A Marriage Under the Terror

by Patricia Wentworth

  Suddenly even her composure was shattered.

  There was a loud shout of “Come out, Austrian! Look, Austrian!” and a shape appeared at the window—a head, omen of imminent tragedy. That head had shared the Queen’s pillow, those drawn lips had smiled for her, those heavy lids closed over eyes whose beauty to her had been the lovely, frank affection which beamed from them. Thus, in this fearful shape, came the intimation of that friendship’s close.

  Cléry sprang up with a cry of “Don’t look!” but he was too late. With a hoarse sound, half cry, half strained release of breath too frantically held, the Queen shrank back.

  In that moment her face went grey and hollow, her death-mask showed prophetic, but after that one movement, that one cry, she sat quite still and made no sound. Mme Royale had fainted, and Elizabeth knelt beside her shuddering and weeping.

  Renault’s great shoulders blocked the window, and even as he pressed forward the head was withdrawn.

  Down below a second crisis was being fought through. Dangeau began to feel the strain of that scene by the Temple gates; his nervous energy was diminished, and the dreadful six were straining at the leash. They howled for the Austrian, they bellowed forth threats, they vociferated. One of them caught Dangeau by the shoulder and levelled a red pike at his head; but for a moment the steely composure of the eyes held him, and the next a friendly hand struck down the weapon.

  “It is Dangeau, our Dangeau, the people’s friend!” shouted his rescuer, a powerful workman. “I am of his section,” and he squeezed him in a grimy embrace.

  Dangeau, released, sprang on a heap of rubble, and made his final effort.

  “Hé, mes braves!” he cried, “it is growing late; half Paris knows your deeds, it is true, but how many are still ignorant? Will you let darkness overtake you with your trophies yet undisplayed? Away, let the other quarters hear of your triumphs. Vaunt them before the Palais Royal, and let the Tuileries, so often defiled by the Tyrant’s presence, be purified now by these relics, evidence of the people’s power!”

  As he ceased, his words were taken up by all present.

  “To the Palais Royal! To the Tuileries!” they howled.

  Dangeau, not only saved, but a hero,—so fickle a thing is the mood of the sovereign people,—was cheered, embraced, carried across the court-yard, and with difficulty permitted to remain behind; whilst the whole mob, singing, shouting, and dancing, took its frenzied course towards the royal palaces.

  CHAPTER VI

  A DOUBTFUL SAFETY

  MLLE DE ROCHAMBEAU KNELT by her open window. She had been praying, but for a long time her lips had not moved, and now it seemed as if their numbness had invaded her heart, and lay there deadening fear, emotion, sorrow, all,—all except that heavy beating, to which she listened half unconsciously, as though it were a sound from some world which hardly concerned her.

  She had not left the little room at all. On the first day she had been put off civilly enough.

  “Rest a little, Ma’mselle, rest a little; to-morrow I will make my sister a little visit, and you shall accompany me. To-day I am busy, and without me you would not be admitted to the prison.”

  But when to-morrow came, there were at first black looks, then impatient words, and finally the key turned in the lock and hours of terrifying solitude. The one small window overlooked a dark and squalid street where the refuse of the neighbourhood festered. It was noisy and malodorous, and she sickened at every sense. The sounds, the smells, the sight of the wizened, wicked-looking children, who fought, and swore, and scrabbled in the noisome gutter below, all added to her growing apprehension.

  Closing the cracked pane she retreated to the farther corner of the attic, and again slow hours went by.

  About noon a distant roar startled her to the window once more. Nothing was to be seen, but the sound came again, and yet again; increasing each time in violence, and becoming at last a heavy, continuous boom.

  There is scarcely anything so immediately terrifying as that dull mutter of a city in tumult. Mlle de Rochambeau’s smooth years supplied her with no experience by which to measure the threat of that far uproar, and yet every nerve in her body thrilled to it and cried danger! It was then that she began to pray. The afternoon wore on, and she grew faint as well as frightened. Rosalie Leboeuf had set coffee and coarse bread before her in the early morning, but that was now many hours since.

  The sun was near to setting when a loud shouting arose in the street below, shocking her from the dizzy quiescence into which she had fallen. Looking out, she saw that the children had scattered, pushed aside by rapidly gathering groups of their elders. Every house appeared to be disgorging an incredible number of people, and in their midst swayed a very large man, extremely drunk, and half naked. Such clothes as he possessed appeared to have been torn and rent in a most amazing manner, and scraps of them depended fantastically from naked shoulders and battered belt. His swarthy head retained its bonnet rouge, whose original colour was dyed, here and there, a deeper and more portentous crimson.

  He waved great windmills of arms, and talked loudly in a thick guttural voice, adding strange gestures and stranger oaths. A sort of fascination kept Mademoiselle’s eyes riveted upon him, and presently she began to catch words—phrases.

  “Dear holy Virgin! what was he saying?—Impossible—impossible, impossible!” And then quite suddenly her shocked brain yielded to the truth. There had been a massacre of the prisoners—this man had been there; he was recounting his exploits, boasting of the number he had killed.

  “Mother most merciful, protect! save!—” But the ghastly catalogue ran on. They say that in those days many claimed the murderer’s praise who had never acted the murderer’s part. Men with hands innocent of blood daubed themselves horribly, and went home boasting of unimaginable horrors, guiltless the while as the children who hung eagerly on the tale. There was a madness abroad,—a fearful, epidemic madness that seized its thousands, and time and again set Paris reeking like a shambles and laughing wantonly in the face of outraged Europe.

  Whether Jean Michel were innocent or not, his conversation was equally horrifying. Mlle de Rochambeau listened to it, shaking. The things said were inconceivable, and mercifully some of them passed over her innocence leaving it unbruised, save for a gradually accumulating weight of horror.

  Suddenly she caught her cousin’s name—“that wanton, the Montargis, damned Austrian spy,” the man called her, and added Sélincourt’s name to hers with a foul oath.

  “I struck them, I! My pike was the first!” he shouted. Then drawing a scrap of reeking linen from his belt he waved it aloft, proclaiming, “This is her blood!” and looked around him for applause.

  It was too much. A gasp broke from the girl’s rigid lips, a damp dew from her brow. The twilight quivered—turned to darkness—then broke into a million sparks of flame, and a merciful oblivion overtook her.

  Jean Michel may be left to the tender mercies of Louison his wife, a little woman and a venomous, having that command over her husband which one sees in the small wives of large men. Having haled him home, she burned his precious trophy, and poured much cold water on his hot and muddled head. Afterwards she gave her tongue free course, and we may consider that Jean Michel had his deserts.

  When Mlle de Rochambeau shuddered back again to consciousness, the room was dark. Outside, quiet reigned, and a beautiful blue dusk, just tinged with starlight. She dragged herself up into a half-sitting, half-kneeling position, and looked long and tremblingly into the tranquil depths above. All was peace and a cool purity, after the red horror of the day. The lights of the city looked friendly; they spoke of homes, of children, of decent comfort and ordered lives, and over all brooded the great sapphire glooms of the darkening ether and the lights of the houses of God. A strange calm slid into her soul—the hour held her—life and death were twin points in a fathomless, endless stretch of peace eternal.

  The flesh no longer enchained her—weak with shock and fasting, it release
d its grip, and the freer spirit peered forth into the immensities.

  Aline’s body lay motionless, but her soul floated in a calm sea of light.

  How long this lasted she did not know, but presently she became aware that she was listening to some rather distant sound. It came slowly nearer, and resolved itself into a man’s heavy step, which mounted the narrow stairway, and paused ominously beside her door. Some of the strange calm from which she came still wrapped her, but her heart began to beat piteously. Her hearing seemed preternaturally acute, and she was aware of a pause, of one or two quickly drawn breaths, and then the dull sound of a groan—such a sound as may come from a man utterly weary and forespent when he imagines himself alone. The pause, the groan were over even as she listened, and the door opposite hers closed sharply upon Jacques Dangeau.

  A throb of relief shook her back into normal humanity. It was, of course, the man she had seen on the stairs, and all at once she was conscious of immense fatigue; her head sank lower and lower, the darkness closed upon her, and she slept.

  Rosalie stumbled over her an hour later, and took fright when the girl just stirred, and no more. She had intended her young aristocrat to pass a chastening day. Fasting was good for the soul, it rendered young girls amenable, and Rosalie wished to come to terms with this friendless but not unmoneyed demoiselle whom chance, luck, or some other god of her rather mixed beliefs had thrown her way. She had not, however, meant to leave the girl quite so long without food, but sallying out in quest of news she had been detained by her trembling sister, whose timid soul saw no safety anywhere in all red, raving Paris.

  Rosalie set down her light and bent over the sleeping girl. A shrewd glance showed her a drawn fatigue of feature and a collapsed discomfort of attitude beyond anything she was prepared for.

  “Tett, tett!” she grunted; “that Michel—could she have heard him? It is certainly possible. Well, well, there will be no talk to-night, that’s a sure thing. Here, Ma’mselle! Ma’mselle!”

  Mlle de Rochambeau opened her eyes, but only to close them again. The lids hung half shut, and under them lay heavy violet streaks. This was slumber that was half a swoon, and with a shrug of her vast shoulders, and a mental objurgation of the tenderness of aristocrats, Rosalie set herself to getting a cup of strong hot broth down the girl’s throat.

  Mademoiselle moaned and gasped, but when a sip or two had been chokingly swallowed, she raised her head and took the warm drink eagerly. She was about to sink back again into her old position when she felt strong arms about her, and capable hands loosened her dress and pulled off shoes and stockings. With a sigh of content, she felt herself laid down on the bed, her head touched a pillow, some one covered her, and she fell again upon a deep, deep, dreamless sleep.

  It was high noon before she awoke, and then it was to a sense of bewildered fatigue beyond anything she had ever experienced. She lay quite still, and watched the little patch of sky which showed above the roofs of the houses opposite. It was very blue, and small glittering clouds raced quickly across it. Slowly, slowly as she looked, yesterday came back to her, but with a strange remoteness, as if it had all happened too long ago to weep for. A great shock takes us out of time and space. Emotion crystallises and ceases to flow along its accustomed channels. Aline de Rochambeau was never to forget the experience she had just passed through, but for the time being it seemed too far away to pierce the numbness round her heart.

  A cry in the street did something; her cheek paled, and Rosalie coming noisily in found her sitting up in bed with wide, frightened eyes. She caught at the woman’s arm and spoke in a sort of hurried whisper.

  “Ah, Madame, is it true? For Heaven’s love tell me! Or have I had some terrible dream?” and her voice sank, as if the sound of it terrified her.

  Rosalie’s fat shoulders went shrugging up to Rosalie’s thick, red ears.

  “Is what true?” she asked. “It is certainly true that you have slept fourteen hours, no less; long enough to dream anything. They called it laziness when I was young, my girl.”

  Mlle de Rochambeau joined both hands about her wrist. “Tell me—only tell me, Madame—I heard—oh, God!—I heard a man in the street—he said”—shuddering—“he said the prisoners were all murdered—and my cousin—oh, my poor cousin!” Words brought her tears, and she covered her face from Rosalie’s convincing nod.

  “As to all the prisoners, for that I cannot answer, but certainly there are some hundreds less of the pestilent aristocrats than there were. As to your cousin, the ci-devant Marquise de Montargis, she’s as dead as mutton.”

  Aline looked up—she was not stupid, and this woman’s altered tone was confirmation enough without any further words. Two days ago, it had been “Ma’mselle,” and the respectful demeanour of a servant, smiles and smooth words had met her, and now that rough “my girl” and these brutal words! Rosalie Leboeuf was no pioneer. Had some terrible change not taken place, she would never have dared to speak and look as she was looking and speaking now.

  Mademoiselle had not the Rochambeau blood for nothing. She drew herself up, looked gravely in the woman’s face, and said in a fine, cold voice:

  “I understand, Madame. Is it permitted to ask what you propose to do with me?”

  Rosalie stared insolently. Then planting herself deliberately on a chair, she observed:

  “It is certainly permitted to ask, my little aristocrat—certainly; but I should advise fewer airs and graces to a woman who has saved your life twice over, and that at the risk of her own.”

  Mademoiselle was silent, and Rosalie took up her parable. “Where would you have been by now, if I had not brought you home with me? There’s many a citizen who would have been glad to find a cage for a pretty stray bird like you, and how would that have suited you—eh? Better rough words from respectable Rosalie Leboeuf than shameful kisses from Citizen Such-a-one. And yesterday—if I had whispered yesterday, ‘Montargis is dead, but there’s a chick of the breed roosting in my upper room,’ as I might very well have done, very well indeed, and kept your money into the bargain—what then, Miss Mealy-mouth? Have you a fancy for being stripped and dragged at a cart’s tail through Paris, or would you relish being made to drink success to the Revolution in a brimming mug of aristocrats’ blood? Eh! I could tell you tales, my girl, such tales that you’d never sleep again, and that’s what I’ve saved you from, and do I get thanks—gratitude? Tush! was that ever the nobles’ way?”

  “Madame—I am—grateful,” said Mademoiselle faintly. Her lips were ashen, and the breath came with a gasp between every word.

  “Grateful—yes, indeed, I should think you were grateful,” responded Rosalie, her keen eyes on the girl’s ghastly face. With a little nod, she decided that she had frightened her enough. “I want more than your ‘Madame, I’m grateful,’” and as she mimicked the faltering tones the blood ran back into Mademoiselle’s white cheeks. “So far we have talked sentiment,” she continued, with a complete change of manner. Her brutality slipped from her, and she became the bargaining bourgeoise.

  “Let us come to business.”

  “With all my heart, Madame.”

  “Tut—no Madame—Citoyenne, or Rosalie. Madame smells of treason, disaffection, what not. What money have you?”

  “Only what I showed you yesterday.”

  “But you could get more?”

  “I do not think so, I know nothing of my affairs—but there was a good deal in that bag. I put it—yes, I’m sure I did—under the pillow. Oh, Madame, my money’s not here! The bag is gone!”

  “Té! té! té!” went Rosalie’s tongue against the roof of her mouth; “gone it is, and for a very good reason, my little cabbage, because Rosalie Leboeuf took it!”

  “Madame!”

  “Ma’mselle!” mimicked the rough voice. “It is the little present that Ma’mselle makes me—the token of her gratitude. Hein! do you say anything against that?”

  Mademoiselle was silent. She was reflecting that she still had her pear
ls, and she put a timid hand to her bosom. A moment later, she sank back trembling upon her pillow. The pearls were gone. It was not for nothing that Rosalie had undressed her the night before. She bit her lip, constraining herself to silence; and Rosalie, twinkling maliciously, maintained the same reserve. She was neither a cruel nor a brutal woman, though she could appear both, if she had an end to gain, as she had now.

  She meant Mlle de Rochambeau no harm, and honestly considered that she had earned both gold and pearls. Indeed, who shall say that she had not? Girls had to be managed, and were much easier to deal with when they had been well frightened. When she was well in hand, Rosalie would be kind enough, but just now, a touch of the spur, a flick of the whip, was what was required—and yet not too much, for times changed so rapidly, and who knew how long the reign of Liberty would last? She must not overdo it.

  “Well now, Citoyenne,” she said suddenly, “let us see where we are. You came to Paris ten days ago. Who brought you?”

  “The Intendant and his wife,” said Mademoiselle.

  “And they are still in Paris?” (The devil take this Intendant!)

  “No; they returned after two days. I think now that they were frightened.”

  “Very likely. Worthy, sensible people!” said Rosalie, with a puff of relief. “And you came to the Montargis? Well, she’s dead. Are you betrothed?”

  Aline turned a shade paler. How far away seemed that betrothal kiss which she had rubbed impatiently from her reluctant hand!

  “I was fiancée to M. de Sélincourt.”