CHAPTER XV
Detected.
The opening and shutting of the door roused them both from their dreams.
Anne Mie, pale, trembling, with eyes looking wild and terrified, hadglided into the room.
Deroulede had sprung to his feet. In a moment he had thrust his ownhappiness into the background at sight of the poor child's obvioussuffering. He went quickly towards her, and would have spoken to her,but she ran past him up to Madame Deroulede, as if she were besideherself with some unexplainable terror.
"Anne Mie," he said firmly, "what is it? Have those devils dared ..."
In a moment reality had come rushing back upon him with full force, andbitter reproaches surged up in his heart against himself, for having inthis moment of selfish joy forgotten those who looked up to him for helpand protection.
He knew the temper of the brutes who had been set upon his track, knewthat low-minded Merlin and his noisome ways, and blamed himself severelyfor having left Anne Mie and Petronelle alone with him even for a fewmoments.
But Anne Mie quickly reassured him.
"They have not molested us much," she said, speaking with a visibleeffort and enforced calmness. "Petronelle and I were together, and theymade us open all the cupboards and uncover all the dishes. They thenasked us many questions."
"Questions? Of what kind?" asked Deroulede.
"About you, Paul," replied Anne Mie, "and about maman, and also about--about the citizeness, your guest."
Deroulede looked at her closely, vaguely wondering at the strangeattitude of the child. She was evidently labouring under some strongexcitement, and in her thin, brown little hand she was clutching a pieceof paper.
"Anne Mie! Child," he said very gently, "you seem quite upset--as ifsomething terrible had happened. What is that paper you are holding, mydear?"
Anne Mie gazed down upon it. She was obviously making frantic efforts tomaintain her self-possession.
Juliette at first sight of Anne Mie seemed literally to have been turnedto stone. She sat upright, rigid as a statue, her eyes fixed upon thepoor, crippled girl as if upon an inexorable judge, about to pronouncesentence upon her of life or death.
Instinct, that keen sense of coming danger which Nature sometimes givesto her elect, had told her that, within the next few seconds, her doomwould be sealed; that Fate would descend upon her, holding the sword ofNemesis; and it was Anne Mie's tiny, half-shrivelled hand which hadplaced that sword into the grasp of Fate.
"What is that paper? Will you let me see it, Anne Mie?" repeatedDeroulede.
"Citizen Merlin gave it to me just now," began Anne Mie more quietly;"he seems very wroth at finding nothing compromising against you, Paul.They were a long time in the kitchen, and now they have gone to searchmy room and Petronelle's; but Merlin--oh! that awful man!--he seemedlike a beast infuriated with his disappointment."
"Yes, yes."
"I don't know what he hoped to get out of me, for I told him that younever spoke to your mother or to me about your political business, andthat I was not in the habit of listening at the keyholes."
"Yes. And ..."
"Then he began to speak of--of our guest--but, of course, there again Icould tell him nothing. He seemed to be puzzled as to who had denouncedyou. He spoke about an anonymous denunciation, which reached the PublicProsecutor early this morning. It was written on a scrap of paper, andthrown into the public box, it seems, and ..."
"It is indeed very strange," said Deroulede, musing over thisextraordinary occurrence, and still more over Anne Mie's strangeexcitement in the telling of it. "I never knew I had a hidden enemy. Iwonder if I shall ever find out ..."
"That is just what I said to Citizen Merlin," rejoined Anne Mie.
"What?"
"That I wondered if you, or--or any of us who love you, will ever findout who your hidden enemy might be."
"It was a mistake to talk so fully with such a brute, little one."
"I didn't say much, and I thought it wisest to humour him, as he seemedto wish to talk on that subject."
"Well? And what did he say?"
"He laughed, and asked me if I would very much like to know."
"I hope you said No, Anne Mie?"
"Indeed, indeed, I said Yes," she retorted with sudden energy, her eyesfixed now upon Juliette, who still sat rigid and silent, watching everymovement of Anne Mie from the moment in which she began to tell herstory.
"Would I not wish to know who is your enemy, Paul--the creature who wasbase and treacherous enough to attempt to deliver you into the hands ofthose merciless villains? What wrong had you done to anyone?"
"Sh! Hush, Anne Mie! you are too excited," he said, smiling now, inspite of himself, at the young girl's vehemence over what he thought wasbut a trifle--the discovery of his own enemy.
"I am sorry, Paul. How can I help being excited," rejoined Anne Mie withquaint, pathetic gentleness, "when I speak of such base treachery, asthat which Merlin has suggested?"
"Well? And what did he suggest?"
"He did more than suggest," whispered Anne Mie almost inaudibly; "hegave me this paper--the anonymous denunciation which reached the PublicProsecutor this morning--he thought one of us might recognise thehandwriting."
Then she paused, some five steps away from Deroulede, holding outtowards him the crumpled paper, which up to now she had clutcheddeterminedly in her hand. Deroulede was about to take it from her, andjust before he had turned to do so, his eyes lighted on Juliette.
She said nothing, she had merely risen instinctively, and had reachedAnne Mie's side in less than the fraction of a second.
It was all a flash, and there was dead silence in the room, but in thatone-hundredth part of a second, Deroulede had read guilt in the face ofJuliette.
It was nothing but instinct, a sudden, awful, unexplainable revelation.Her soul seemed suddenly to stand before him in all its misery and inall its sin.
It was if the fire from heaven had descended in one terrific crash,burying beneath its devastating flames his ideals, his happiness, andhis divinity. She was no longer there. His madonna had ceased to be.
There stood before him a beautiful woman, on whom he had lavished allthe pent-up treasures of his love, whom he had succoured, sheltered, andprotected, and who had repaid him thus.
She had forced an entry into his house; she had spied upon him, doggedhim, lied to him. The moment was too sudden, too awful for him to makeeven a wild guess at her motives. His entire life, his whole past, thepresent, and the future, were all blotted out in this awful dispersal ofhis most cherished dream. He had forgotten everything else save herappalling treachery; how could he even remember that once, long ago, infair fight, he had killed her brother?
She did not even try now to hide her guilt.
A look of appeal, touching in its trustfulness, went out to him, begginghim to spare her further shame. Perhaps she felt that love, such as his,could not be killed in a flash.
His entire nature was full of pity, and to that pity she made a finalappeal, lest she should be humiliated before Madame Deroulede and AnneMie.
And he, still under the spell of those magic moments when he had kneltat her feet, understood her prayer, and closing his eyes just for onebrief moment in order to shut out for ever that radiant vision of a pureangel whom he had worshipped, turned quietly to Anne Mie.
"Give me that paper, Anne Mie," he said coldly. "I may perhaps recognisethe handwriting of my most bitter enemy."
"'Tis unnecessary now," replied Anne Mie slowly, still gazing at theface of Juliette, in which she too had read what she wished to read.
The paper dropped out of her hand.
Deroulede stooped to pick it up. He unfolded it, smoothed it out, andthen saw that it was blank.
"There is nothing written on this paper," he said mechanically.
"No," rejoined Anne Mie; "no other words save the story of hertreachery."
"What you have done is evil and wicked, Anne Mie."
"Perhaps so; bu
t I had guessed the truth, and I wished to know. Godshowed me this way, how to do it, and how to let you know as well."
"The less you speak of God just now, Anne Mie, the better, I think. Willyou attend to maman? she seems faint and ill."
Madame Deroulede, silent and placid in her arm-chair, had watched thetragic scene before her, almost like a disinterested spectator. All herideas and all her thoughts had been paralysed, since the moment when thefirst summons at the front door had warned her of the imminence of theperil to her son.
The final discovery of Juliette's treachery had left her impassive.Since her son was in danger, she cared little as to whence that dangerhad come.
Obedient to Deroulede's wish, Anne Mie was attending to the old lady'scomforts. The poor, crippled girl was already feeling the terriblereaction of her deed.
In her childish mind she had planned this way, in which to bring thetraitor to shame. Anne Mie knew nothing, cared nothing, about themotives which had actuated Juliette; all she knew was that a terribleJudas-like deed had been perpetrated against the man, on whom sheherself had lavished her pathetic, hopeless love.
All the pent-up jealousy which had tortured her for the past three weeksrose up, and goaded her into unmasking her rival.
Never for a moment did she doubt Juliette's guilt. The god of love maybe blind, tradition has so decreed it, but the demon of jealousy has ahundred eyes, more keen than those of the lynx.
Anne Mie, pushed aside by Merlin's men when they forced their way intoDeroulede's study, had, nevertheless, followed them to the door. Whenthe curtains were drawn aside and the room filled with light, she hadseen Juliette enthroned, apparently calm and placid, upon the sofa.
It was instinct, the instinct born of her own rejected passion, whichcaused her to read in the beautiful girl's face all that lay hiddenbehind the pale, impassive mask. That same second sight made herunderstand Merlin's hints and allusions. She caught every inflection ofhis voice, heard everything, saw everything.
And in the midst of her anxiety and her terrors for the man she loved,there was the wild, primitive, intensely human joy at the thought ofbringing that enthroned idol, who had stolen his love, down to earth atlast.
Anne Mie was not clever; she was simple and childish, with no complexityof passions or devious ways of intellect. It was her elemental jealousywhich suggested the cunning plan for the unmasking of Juliette. Shewould make the girl cringe and fear, threaten her with discovery, andthrough her very terror shame her before Paul Deroulede.
And now it was all done; it had all occurred as she had planned it. Paulknew that his love had been wasted upon a liar and a traitor, andJuliette stood pale, humiliated, a veritable wreck of shamed humanity.
Anne Mie had triumphed, and was profoundly, abjectly wretched in hertriumph. Great sobs seemed to tear at her very heart-strings. She hadpulled down Paul's idol from her pedestal, but the one look she had castat his face had shown her that she had also wrecked his life.
He seemed almost old now. The earnest, restless gaze had gone from hiseyes; he was staring mutely before him, twisting between nervelessfingers that blank scrap of paper, which had been the means ofannihilating his dream.
All energy of attitude, all strength of bearing, which were his chiefcharacteristics, seemed to have gone. There was a look of completeblankness, of hopelessness in his listless gesture.
"How he loved her!" sighed Anne Mie, as she tenderly wrapped the shawlround Madame Deroulede's shoulders.
Juliette had said nothing; it seemed as if her very life had gone out ofher. She was a mere statue now, her mind numb, her heart dead, her veryexistence a fragile piece of mechanism. But she was looking atDeroulede. That one sense in her had remained alive: her sight.
She looked and looked: and saw every passing sign of mental agony on hisface: the look of recognition of her guilt, the bewilderment at theappalling crash, and now that hideous deathlike emptiness of his souland mind.
Never once did she detect horror or loathing. He had tried to save herfrom being further humiliated before his mother, but there was no hatredor contempt in his eyes, when he realised that she had been unmasked bya trick.
She looked and looked, for there was no hope in her, not even despair.There was nothing in her mind, nothing in her soul, but a greatpall-like blank.
Then gradually, as the minutes sped on, she saw the strong soul withinhim make a sudden fight against the darkness of his despair: themovement of the fingers became less listless; the powerful, energeticfigure straightened itself out; remembrance of other matters, otherinterests than his own began to lift the overwhelming burden of hisgrief.
He remembered the letter-case containing the compromising papers. Avague wonder arose in him as to Juliette's motives in warding off,through her concealment of it, the inevitable moment of its discovery byMerlin.
The thought that her entire being had undergone a change, and that shenow wished to save him, never once entered his mind; if it had, he wouldhave dismissed it as the outcome of maudlin sentimentality, the conceitof the fop, who believes his personality to be irresistible.
His own self-torturing humility pointed but to the one conclusion: thatshe had fooled him all along; fooled him when she sought his protection;fooled him when she taught him to love her; fooled him, above all, atthe moment when, subjugated by the intensity of his passion, he had forone brief second ceased to worship in order to love.
When the bitter remembrance of that moment of sweetest folly rushed backto his aching brain, then at last did he look up at her with one final,agonised look of reproach, so great, so tender, and yet so final, thatAnne Mie, who saw it, felt as if her own heart would break with the pityof it all.
But Juliette had caught the look too. The tension of her nerves seemedsuddenly to relax. Memory rushed back upon her with tumultuousintensity. Very gradually her knees gave beneath her, and at last sheknelt down on the floor before him, her golden head bent under theburden of her guilt and her shame.