CHAPTER XXX
Conclusion.
There is but little else to record.
History has told us how, shamefaced, tired, dripping, the great,all-powerful people of Paris quietly slunk back to their homes, evenbefore the first cock-crow in the villages beyond the gates, acclaimedthe pale streak of dawn.
But long before that, even before the church bells of the great city hadtolled the midnight hour, Sir Percy Blakeney and his little band offollowers had reached the little tavern which stands close to thefarthest gate of Pere Lachaise.
Without a word, like six silent ghosts, they had traversed the vastcemetery, and reached the quiet hostelry, where the sounds of theseething revolution only came, attenuated by their passage through thepeaceful city of the dead.
English gold had easily purchased silence and good will from thehalf-starved keeper of this wayside inn. A huge travelling chaisealready stood in readiness, and four good Flanders horses had beenpawing the ground impatiently for the past half hour. From the window ofthe chaise old Petronelle's face, wet with anxious tears, was peeringanxiously.
A cry of joy and surprise escaped Deroulede and Juliette, and bothturned, with a feeling akin to awe, towards the wonderful man who hadplanned and carried through this bold adventure.
"Nay, my friend," said Sir Percy, speaking more especially to Deroulede;"if you only knew how simple it all was! Gold can do so many things, andmy only merit seems to be the possession of plenty of that commodity.You told me yourself how you had provided for old Petronelle. Under themost solemn assurance that she would meet her young mistress here, I gother to leave Paris. She came out most bravely this morning in one of themarket carts. She is so obviously a woman of the people, that no onesuspected her. As for the worthy couple who keep this wayside hostel,they have been well paid, and money soon procures a chaise and horses.My English friends and I, we have our own passports, and one forMademoiselle Juliette, who must travel as an English lady, with her oldnurse, Petronelle. There are some decent clothes in readiness for us allin the inn. A quarter of an hour in which to don them and we must on ourway. You can use your own passport, of course; your arrest has been sovery sudden that it has not yet been cancelled, and we have an eighthours' start of our enemies. They'll wake up to-morrow morning, begad!and find that you have slipped through their fingers."
He spoke with easy carelessness, and that slow drawl of his, as if hewere talking airy nothings in a London drawing-room, instead ofrecounting the most daring, most colossal piece of effrontery theadventurous brain of man could conceive.
Deroulede could say nothing. His own noble heart was too full ofgratitude towards his friend to express it all in a few words.
And time, of course, was precious.
Within the prescribed quarter of an hour the little band of heroes haddoffed their grimy, ragged clothes, and now appeared dressed asrespectable bourgeois of Paris _en route_ for the country. Sir PercyBlakeney had donned the livery of a coachman of a well-to-do house,whilst Lord Anthony Dewhurst wore that of an English lacquey.
Five minutes later Deroulede had lifted Juliette into the travellingchaise, and in spite of fatigue, of anxiety, and emotion, it wasimmeasurable happiness to feel her arm encircling his shoulders inperfect joy and trust.
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Hastings joined them inside the chaise;Lord Anthony sat next to Sir Percy on the box.
And whilst the crowd of Paris was still wondering why it had stormed thegates of the city, the escaped prisoners were borne along the muddyroads of France at breakneck speed northward to the coast.
Sir Percy Blakeney held the reins himself. With his noble heart full ofjoy, the gallant adventurer himself drove his friends to safety.
They had an eight hours' start, and The League of The Scarlet Pimpernelhad done its work thoroughly: well provided with passports, and withrelays awaiting them at every station of fifty miles or so, the journey,though wearisome was free from further adventure.
At Le Havre the little party embarked on board Sir Percy Blakeney'syacht the _Daydream,_ where they met Madame Deroulede and Anne Mie.
The two ladies, acting under the instructions of Sir Percy, had asoriginally arranged, pursued their journey northwards, to the populousseaport town.
Anne Mie's first meeting with Juliette was intensely pathetic. The poorlittle cripple had spent the last few days in an agony of remorse,whilst the heavy travelling chaise bore her farther and farther awayfrom Paris.
She thought Juliette dead, and Paul a prey to despair, and her tendersoul ached when she remembered that it was she who had given the finaldeadly stab to the heart of the man she loved.
Hers was the nature born to abnegation: aye! and one destined to findbliss therein. And when one glance in Paul Deroulede's face told herthat she was forgiven, her cup of joy at seeing him happy beside hisbeloved, was unalloyed with any bitterness.
It was in the beautiful, rosy dawn of one of the last days of thatmemorable Fructidor, when Juliette and Paul Deroulede, standing on thedeck of the _Daydream,_ saw the shores of France gradually receding fromtheir view.
Deroulede's arm was round his beloved, her golden hair, fanned by thebreeze, brushed lightly against his cheek.
"Madonna!" he murmured.
She turned her head to him. It was the first time that they were quitealone, the first time that all thought of danger had become a meredream.
What had the future in store for them, in that beautiful, strange landto which the graceful yacht was swiftly bearing them?
England, the land of freedom, would shelter their happiness and theirjoy; and they looked out towards the North, where lay, still hidden inthe arms of the distant horizon, the white cliffs of Albion, whilst themist even now was wrapping it its obliterating embrace the shores of theland where they had both suffered, where they had both learned to love.
He took her in his arms.
"My wife!" he whispered.
The rosy light touched her golden hair; he raised her face to his, andsoul met soul in one long, passionate kiss.
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