_, we strike a
bargain!'

'A bargain?' repeated the young man dully. 'What bargain?'

She ground her sharp white teeth together savagely.

'What bargain other than one does an ignoble _canaille_ like Fouquier
strike with any pretty woman?' she demanded.

He gasped.

'You...?' he began.

She nodded with a little shiver.

'_N'en parlons plus!_' she begged. 'I left the Conciergerie with my
reprieve.'

He groaned aloud.

'And you arrived too late? Hanriot had forced the tumbrils to continue
on their way.'

She stared at him.

'_Mais non!_' she exclaimed in astonishment. 'Did you not receive my
letter? _Voyons, mon ami_, be calm. You hurt me!'

For Hector had grasped her by the arms and forced her round to face him.

'What are you saying?' he shouted brokenly. 'What are you saying? Don't
you see you're torturing me? Is Loison _alive_?'

His violence frightened her. Huddled up in the corner of the sofa, she
nodded.

_She nodded!_

'Calm yourself, _mon petit_,' she begged him. 'Sit down and let me
finish ...'

'Where is she? Is she safe? Is she out of danger?'

'Yes, yes! Presently, I will answer all your questions. You must be
cool, my friend, calm--and courageous. The carts had already started
when I left the Conciergerie; but I drove after them in my carriage and
we caught them up on the Place du Trône itself. I submitted my reprieve
and the little one was released immediately.'

'But tell me,' he implored, rolling wild eyes at her, 'where is Loison?
When can I see her?'

'In a little minute! Let me tell my story to the end. They laid her
fainting in my carriage, and I drove her out to Neuilly. That very
evening an opportunity to get away offered itself. You remember this
little Lévy, of the Agricultural Bank ...'

'Yes, yes, but Loison...?'

'Lévy wished to get away to Amsterdam with early news of the fall of
Robespierre to speculate on the _hausse_. He consented to take us with
him. I wrote you all this to Paris to your lodging in the rue
Helvétius. From Holland we came on to London, and there _ce bon_ Lévy,
who knows and reads everything, found out your address from the
newspaper ...'

She would have run on; but he stormed at her.

'If Loison is in London, why haven't you brought her with you? What is
all this mystery, Zouzou? Why do you torment me thus? With one word you
give me back my life! Tell me there is no mistake, for the love of
God...!'

'I was trying to spare you,' she faltered--'my friend, you look so
distraught--I wanted to break it to you gradually, I did not know if you
could bear the shock'--she put her hand to her bosom. 'But I am
exhausted: _je ne puis plus_. Go'--she held out a trembling hand--'in
the carriage at the door ...'

For an instant he stared at her like one transfigured. And as she, all
tremulous, gazed back at him, suddenly she saw the tragedy lift from
that haunted face, from those suffering eyes.

'Go to her!' she said. 'Be gentle with her, Jeannot, she is very frail.'

In a swift impulse he bent and raised the soft warm hand to his lips.

'_C'est bien, c'est bien_'--her voice died away to a whisper--'go, your
love is waiting.'

He did not hear her sobbing as he darted from the room.

The light poured greenly into the long quiet hall through the creepers
clustering at the Gothic windows. At the porch a carriage was drawn up,
and there, on the heavy door, very white against the battered black
paint, a little hand rested.

Gently his fingers closed about it. Then, out of the inner darkness, a
pale, sweet face appeared, set in an aureole of golden hair. He did not
pause to open the door, but caught her in his arms as she rose up to him
and drew the soft and slender form to his breast. So the postboy saw
them when, presently, full of the Cranwell cider, he emerged from the
stables with Maggs, the grizzled groom.

'Never,' said Maggs, when he told the story that evening in the
harness-room--'never did oi zee old Squoire dew a thing loike that. 'E
wor a woild 'un, wor Measter John, a proper carker 'e wor, afore the
gout laid 'un boi, 'specially w'en 'im 'ad a skinful; but, dang me, if
ever oi zee 'un bussin' a wench roight in front of the 'ouse! It ain't
roightly proper, it ain't ...'

'A tarrible wilful lot, the Futheringays,' observed Lowmass, the old
coachman, thoughtfully rotating the cider in his mug. 'Squoire dew for
sure be moightily taken with the little lass. I zar 'un watchin' 'er out
of 'is eyes w'en oi wor adrivin' 'im and the tew furrin' ladies down to
the Lunnon coach this arternoon. I'll tell 'e summat, young Maggs!
Her'll be back 'ere as Squoire's lady, her'll be back!'

Young Maggs shook his grizzled poll darkly.

'Oi bean't as zproightly as oi wor,' he remarked, 'but ef it 'ud bin me,
Lowmass, I tell 'e, oi'd a' picked the buxom 'un ...'

       *       *       *       *       *

The 'buxom 'un' did not wait for the wedding. The cares of high finance
beckoned 'her little Lévy,' as she called him, back to the Continent,
and, with her trunks full of presents from Sir Hector Fotheringay and
his bride to be, she departed for Hamburg, as blonde, as soft, as
cajoling as ever.

'I shall soon follow after, Zouzou,' Hector told her before she went
away.

'Not to Paris again?' she queried, aghast.

Hector smiled and shook his head.

'To my regiment in Flanders,' he replied.

'_Bon Dieu!_' she cried, and threw up her hands, 'have you not had
enough of scenes of blood?'

'So much,' said he, 'that I should not rest happy at home, knowing I had
no hand in saving Europe from their recurrence.'

'And Loison?' demanded Zouzou. 'What does she say?'

She turned to the girl who had come up and slipped her arm through
Hector's.

'_Noblesse oblige_,' said Loison, and glanced up at her husband.

'_Voilà la vraie aristocrate!_' he cried; and, catching her up in his
arms, he kissed her.


THE END


[The end of _The Red Mass_ by Valentine Williams]