She raised her eyes from her work and slowly regarded him. “I will beg you, citizen, not to jest upon such a subject.”
“I were incapable of jesting upon it,” he assured her solemnly. “After all, your husband will be with the army itself; you will he somewhere in the rear, seeing him infrequently, constantly moving your quarters, and finding them, for the most part, trying to one who is unaccustomed to hardships.”
“I am not unaccustomed to them.” she said quietly. “And if I am in the rear, at least I shall not be so far in the rear as here in Paris; and I do not believe that the alarms of a campaign can compare in horror with the constant alarm amid which I have lived here.”
He felt that his plummet had failed to touch bottom. He was swinging it again, for a more audacious cast this time, when a step sounded on the stairs accompanied by the clank-clank of a saber striking the balusters.
“It is Jerome,” she said, and, rising, she flung the repaired coat over the back of a chair. Seyrac cursed the interruption and his own sluggishness, which had wasted yet another opportunity.
Vidal entered, and the first glance at his face told Angèle that all was not well.
“What has happened?” she cried, advancing to meet him.
He checked to stare at her, amazed by her quick perceptions. Then, with a laugh, he flung his great cocked hat into a corner, and closed the door.
“The worst has happened,” he confessed. “I have been a fool. I have talked too much to the rabble of the convention.”
Her fears rose quickly. That he should allude to the assembly in such disrespectful terms was in itself enough to warn her that the matter was grave.
“What is it?” she asked him breathlessly.
“This,” he said, and drew from his breast-pocket the laissez-passer with which Danton had equipped him. He spread it, and smacked it down upon the table under her eyes.
She looked at it vacantly understanding nothing.
“We must pack, my girl; that is the long and the short of it. We must pack and see to it that we are out of Paris before the barriers close tonight or we may never leave it at all. My papers are ratified and in order, as you see. So that there is nothing to prevent our going, and no need for alarm so that we go at once. I have ordered a berlin to be here at eight o’clock. See that you are ready by then.”
“But what has happened?” she insisted, coming up to him and setting her hands upon his shoulders.
In the background, near the window, stood Seyrac, who had also risen, filled with vague alarms by what he heard.
Vidal poured out the story of his indiscretion. “Say they I have been a fool,” he ended irritably almost. “I know it. I have been a fool to believe in the uprightness of the national representatives, to have been deluded by their high-souled talk of liberty and honesty.
“And now I have publicly called St. Just a thief and threatened to press the matter until an inquiry is held into his conduct and that of his accomplice and tool Lemoine. I have done a service to the nation that any man less honest would have shrunk from doing. The representatives are aware of it. But how will they express their gratitude?
“By sitting still while St. Just, to silence me, will have me arrested and guillotined upon some trumpery charge of treason, against which I shall be given no opportunity to defend myself.”
He snorted furiously. “That is this French Republic, one and indivisible, which I have served, which I have helped to establish and in the upholding of which I have shed my blood. St. Just, too, has shed blood, aye, and freely, but it has been the blood of others. Ah, name of a name!”
He sat down heavily.
“Jerome!” She came to him, flung an arm about his shoulder, and set her cheek against his. She was very white and cold in her great fear for him.
“Allons,” he said gruffly. “There’s nothing to fear, my girl. Indulge your disgust as freely as you please, but for alarm there is no occasion. Forewarned, forearmed. Danton opened my eyes to my danger, and obtained the ratification of my papers that will permit me to depart at once, before St. Just can strike. So that all is well.” He patted her head. “And, anyhow, I have had the satisfaction of calling St. Just a thief. The name will stick; not all the blood in France will wash out that label.”
There was a movement behind. Vidal looked sharply over his shoulder. He had almost forgotten the chevalier’s presence.
“Ah, citizen.” he said, “this will make a difference to you, too!”
“It is what I feared,” said Seyrac.
“You will understand that there will be no more recruiting or marshaling of recruits for me this journey. Someone else will have to take charge of that business. I am sorry, citizen. I would help you if I could.
“But you see how I am placed. I have my wife to think of. I cannot jeopardize her happiness, perhaps her very life, for any man, and for you least of all men. I do not say it in any hostility, citizen-chevalier. All that is past and forgotten. As long as I deemed it possible to help you, I was ready to do so. But you will see that it is possible no longer, You must shift for yourself.”
Seyrac stood there, sick at heart.
The shadow that had been lifted from his was returned, and it now seemed darker than before by virtue of that momentary glimpse of sunshine that had been vouchsafed him. He looked at Angèle, almost expecting to hear her protest again and plead for him.
But Angèle was silenced by her fears for Vidal — fears so engrossing that they left no room for any other thought.
“Very well,” he said at last, in a choking voice. “It remains for me to thank you for what you have done, and—”
“There is no need for haste, at least,” said Vidal, with gruff kindliness. “The berline will not be here until eight o’clock. No need, then, for you to forth until dusk. You may linger on even later if you like. You may spend the night here if you choose. But in that case I should recommend you to depart early to-morrow before St. Just’s warrant arrives. Else they may find you when they search the house, and arrest you by way of consoling themselves to that extent at least.”
He stood up “Come, Angèle; let us set about this packing.”
“There is not much to pack, Jerome,” she answered him. “It is soon done.”
They departed together, leaving Seyrac alone with his despair. He stood by the window, staring out at the houses across the narrow street, and his heart was filled by a dull resentment against fate and Vidal. He felt that he had been ill used. He had been uplifted merely to be dashed down again with a violence that increased his suffering. His soul rebelled against such treatment, and from the depths of it he cursed Vidal as the author of his present despair.
Thus miserably waned for him the evening of a day that had dawned so gloriously.
A little after seven a man came down the street and knocked at the door of Vidal’s house. That knock flung Angèle into alarm. What if already they should be too late? What if already this were an agent of the law? But Vidal reassured her. “St. Just can do nothing until he has denounced me tomorrow, if he so intends. Besides, when they come to arrest me, they will not send just a solitary fellow. There will be a file of national guards with fixed bayonets.”
He went below to open the door to a shabby fellow who, upon assuring himself that he addressed Colonel Vidal, delivered a sealed note of which he was the bearer. Vidal tore it open there and then, scanned the contents, and dismissed the messenger.
“Say that I follow you at once,” he announced. “That is, indeed, if you do not find me there ahead of you.”
He returned up-stairs to get his hat and to show the note to Angèle. It contained but three lines above the sprawling signature of Danton:
“Come to me here at once.
I have news of the utmost urgency for you.
On your life do not fail.”
“What does it mean?” she asked him.
“That is what I am going to ascertain,” he answered. “But whatever it may be, it c
an be nothing to alarm you. What should there be? I shall go straight there and back, and I shall be here as soon as the coach arrives.”
Yet, for all the confidence he displayed, Angèle remained vaguely uneasy after his departure. She stood a while by the window, looking after him as he went up the street, and continued there for some time after he had passed beyond range of her eyes, silently praying for his safe return.
She turned at last. “How thankful I shall be,” she said, with a little catch in her breath, “when the barrier is behind us and we are clear of this terrible city.”
And then, moved to concern for Seyrac, perhaps, because of his concern for Vidal:
“And you, citizen,” she inquired— “what are your plans now?”
“My plans?” said he, with a wry smile. “What plans are possible to me? I must follow my destiny.”
“Alas, citoyen! I would that we could help you.”
Her concern for him revived his drooping coxcombry.
“If the worst befalls,” he said, “I shall at least have the memory of our meeting to enhearten me. Until I met you again, citoyenne, I imagined that it was my evil star had guided me to Paris.”
She looked at him, and he observed the slight frown, the slightly haughty stare of inquiry that warned him he was treading dangerous ground. His flash of courtliness awakened memories that slammed the door at once upon her concern. She turned from him and in silence moved about the room, gathering up a few objects here and there.
“I have yet to complete my packing, citizen, against my husband’s return.” she said, and upon that passed out with her arms full.
CHAPTER V — De Seyrac’s Base Ingratitude
SEYRAC had watched her every movement with those dark, ardent eyes of his, and he sighed when the door closed after her. He flung himself into a chair by the table, and sat there a while absorbed in thought. When at last he stirred it was to take up a paper which lay there where Vidal had left it.
It was the laissez-passer that was to provide the colonel with the means of leaving Paris. He considered it, then dropped it, and rose, stretching himself as if to shake off the despondent lethargy that threatened him.
As his arms dropped back to his sides his glance settled upon that blue military coat, that spare coat of Vidal’s, which Angèle had repaired, lying across the back of the chair where she had flung it. For an instant his face was blank.
It was a blankness that reflected the shock of astonishment which a sudden idea had wrought upon his mind. The next moment his brows were knit thoughtfully, his dark eyes gleamed, and a slow, cunning smile spiced with a touch of malice crept round his lips. He set his hands behind him and, with head sunk between his shoulders, he paced to the fireplace. He stood there staring at the fading embers, his eyes seeing nothing, but his every sense absorbed and concentrated upon this sudden notion that had smitten him, this door of deliverance that had so suddenly and unexpectedly been flung wide before him.
Be turned and came back to the table, passing now along the other side of it, and coming to a standstill beside that coat. Then he stirred out of his absorption to take stock once more of his surroundings. He stood listening. He could hear Angèle moving briskly in the next room about her task of completing the preparations for departure.
Satisfied that she was fully engaged, he moved abruptly to do the thing he had planned. With impatient hands he tore open his long fawn-colored riding-coat, and peeled it off, standing forth in white shirt, white nankeens, and Hessian boots.
Those nether garments of his were, after all, the garments of every officer of the convention: they did not materially differ from those worn by Vidal himself. He took up the military coat, slipped his arms into the sleeves, and drew it on.
Vidal was a bigger man with a greater breadth of torso and length of arm. Still the fit was none so bad as to be remarkable, and much of its general slackness was dissembled when he had drawn tight about his waist the tricolor sash that was attached to it.
Thus be stood forth now to all seeming an officer of the republic one and indivisible. He took up the passport and stuffed it into his breast-pocket, then looked about him for a hat. He failed in this quest, but his roving glance fell upon a brace of pistols which Vidal had left lying upon the dresser.
He picked them up and had just slipped them into his pocket when Angèle came in. She stopped short at sight of him, barely stifling a cry of astonishment, for at the first glance she had failed to recognize him. Then perceiving who it was and at once where he had procured the coat, she challenged his intentions.
“What are you doing?”
He was completely master of himself. Confident now to the point of jauntiness.
“To fool the canaille,” he answered, “I have donned their livery. Vidal should be able to spare me this coat. Indeed, when you come to think of it, it is surely most unrepublican to be possessed of two coats. To the simple patriots, the disciples of Rousseau — that prophet of their new apocalypse — such an excess of garments must surely savor of ostentation, of aristocracy.”
There was something bewildering in this flippancy, something that aroused Angèle’s suspicions. Had his tone been more serious, it is probable that she would have approved the matter of his disguise and at once suffered him to depart in it, that thus he might attempt to win clear of Paris. But the sardonic note in his voice stirred her unaccountably to suspect that here was more than appeared.
“You will be stopped at the barriers,” she said. “You have no papers to support your travesty.”
He smiled.
“Be easy on that score,” he answered “I — I shall take my chance of that with confidence.”
She observed his air of assurance, his smile, faintly tinged with mockery; and her suspicions, far from being allayed, were on the instant quickened. A memory started up under the urgent spur of her wits. Her eyes flashed to the table and noted the absence of what they sought there. She flung out an arm to point to it.
“Citizen,” she cried, “Vidal’s passport? What have you done with it?”
“Faith, I have provided myself with it against precisely such a contingency as you were suggesting.”
“You have provided yourself with it?” She advanced a step, and checked, staring at him with eyes in which indignation was slowly overcoming amazement. “Citizen! You jest!”
“A jest it is indeed.” he agreed with her. “But I shall wait until I reach England before I laugh. It is unlucky to laugh too soon.”
“But you are mad! Do you think you can pass the barriers with Vidal’s papers?”
“Why not? What is there about me to advertise the fact that I am not Vidal? Does my coat fit indifferently? Faith, I have not noticed that such indifference is other than apt in a good republican.”
She came forward now until she stood close before him, “If you take those papers, how is Vidal himself to leave Paris?”
“No doubt he will be able to procure others as readily as he procured these.”
“But if he should not?”
He spread his hands deprecatingly. “Do not let us consider contingencies as unpleasant as they are unlikely.”
“Citizen, you are frivolous,” she rebuked him, “and this is not a matter for frivolity. Take the coat if you will; but restore me the papers.”
“Now consider,” he begged her, “that, as you yourself almost suggested, the coat without the passport is worthless. Of the two I would, indeed, sooner return you the coat; and I should not hesitate to do so were I not persuaded that Vidal can without inconvenience dispense with it.”
She made an effort obviously to keep her patience.
“Citizen Seyrac, you heard Vidal himself say here not half an hour ago that he is in danger, and that his safety depends upon our quitting Paris at once; that he will be lost irrevocably if he is still here to-morrow.”
“That is an excellent reason why I should depart to-night.”
“But don’t you understand that without tha
t passport Vidal will be unable to leave; that if you take it you send him to his death?”
He considered her a moment, then a slow smile broke upon his face.
“You would make a charming widow,” he declared.
She was within an ace of striking him: yet she retained her self-control, though her eyes blazed in her white face. At last she understood his incredible attitude.
“Canaille,” she said; and no worse insult could she have flung at him. “Is that the return you propose to make Vidal for having given you shelter?”
At the opprobrious word “canaille” — that word which his class kept exclusively for those whom they considered the very scum of France — he had fallen serious and a little color had crept into his sallow face.
“It was not Vidal who gave me shelter.” he replied, something sullen now in his demeanor. “Vidal would have flung me to the rabble; it was with regret and reluctance that he forbore. What, then, do I owe Vidal?”
She might have argued the point, but she swept impatiently on to lake her stand upon ground whose firmness was beyond all question.
“And what of me? Do you owe me nothing?”
He made her a leg in his courtliest manner.
“I recognize the full extent of my indebtedness. I ask nothing better of fortune than the opportunity to discharge it.”
“Then, do you not see that if you rob Vidal of the means of saving his life, you deliver me up to death together with him? You may repudiate the debt I say you owe Vidal, but you cannot repudiate the debt you owe to me. You cannot deny that you owe me your life at this moment. Will you, then, destroy me in return for that?”
“How could you suppose me capable of it?”
“Ah!” she caught her breath in relief, misunderstanding him utterly. “Then you will return me the passport?”
“Now see how unreasonable you are. Why must we go back to that?”
She could only stare at him. She did not understand, and yet she suspected something vile under all this.
“But do you not see that there is no alternative; that if you take this passport you leave me to die?”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 564