II
Martin-Roget knew his way about the murky street well enough. He went up to the house which lay a little back from the others. It appeared even more squalid than the rest, not a sound came from within—hardly a light—only a narrow glimmer found its way through the chink of a shutter on the floor above. To right and left of it the houses were tall, with walls that reeked of damp and of filth: from one of these—the one on the left—an iron sign dangled and creaked dismally as it swung in the wind. Just above the sign there was a window with partially closed shutters: through it came the sound of two husky voices raised in heated argument.[214]
In the open space in front of Louise Adet's house vague forms standing about or lounging against the walls of the neighbouring houses were vaguely discernible in the gloom. Martin-Roget and Chauvelin as they approached were challenged by a raucous voice which came to them out of the inky blackness around.
"Halt! who goes there?"
"Friends!" replied Martin-Roget promptly. "Is citizeness Adet within?"
"Yes! she is!" retorted the man bluntly; "excuse me, friend Adet—I did not know you in this confounded darkness."
"No harm done," said Martin-Roget. "And it is I who am grateful to you all for your vigilance."
"Oh!" said the other with a laugh, "there's not much fear of your bird getting out of its cage. Have no fear, friend Adet! That Kernogan rabble is well looked after."
The small group dispersed in the darkness and Martin-Roget rapped against the door of his sister's house with his knuckles.
"That is the Rat Mort," he said, indicating the building on his left with a nod of the head. "A very unpleasant neighbourhood for my sister, and she has oft complained of it—but name of a dog! won't it prove useful this night?"
Chauvelin had as usual followed his colleague in silence, but his keen eyes had not failed to note the presence of the village lads of whom Martin-Roget had spoken. There are no eyes so watchful as those of hate, nor is there aught so incorruptible. Every one of these men here had an old wrong to avenge, an old score to settle with those ci-devant Kernogans who had once been their masters and who were so completely in their power now. Louise Adet had gathered[215] round her a far more efficient bodyguard than even the proconsul could hope to have.
A moment or two later the door was opened, softly and cautiously, and Martin-Roget asked: "Is that you, Louise?" for of a truth the darkness was almost deeper within than without, and he could not see who it was that was standing by the door.
"Yes! it is," replied a weary and querulous voice. "Enter quickly. The wind is cruel, and I can't keep myself warm. Who is with you, Pierre?"
"A friend," said Martin-Roget drily. "We want to see the aristo."
The woman without further comment closed the door behind the new-comers. The place now was as dark as pitch, but she seemed to know her way about like a cat, for her shuffling footsteps were heard moving about unerringly. A moment or two later she opened another door opposite the front entrance, revealing an inner room—a sort of kitchen—which was lighted by a small lamp.
"You can go straight up," she called curtly to the two men.
The narrow, winding staircase was divided from this kitchen by a wooden partition. Martin-Roget, closely followed by Chauvelin, went up the stairs. On the top of these there was a tiny landing with a door on either side of it. Martin-Roget without any ceremony pushed open the door on his right with his foot.
A tallow candle fixed in a bottle and placed in the centre of a table in the middle of the room flickered in the draught as the door flew open. It was bare of everything save a table and a chair, and a bundle of straw in one corner. The tiny window at right angles to the door was innocent of glass, and the north-westerly wind came in an icy stream[216] through the aperture. On the table, in addition to the candle, there was a broken pitcher half-filled with water, and a small chunk of brown bread blotched with stains of mould.
On the chair beside the table and immediately facing the door sat Yvonne Lady Dewhurst. On the wall above her head a hand unused to calligraphy had traced in clumsy characters the words: "Liberté! Fraternité! Egalité!" and below that "ou la Mort."
III
The men entered the narrow room and Chauvelin carefully closed the door behind him. He at once withdrew into a remote comer of the room and stood there quite still, wrapped in his mantle, a small, silent, mysterious figure on which Yvonne fixed dark, inquiring eyes.
Martin-Roget, restless and excited, paced up and down the small space like a wild animal in a cage. From time to time exclamations of impatience escaped him and he struck one fist repeatedly against his open palm. Yvonne followed his movements with a quiet, uninterested glance, but Chauvelin paid no heed whatever to him.
He was watching Yvonne ceaselessly, and closely.
Three days' incarceration in this wind-swept attic, the lack of decent food and of warmth, the want of sleep and the horror of her present position all following upon the soul-agony which she had endured when she was forcibly torn away from her dear milor, had left their mark on Yvonne Dewhurst's fresh young face. The look of gravity which had always sat so quaintly on her piquant features had now changed to one of deep and abiding sorrow; her large dark eyes were circled and sunk; they had in them the[217] unnatural glow of fever, as well as the settled look of horror and of pathetic resignation. Her soft brown hair had lost its lustre; her cheeks were drawn and absolutely colourless.
Martin-Roget paused in his restless walk. For a moment he stood silent and absorbed, contemplating by the flickering light of the candle all the havoc which his brutality had wrought upon Yvonne's dainty face.
But Yvonne after a while ceased to look at him—she appeared to be unconscious of the gaze of these two men, each of whom was at this moment only thinking of the evil which he meant to inflict upon her—each of whom only thought of her as a helpless bird whom he had at last ensnared and whom he could crush to death as soon as he felt so inclined.
She kept her lips tightly closed and her head averted. She was gazing across at the unglazed window into the obscurity beyond, marvelling in what direction lay the sea and the shores of England.
Martin-Roget crossed his arms over his broad chest and clutched his elbows with his hands with an obvious effort to keep control over his movements and his temper in check. The quiet, almost indifferent attitude of the girl was exasperating to his over-strung nerves.
"Look here, my girl," he said at last, roughly and peremptorily, "I had an interview with the proconsul this afternoon. He chides me for my leniency toward you. Three days he thinks is far too long to keep traitors eating the bread of honest citizens and taking up valuable space in our city. Yesterday I made a proposal to you. Have you thought on it?"
Yvonne made no reply. She was still gazing out into nothingness and just at that moment she was very far[218] away from the narrow, squalid room and the company of these two inhuman brutes. She was thinking of her dear milor and of that lovely home at Combwich wherein she had spent three such unforgettable days. She was remembering how beautiful had been the colour of the bare twigs in the chestnut coppice when the wintry sun danced through and in between them and drew fantastic patterns of living gold upon the carpet of dead leaves; and she remembered too how exquisite were the tints of russet and blue on the distant hills, and how quaintly the thrushes had called: "Kiss me quick!" She saw again those trembling leaves of a delicious faintly crimson hue which still hung upon the branches of the scarlet oak, and the early flowering heath which clothed the moors with a gorgeous mantle of rosy amethyst.
Martin-Roget's harsh voice brought her abruptly back to the hideous reality of the moment.
"Your obstinacy will avail you nothing," he said, speaking quietly, even though a note of intense irritation was distinctly perceptible in his voice. "The proconsul has given me a further delay wherein to deal leniently with you and with your father if I am so minded. You know what I have proposed to you: Life with me as my wife—in whi
ch case your father will be free to return to England or to go to the devil as he pleases—or the death of a malefactor for you both in the company of all the thieves and evil-doers who are mouldering in the prisons of Nantes at this moment. Another delay wherein to choose between an honourable life and a shameful death. The proconsul waits. But to-night he must have his answer."
Then Yvonne turned her head slowly and looked calmly on her enemy.
"The tyrant who murders innocent men, women and[219] children," she said, "can have his answer now. I choose death which is inevitable in preference to a life of shame."
"You seem," he retorted, "to have lost sight of the fact that the law gives me the right to take by force that which you so obstinately refuse."
"Have I not said," she replied, "that death is my choice? Life with you would be a life of shame."
"I can get a priest to marry us without your consent: and your religion forbids you to take your own life," he said with a sneer.
To this she made no reply, but he knew that he had his answer. Smothering a curse, he resumed after a while:
"So you prefer to drag your father to death with you? Yet he has begged you to consider your decision and to listen to reason. He has given his consent to our marriage."
"Let me see my father," she retorted firmly, "and hear him say that with his own lips.
"Ah!" she added quickly, for at her words Martin-Roget had turned his head away and shrugged his shoulders with well-assumed indifference, "you cannot and dare not let me see him. For three days now you have kept us apart and no doubt fed us both up with your lies. My father is duc de Kernogan, Marquis de Trentemoult," she added proudly, "he would far rather die side by side with his daughter than see her wedded to a criminal."
"And you, my girl," rejoined Martin-Roget coldly, "would you see your father branded as a malefactor, linked to a thief and sent to perish in the Loire?"
"My father," she retorted, "will die as he has lived, a brave and honourable gentleman. The brand of a malefactor cannot cling to his name. Sorrow we are ready to endure—death is less than nothing to us—we will but follow[220] in the footsteps of our King and of our Queen and of many whom we care for and whom you and your proconsul and your colleagues have brutally murdered. Shame cannot touch us, and our honour and our pride are so far beyond your reach that your impious and blood-stained hands can never sully them."
She had spoken very slowly and very quietly. There were no heroics about her attitude. Even Martin-Roget—callous brute though he was—felt that she had only spoken just as she felt, and that nothing that he might say, no plea that he might urge, would ever shake her determination.
"Then it seems to me," he said, "that I am only wasting my time by trying to make you see reason and common-sense. You look upon me as a brute. Well! perhaps I am. At any rate I am that which your father and you have made me. Four years ago, when you had power over me and over mine, you brutalised us. To-day we—the people—are your masters and we make you suffer, not for all—that were impossible—but for part of what you made us suffer. That, after all, is only bare justice. By making you my wife I would have saved you from death—not from humiliation, for that you must endure, and at my hands in a full measure—but I would have made you my wife because I still have pleasant recollections of that kiss which I snatched from you on that never-to-be-forgotten night and in the darkness—a kiss for which you would gladly have seen me hang then, if you could have laid hands on me."
He paused, trying to read what was going on behind those fine eyes of hers, with their vacant, far-seeing gaze which seemed like another barrier between her and him. At this rough allusion to that moment of horror and of shame, she had not moved a muscle, nor did her gaze lose its fixity.[221]
He laughed.
"It is an unpleasant recollection, eh, my proud lady? The first kiss of passion was not implanted on your exquisite lips by that fine gentleman whom you deemed worthy of your hand and your love, but by Pierre Adet, the miller's son, what? a creature not quite so human as your horse or your pet dog. Neither you nor I are like to forget that methinks...."
Yvonne vouchsafed no reply to the taunt, and for a moment there was silence in the room, until Chauvelin's thin, suave voice broke in quite gently:
"Do not lose your patience with the wench, citizen Martin-Roget. Your time is too precious to be wasted in useless recriminations."
"I have finished with her," retorted the other sullenly. "She shall be dealt with now as I think best. I agree with citizen Carrier. He is right after all. To the Loire with the lot of that foul brood!"
"Nay!" here rejoined Chauvelin with placid urbanity, "are you not a little harsh, citizen, with our fair Yvonne? Remember! Women have moods and megrims. What they indignantly refuse to yield to us one day, they will grant with a smile the next. Our beautiful Yvonne is no exception to this rule, I'll warrant."
Even while he spoke he threw a glance of warning on his colleague. There was something enigmatic in his manner at this moment, in the strange suavity wherewith he spoke these words of conciliation and of gentleness. Martin-Roget was as usual ready with an impatient retort. He was in a mood to bully and to brutalise, to heap threat upon threat, to win by frightfulness that which he could not gain by persuasion. Perhaps that at this moment he desired Yvonne de Kernogan for wife, more even than he desired[222] her death. At any rate his headstrong temper was ready to chafe against any warning or advice. But once again Chauvelin's stronger mentality dominated over his less resolute colleague. Martin-Roget—the fowler—was in his turn caught in the net of a keener snarer than himself, and whilst—with the obstinacy of the weak—he was making mental resolutions to rebuke Chauvelin for his interference later on, he had already fallen in with the latter's attitude.
"The wench has had three whole days wherein to alter her present mood," he said more quietly, "and you know yourself, citizen, that the proconsul will not wait after to-day."
"The day is young yet," rejoined Chauvelin. "It still hath six hours to its credit.... Six hours.... Three hundred and sixty minutes!" he continued with a pleasant little laugh; "time enough for a woman to change her mind three hundred and sixty times. Let me advise you, citizen, to leave the wench to her own meditations for the present, and I trust that she will accept the advice of a man who has a sincere regard for her beauty and her charms and who is old enough to be her father, and seriously think the situation over in a conciliatory spirit. M. le duc de Kernogan will be grateful to her, for of a truth he is not over happy either at the moment ... and will be still less happy in the dépôt to-morrow: it is over-crowded, and typhus, I fear me, is rampant among the prisoners. He has, I am convinced—in spite of what the citizeness says to the contrary—a rooted objection to being hurled into the Loire, or to be arraigned before the bar of the Convention, not as an aristocrat and a traitor but as an unit of an undesirable herd of criminals sent up to Paris for trial, by an anxious and harried proconsul. There! there!" he added benignly, "we will not worry our fair Yvonne any longer, will we, citizen? I[223] think she has grasped the alternative and will soon realise that marriage with an honourable patriot is not such an untoward fate after all."
"And now, citizen Martin-Roget," he concluded, "I pray you allow me to take my leave of the fair lady and to give you the wise recommendation to do likewise. She will be far better alone for awhile. Night brings good counsel, so they say."
He watched the girl keenly while he spoke. Her impassivity had not deserted her for a single moment: but whether her calmness was of hope or of despair he was unable to decide. On the whole he thought it must be the latter: hope would have kindled a spark in those dark, purple-rimmed eyes, it would have brought moisture to the lips, a tremor to the hand.
The Scarlet Pimpernel was in Nantes—that fact was established beyond a doubt—but Chauvelin had come to the conclusion that so far as Yvonne Dewhurst herself was concerned, she knew nothing of the mysterious agencies that were working on her behalf.
&nbs
p; Chauvelin's hand closed with a nervous contraction over the packet of papers in his pocket. Something of the secret of that enigmatic English adventurer lay revealed within its folds. Chauvelin had not yet had the opportunity of examining them: the interview with Yvonne had been the most important business for the moment.
From somewhere in the distance a city clock struck six. The afternoon was wearing on. The keenest brain in Europe was on the watch to drag one woman and one man from the deadly trap which had been so successfully set for them. A few hours more and Chauvelin in his turn would be pitting his wits against the resources of that intricate brain, and he felt like a war-horse scenting blood and battle.[224] He was aching to get to work—aching to form his plans—to lay his snares—to dispose his trap so that the noble English quarry should not fail to be caught within its meshes.
He gave a last look to Yvonne, who was still sitting quite impassive, gazing through the squalid walls into some beautiful distance, the reflection of which gave to her pale, wan face an added beauty.
"Let us go, citizen Martin-Roget," he said peremptorily. "There is nothing else that we can do here."