CHAPTER XXXI. AN INTERLUDE
It was close on midnight now, and still they sat opposite one another,he the friend and she the wife, talking over that brief half-hour thathad meant an eternity to her.
Marguerite had tried to tell Sir Andrew everything; bitter as it was toput into actual words the pathos and misery which she had witnessed,yet she would hide nothing from the devoted comrade whom she knew Percywould trust absolutely. To him she repeated every word that Percy haduttered, described every inflection of his voice, those enigmaticalphrases which she had not understood, and together they cheated oneanother into the belief that hope lingered somewhere hidden in thosewords.
"I am not going to despair, Lady Blakeney," said Sir Andrew firmly;"and, moreover, we are not going to disobey. I would stake my life thateven now Blakeney has some scheme in his mind which is embodied in thevarious letters which he has given you, and which--Heaven help usin that case!--we might thwart by disobedience. Tomorrow in the lateafternoon I will escort you to the Rue de Charonne. It is a house thatwe all know well, and which Armand, of course, knows too. I had alreadyinquired there two days ago to ascertain whether by chance St. Just wasnot in hiding there, but Lucas, the landlord and old-clothes dealer,knew nothing about him."
Marguerite told him about her swift vision of Armand in the darkcorridor of the house of Justice.
"Can you understand it, Sir Andrew?" she asked, fixing her deep,luminous eyes inquiringly upon him.
"No, I cannot," he said, after an almost imperceptible moment ofhesitancy; "but we shall see him to-morrow. I have no doubt thatMademoiselle Lange will know where to find him; and now that we knowwhere she is, all our anxiety about him, at any rate, should soon be atan end."
He rose and made some allusion to the lateness of the hour. Somehow itseemed to her that her devoted friend was trying to hide his innermostthoughts from her. She watched him with an anxious, intent gaze.
"Can you understand it all, Sir Andrew?" she reiterated with a patheticnote of appeal.
"No, no!" he said firmly. "On my soul, Lady Blakeney, I know no more ofArmand than you do yourself. But I am sure that Percy is right. The boyfrets because remorse must have assailed him by now. Had he but obeyedimplicitly that day, as we all did--"
But he could not frame the whole terrible proposition in words. Bitterlyas he himself felt on the subject of Armand, he would not add yetanother burden to this devoted woman's heavy load of misery.
"It was Fate, Lady Blakeney," he said after a while. "Fate! a damnablefate which did it all. Great God! to think of Blakeney in the handsof those brutes seems so horrible that at times I feel as if the wholething were a nightmare, and that the next moment we shall both wakehearing his merry voice echoing through this room."
He tried to cheer her with words of hope that he knew were but chimeras.A heavy weight of despondency lay on his heart. The letter from hischief was hidden against his breast; he would study it anon in theprivacy of his own apartment so as to commit every word to memory thatrelated to the measures for the ultimate safety of the child-King. Afterthat it would have to be destroyed, lest it fell into inimical hands.
Soon he bade Marguerite good-night. She was tired out, body and soul,and he--her faithful friend--vaguely wondered how long she would be ableto withstand the strain of so much sorrow, such unspeakable misery.
When at last she was alone Marguerite made brave efforts to composeher nerves so as to obtain a certain modicum of sleep this night. But,strive how she might, sleep would not come. How could it, when beforeher wearied brain there rose constantly that awful vision of Percy inthe long, narrow cell, with weary head bent over his arm, and thosefriends shouting persistently in his ear:
"Wake up, citizen! Tell us, where is Capet?"
The fear obsessed her that his mind might give way; for the mental agonyof such intense weariness must be well-nigh impossible to bear. In thedark, as she sat hour after hour at the open window, looking out in thedirection where through the veil of snow the grey walls of the Chateletprison towered silent and grim, she seemed to see his pale, drawn facewith almost appalling reality; she could see every line of it, and couldstudy it with the intensity born of a terrible fear.
How long would the ghostly glimmer of merriment still linger in theeyes? When would the hoarse, mirthless laugh rise to the lips, thatawful laugh that proclaims madness? Oh! she could have screamed now withthe awfulness of this haunting terror. Ghouls seemed to be mockingher out of the darkness, every flake of snow that fell silently on thewindow-sill became a grinning face that taunted and derided; every cryin the silence of the night, every footstep on the quay below turned tohideous jeers hurled at her by tormenting fiends.
She closed the window quickly, for she feared that she would go mad.For an hour after that she walked up and down the room making violentefforts to control her nerves, to find a glimmer of that courage whichshe promised Percy that she would have.