“Why?” he inquired, raising his eyebrows, his glance flaming suddenly and enwrapping her. “Why should I leave you to die? Why leave you at all? The passport is for Colonel Vidal and his wife Angèle Vidal.”
She fell back before him, her eyes staring, her fingers plucking mechanically at her fichu, It was incredible, inconceivable!
Here in revolutionary Paris, slippery with the blood of aristocrats, at the very foot of the guillotine almost, these two had suddenly resumed their relations of ten years ago at Beauvaloir.
Just as he had persecuted her then when, lord of life and death, his will had been the paramount law, so did he persecute her when he was himself persecuted, a proscribed and hunted fugitive.
Encouraged by her silence, he advanced toward her and put out hands to seize her. But she shrank back before him in utter loathing and fear.
“No, no!” she moaned, her wits benumbed for the moment, her spirit paralyzed by the surprise of this.
But he — the fatuous fool dominated entirely by the idea that had so suddenly entered his mind — misunderstood that reiterated negative; conceived it to be the piteous appeal of failing strength, the last feeble outcry of a conscience and a sense of duty bidding her to resist the thing he was proposing.
That her inclinations were not at one with her duty in this he never doubted now. If she was indifferent to him, why had she pleaded for him with Vidal? To that question his vanity could find ever but one answer.
“I love you, Angèle,” he cried hoarsely, overmastered now by his convictions and inflamed by them. “Quit all this, and come away with me, out of Paris — out of France — away from these republican sons of dogs. I will open for you the very gates of life. Angèle.”
She had backed away before him until the wall made further retreat impossible. Her shoulders touching it, she stood there with white terror of him in her face.
Yet for all that her body might be paralyzed by dread, her wits were working quickly and with a shrewdness quickened by the circumstances. She realized that though she might express the loathing in her soul and lash such manhood as might still abide in him with the fiery scorn that filled her, yet she would be powerless to resist his departure.
Did she so much as attempt it he would have no scruple in using force against her. And if he went, taking with him Vidal’s passport, he would thus cut off Vidal’s only chance of escape from Paris, leaving him to fall a prey to the danger that threatened him.
Her resolve was soon taken, even as she stood cowering there under the chevalier’s smoldering glance. Since she could not prevent his departure, at least she must delay him, and even as a last resource make the most of the chance he afforded her of accompanying him. At all costs must she cling to him until she found an opportunity to turn the tables upon him and to repossess herself of that sheet of paper that meant her husband’s life.
Yet before her cowering attitude he hesitated.
She could not quite stifle all her loathing and contempt of him. Despite her, some of it must rise to stamp itself upon her face. And although he scanned it closely, his fatuousness again misled him and made him blind to that, which should have given him pause.
“Poor child.” he murmured, his voice a caress. “Forgive me if I have startled you. Consider that I have waited ten years, and ask yourself whether my present impatience is unnatural.”
She shivered slightly, and in her heart prayed frenziedly for Vidal’s return. Where did he linger, and what kept him? Did no intuition warn him of her straits? At last, with obvious effort, she replied, intent only upon delaying Seyrac’s departure.
“I have known so little love in all these years.” she said in a quavering voice, “that I well might be startled by an expression of it, particularly at such a time and in such a place and from one in your straits. We are amid death, citizen-chevalier, here in Paris.”
Joy and amaze at her confession almost turned his head completely.
He had not been oversanguine then. She had but waited for him to declare himself. Vidal then had been the brute he had supposed him; her late appeal on her husband’s behalf had been uttered at the dictate, not of love, as he had momentarily supposed, but of that curious loyalty of such women for the mate whom circumstances have imposed upon them.
Thus his fatuous thoughts ran on a while.
Then he checked them. It might be as he supposed. Yet, watching her face, remembering how she had shrank and cowered before his advance, a lingering mistrust abode with him.
“Your words make me mad with hope, Angèle. Yet I will use no constraint with you. Unless of your own free will you determine to accompany me I go alone. But if you elect to bear me company in my exile, leaving this gross fellow upon whom the sweetness of your youth has been so shamefully wasted, I swear that never for an instant shall you know regret.”
“You — you will be good to me?” she faltered, hating herself for the odious pretense, yet constrained to it for Vidal’s sake. “You swear to it?”
“Good to you. Angèle?”
His face was aglow. He advanced again, and this time found no resistance. She shuddered as be touched her, but lay still when he took her to his arms.
For she was resolved in her loyal heart that whatever the sacrifice demanded, at least she must insure that Seyrac did not depart alone with that filched passport that was now Vidal’s only plank of salvation.
But when he lowered his head, seeking to kiss her, she thrust him back a little. It was more than she could endure.
“No, no,” she moaned, and then pleaded upon the moment’s inspiration. “Not here: not in his house, not under his roof.”
He would have struggled with her, but at that moment hoofs upon the cobbles and a rumble of wheels came down the street to attract his attention.
“Listen!” he cried, and held up a hand. “It will be the traveling carriage. We have not another moment to lose.”
The vehicle came to a standstill, and a knock resounded through the house.
They fell apart, Seyrac still a little bewildered. A less fatuous man would have been mastered by his suspicions of this sudden acquiescence on her part; a more scrupulous one would have paused to consider the wrong he did in indulging a passing fancy — a fancy revived, it is true, but one that he recognized perfectly as ephemeral, and only capable of this revival because earlier it had been thwarted.
Scruples then he had none
Far from it. In the fate that must inevitably await her, if she were sincere, he beheld merely a poetic vengeance upon her for all that through disappointment she had made him suffer in his youth. As for suspicions, those that very naturally were uttered by his reason, his amazing vanity overbore.
He crossed to the window, thrust it open and looked out. Below he saw in the fading daylight the bulky traveling carriage standing before the door. A raucous voice hailed him with the announcement that this was the berlin for Colonel Vidal.
He closed the window and returned to Angèle.
“Come,” he said. “There is no time to be lost. Let us be going.”
The imminence of it staggered her a little. “But — but there is my luggage!” she said. “And I have to finish packing one of my boxes. I—”
“What does luggage signify in such a moment?” he interrupted impatiently. “Mon Dieu! am I to jeopardize our future for the sake of a bundle of old rags? We have our lives, and we have each other, Angèle, So in Heaven’s name let us be gone! Come.”
He seized her roughly by the arm, and almost dragged her from the room.
On the landing she resisted him a moment. “Wait! Ah, wait!” she cried.
“What is there to wait for?” he snapped. “Are we to delay until Vidal returns and finds us still here?”
He reminded her of a danger. But she imagined that he voiced a suspicion, and instantly became submissive that she might allay it, realizing that in the alternative he would leave her and depart alone, taking those precious papers with him.
�
��Yes, yes. You are right. Let us go,” she panted.
But it was now his turn to check upon the sudden reflection that were she so disposed he would presently be placing it in her power to ruin him. Headlong almost had he dashed into a danger suddenly grown obvious.
“Angèle,” he said, “forgive me if still finding my happiness incredible I take precautions, against betrayal.” And in the hand which he drew from his pocket she caught the glint of a pistol-barrel.
“You do not trust me yet,” she cried, and made her trembling voice express indignant pain.
“All my life,” he answered, “I shall make amends for this mistrust born of my incredibility at my good fortune. See now that you say no word to betray me.” And his faint gesture with the pistol made clear a threat which he was reluctant to utter. “Come now. Let us make haste.”
At last, then, they went down the stairs together, and it seemed now to Angèle that her feet were turned to lead, that her pretense was all in vain. She had not reckoned upon his lingering mistrust and his precautions against betrayal.
She had even thought that her task would be ended when they reached the street, and she denounced him to the driver of the berlin.
Now she realized that at the first word she uttered he would silence her effectively. And at the barrier, when they reached it, her plight would be the same. For he was not likely to be taken off his guard so long as they were in Paris.
Yet she must cling to him, hoping and praying for the opportunity to recover that precious document. Unfaltering in this resolve, though well-nigh despairing, she went on ahead of him down the narrow stairs.
Seyrac was without hat or cloak. But he bethought him that in the coach these would not be missed, I was Angèle who unlatched the door that led into the street. The cumbrous coach stood there almost entirely blocking the narrow way, the driver pacing impatiently beside it. He turned as they came forth.
“You are come at last?” he growled with republican freedom of expression.
“As you see.” said Seyrac gruffly.
He stepped forward to the door of the coach, which the driver sluggishly opened for him.
Then he turned to hand Angèle into the vehicle with his left hand. His right, she observed, was thrust into his bosom, and she never doubted but that it clenched the butt of the pistol in readiness for the worst.
She hesitated a moment, and then seeing no help for it, seeing that an appeal to the driver was out of the question, she stepped up into the coach, and Seyrac followed her. As he sat down the driver slammed the door.
“You know the way?” said Seyrac.
“Unless you’ve changed your mind.” the fellow answered surlily, “Our first stage will be Beauvais. Is that so?”
“That is so.” said Seyrac.
The driver climbed to his seat, flicked his whip, and they set out, up the street in the direction of St. Sulpice and the river.
The chevalier, as he had flung himself down beside Angèle, had slipped an arm about her waist, and now he drew her toward him. She suffered it in utter silence, quelling as best she could the physical sickness that beset her.
“We are but children in the hands of Fate,” he said. “Children — what do I say? Puppets. Puppets without volition of our own. It was predetermined that we should belong to each other, you and I. And to fulfil that desire of Fate’s I was hunted down the Rue Pot de Fer last evening, driven for shelter into your doorway, of all doorways, in Paris, and thus after ten years of waiting we are brought at last together.”
She lay against his breast, mute and terror-stricken, striving in vain to think, to formulate some plan of action, and then quite suddenly the carriage came to a grinding halt with a jerk that flung them both forward.
The chevalier swore sharply as he recovered.
They heard voices, the driver’s and another’s, and their common thought was that the fellow had almost run over some careless wayfarer at the corner, and that the twain were now engaged in mutual recriminations. Seyrac was about to thrust his head from the window when suddenly he was spared the necessity by the appearance before if of a face surmounted by a conical black hat with a tricolor cockade.
A pair of keen eyes peering into the gloomy interior of the coach fastened upon Seyrac’s pale face, and the chevalier heard himself challenged in a gruff voice:
“Who goes there?”
At his ease, and realizing that in the character of Vidal meekness would be out of place, he answered as gruffly:
“What affair is that of yours?”
The man’s thin lips smiled faintly. “I am an agent of the committee of public safety.” he said.
“Why didn’t you say so at first?” grumbled the chevalier. “You are detaining me. I am Colonel Vidal, of the army of Holland.”
“Your papers, citizen-colonel?” said the agent.
“My papers?” grumbled the chevalier, “I shall show them at the barrier.”
“You will show them to me now, if you please,” the agent insisted. “You know the law.”
The chevalier expressed impatience, but drew the passport from his pocket and thrust it under the man’s nose. His right hand, on the seat between himself and Angèle, gripped a pistol whose menace kept her silent.
The agent took the passport and unfolded it. And now a second fellow, also wearing a conical hat and girt by a tricolor sash, lounged forward into view and studied the document over the other’s shoulder.
“So,” he said, reading the signatures that ratified it, “Danton, Varennes and Desmoulins.” And he uttered a short exclamation that sounded like a laugh.
“Quite in order,” said the agent, almost elaborately.
Seyrac, who had experienced a moment’s anxiety lest there should be any flaw in the passport, breathed freely once more.
“Quite in order,” the agent repeated, folding the document again. But he did not offer to return it. Instead he stuffed it into his pocket with one hand, while with the other he flung open the door of the carriage.
“Colonel Vidal,” he said in a formal voice, “I must trouble you to alight.”
“To alight?” said the amazed Seyrac, suddenly afraid.
The opening of the door had increased his range of vision and Angèle’s, and they now saw something that hitherto had been screened from them. By the corner of the street stood ranged six men and a corporal of the national guard with fixed bayonets.
“Alight?” Seyrac repeated. “To what end?”
“Alight, citizen-colonel,” the man said sharply. “I command you upon the authority of the nation.”
Understanding nothing save that to resist such a command were worse than futile, and still hoping that here was no more than some trumpery formality of this extremely formal government of rapscallions, the chevalier got down. But he still gripped his pistol, and the glance he flashed at Angèle was pregnant with bold significance.
Instantly, as he reached the ground and stood between the agents, he found his arms seized on either side, and the pistol was twisted out of his grasp.
“What’s this?” he demanded, hectoring.
“Colonel Vidal, we arrest you in the name of the republic one and indivisible.”
Dumfounded, he stared from one to the other of them.
“Ah, but wait!” he cried. “Wait! This is a mistake. I — I am not Colonel Vidal.”
One of the agents laughed short and contemptuously at that denial, but disdained reply. He signed to the soldiers, who instantly clanked forward.
“Wait!” repeated Seyrac in a frenzy. “My God, I tell you I am not Vidal!”
He swung round to appeal to Angèle to confirm him in this. But the sight of her struck him dumb.
She was leaning forward, watching him with gleaming eyes and the ghost of a smile on her pale lips. He stared at her in horror, and the appeal he intended remained unuttered. Besides, to what end utter it? He was too utterly and hopelessly the victim of some extraordinary malignancy of circumstances.
&n
bsp; The guards surrounded him,
“Take him away,” said the agent “To the prison of the Abbaye.”
Then hat in hand he turned to Angèle, who sat there still watching with those gleaming eyes and that faint smile, “My excuses, citoyenne, for having been forced thus to interrupt your journey. You had best get home again. I trust your husband will soon be restored to you.” He closed the door, and linking arms with his companion moved away in the wake of the soldiers and their prisoner.
A dozen paces off he halted and after lustily slapping his companion across the shoulders, stood, arms akimbo, looking back. Then he laughed.
“By St Guillotine.” he said, “there is a woman who takes her husband’s arrest with singular philosophy.”
“A stanch republican,” said his companion, who was by much the younger man.
“A weary wife, more like.” replied the agent, who knew his world.
CHAPTER VI — Through the Barrier
ANGÈLE’S first feeling of thankful amazement at the escape which Seyrac had through his very treachery contrived for Vidal, passed quickly into one of utter despondency when she came to consider the position at closer quarters.
She saw clearly that after all there was no escape but merely a respite. Seyrac had plunged headlong to his own doom. His own baseness had enmeshed him with a justice truly poetic. But it was not to he supposed that the mistake which had occurred would long continue undiscovered.
To-morrow, no doubt, he would be haled before the revolutionary tribunal, and it would be revealed that he was not Vidal. They would not be long in discovering his true identity and in despatching him to the national razor, and meanwhile the agents of the committee of public safety would have sought out the real Vidal, that he might feel the weight of St. Just’s vengeance, and that he might be silenced.
In answer to a question from the driver as to what he was to do now, she bade him drive her back to the house she had just quitted. There she alighted, and with trembling hands she unlocked the door. She bade the driver wait, and went in and up-stairs to sit down in the twilight and feverishly await Vidal’s return.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 565