A Marriage Under the Terror

by Patricia Wentworth

  Dangeau scarcely looked up.

  “I thank you, Citoyenne,” he said in a cold, constrained voice; “your confidence shall be respected.”

  Perhaps Mademoiselle was surprised at the formality of the reply,—perhaps she expected a shade more response. It had been a condescension after all, and if one condescended, one expected gratitude. She frowned the least little bit, and caught her lower lip between her white, even teeth for a moment, before she bent again to her writing.

  Dangeau’s pen moved, but he was ignorant of what characters it traced. There is in every heart a moment when the still pool becomes a living fountain, because an angel has descended and the waters are divinely troubled. To Jacques Dangeau such a moment came when he felt that Aline de Rochambeau distrusted him, and by the stabbing pain that knowledge caused him, knew also that he loved her. When he heard her speak her name, those troubled waters leapt towards her, and he constrained his voice, lest it should call her by the sweet name she herself had just spoken—lest it should terrify her with the resonance of this new emotion, or break treacherously and leave her wondering if he were gone suddenly mad.

  He forced his eyes upon the page that he could not see, lest the new light in them should drive her from her place. He kept his hand clenched close above the pen, lest it should catch at her dress—her hand—the white, fine hand which wrote with such clear grace, such maidenly quiet, and all the while his heart beat so hard that he could scarcely believe she did not hear it.

  Ten o’clock struck solemnly, and Mademoiselle began to put away her writing materials in her usual orderly fashion.

  “You are going?” he stammered.

  “Since it is the hour, Citizen,” she answered, in some surprise.

  He held the door, and bowed low as she passed him.

  “Good-night, Citizen.”

  “Good-night, Citoyenne.”

  Mlle de Rochambeau passed lightly out. He heard her door close, and shut his own. He was alone. A torrent as of emotion sublimed into fire swept over him, and soul and body flamed to it. He paced the room angrily. Where was his self-control, his patriotism, his determination to live for one only Mistress, the Republic of his ardent dreams? A shocked consciousness that this aristocrat, this child of the enemy, was more to him than the most ardent of them, assaulted his mind, but he repulsed it indignantly. This was a madness, a fever, and it would pass. He had led too solitary a life, hence this girl’s power to disturb him. Had he mixed more with women he would have been safe,—and suddenly he recalled Rosalie’s handsome cousin, the Thérèse of his warning to young Cléry. She had made unmistakable advances to him more than once, but he had presented a front of immovable courtesy to her inviting smiles and glances. Certainly an affair with her would have been a liberal education, he reflected half scornfully, half whimsically disgusted, and no doubt it would have left him less susceptible. Fool that he was!

  Far into the night he paced his room, and continued the mental struggle. Love comes hardly to some natures, and those not the least noble. A man trained to self-control, master of his own soul and all its passions, does not without a struggle yield up the innermost fortress of his being. He will not abdicate, and love will brook no second place. The strong man armed keepeth his house, but when a stronger than he cometh— All that night Dangeau wrestled with that stronger than he!

  It was some days before the evening task was interrupted again. If Dangeau could not speak to her without a thousand follies clamouring in him for utterance, he could at least hold his tongue. Once or twice the pen in those resolute fingers flagged, and his eyes rested on his secretary longer than he knew. Heavy shadows begirt her. The low roof sloped to the gloom of the unlighted angles in the wall. Outside the lamp-light’s contracted circle, all seemed strange, unformed, grotesque. Weird shadows hovered in the dusk background, and curious flickers of light shot here and there, as the ill-trimmed flame flared up, or suddenly sank. The yellow light turned Mademoiselle’s hair to burnished gold, and laid heavy shadows under her dark blue eyes. Its wan glow stole the natural faint rose from her cheeks and lips, giving her an unearthly look, and waking in Dangeau a poignant feeling, part spiritual awe, part tender compassion for her whiteness and her youth, that sometimes merged into the wholly human longing to touch, hold, and comfort.

  Once she looked up and caught that gaze upon her. Her face whitened a little more, and she bent rather lower over her writing, but afterwards, in her own room, she blushed angrily, and wondered at herself, and him.

  What a look! How dared he? And yet, and yet—there was nothing in it to scare the most sensitive maidenliness, not a hint of passion or desire.

  Out of the far-away memories of her childhood, Aline caught the reflection of that same look in other eyes—the eyes of her beautiful mother, haunted as she gazed by the knowledge that the little much-loved daughter must be left to walk the path of life alone, unguarded by the tender mother’s love. Those eyes had closed in death ten years before, but at the recollection Aline broke into a passionate weeping, which would not be stilled. One of her long-drawn sobs reached waking ears across the way, and Dangeau caught his own breath, and listened. Yes, again,—it came again. Oh God! she was weeping! The unfamiliar word came to his lips as it comes to those most unaccustomed in moments of heart strain.

  “O God, she is in trouble, and I cannot help her!” he groaned, and in that moment he ceased to fight against his love. To himself he ceased to matter. It was of her, of the beloved, of the dear sadness in her voice, of the sweet loneliness in her eyes that he thought, and something like a prayer went up that night from the heart of a man who had pronounced prayer to be a degrading superstition. Long after Aline lay sleeping, her wet lashes folded peacefully over dreaming eyes, he waked, and thought of her with a passion of tenderness.

  CHAPTER VIII

  AN OFFER OF FRIENDSHIP

  IT WAS SOME NIGHTS LATER that Mlle de Rochambeau, copying serenely according to her wont, came across something which made her eyes flash and her cheeks burn. So far she had written on without paying much heed to the matter before her, her pen pursuing a mechanical task, whilst her thought merely followed its clear, external form, gracing it with fine script and due punctuation. At first, too, the strangeness of her situation had had its share in absorbing her mind, but now she was more at her ease, and began, as babies do, to take notice. Custom had set its tranquillising seal upon her occupation, and perhaps a waking interest in Dangeau set her wondering about his work. Certain it is that, having written as the heading of a chapter “Sins against Liberty,” she fell to considering the nature of Liberty and wondering what might be these sins against it, which were treated of, as she began to perceive, in language theological in its fervour of denunciation. Dangeau had written the chapter a year ago, in a white heat of fury against certain facts which had come to his knowledge; and it breathed a very ardent hatred towards tyrants and their rule, towards a hereditary aristocracy and its oppression. Mlle de Rochambeau turned the leaf, and read—“a race unfit to live, since it produces men without honour and justice, and women devoid of virtue and pity.” She dropped the sheet as if it burned, and Dangeau, looking up, found her eyes fixed on him with an expression of proud resentment, which stung him keenly.

  “What is it?” he asked quickly.

  She read the words aloud, with a slow scorn, which went home.

  “And Monsieur believes that?” she said, with her eyes still on his.

  Dangeau was vexed. He had forgotten the chapter. It must read like an insult. So far had love taken him, but he would not deny what he had written, and after all was it not well she should know the truth, she who had been snatched like some pure pearl from the rottenness and corruption of her order?

  “It is the truth,” he said; “before Heaven it is the truth.”

  “The truth—this?” she said, smiling. “Ah no, Monsieur, I think not.”

  The smile pricked him, and his words broke out hotly.

  “You are
young, Citoyenne, too young to have known and seen the shameless wickedness, the crushing tyranny, of this aristocracy of France. I tell you the country has bled at every pore that vampires might suck the blood, and fatten on it, they and their children. Do you claim honour for the man who does not shame to dishonour the hearths of the poor, or pity for the woman who will see children starving at her gate that she may buy herself another string of diamonds—hard and cold as her most unpitiful heart?”

  “Oh!” said Mademoiselle faintly.

  “It is the truth—the truth. I have seen it—and more, much, much more. Tales not fit for innocent girls’ ears like yours, and yet innocent girls have suffered the things I dare not name to you. This is a race that must be purged from among us, with sweat of blood, and tears if needs be, and then—let the land enjoy her increase. Those who toiled as brutes, oppressed and ground down below the very cattle they tended, shall work, each man for his own wife and children, and the prosperity of the family shall make the prosperity of France.”

  Mlle de Rochambeau listened impatiently, her finely cut mouth quivering with anger, and her eyes darkening and deepening from blue to grey. They were those Irish eyes, of all eyes the most changeable: blue under a blue sky, grey in anger, and violet when the soul looked out of them—the beautiful eyes of beautiful Aileen Desmond. They were very dark with her daughter’s resentment now.

  “Monsieur says I am young,” she cried, “but he forgets that I have lived all my life in the country amongst those who, he says, are so oppressed, so enslaved. I have not seen it. Before my parents died and I went to the Convent, I used to visit the peasants with my mother. She was an angel, and they worshipped her. I have seen women kiss the fold of her dress as she passed, and the children would flock to her, like chickens at feeding-time. Then, my father—he was so good, so just. In his youth, I have heard he was the handsomest man at Court; he had the royal favour, the King wished for his friendship, but he chose rather to live on his estates, and rule them justly and wisely. The meanest man in his Marquisate could come to him with his grievance and be sure it would be redressed, and the poorest knew that M. le Marquis would be as scrupulous in defence of his rights as in defence of his own honour. And there were many, many who did the same. They lived on their lands, they feared God, they honoured the King. They did justly and loved mercy.”

  Dangeau watched her face as it kindled, and felt the flame in her rouse all the smouldering fires of his own heart. The opposition of their natures struck sparks from both. But he controlled himself.

  “It is the power,” he said in a sombre voice; “they had too much power—might be angel or devil at will. Too many were devil, and brought hell’s torments with them. You honour your parents, and it is well, for if they were as you speak of them, all would honour them. Do you not think Liberty would have spoken to them too? But for every seigneur who dealt equal justice, there were hundreds who crushed the poor because they were defenceless. For every woman who fostered the tender lives around her, there were thousands who saw a baby die of starvation at its starving mother’s breast with as little concern as if it had been a she-wolf perishing with her whelps, and less than if it were a case of one of my lord’s hounds and her litter.”

  Mademoiselle felt the angry tears come sharply to her eyes. Why should this man move her thus? What, after all, did his opinions matter to her? She chid her own imprudence in having lent herself to this unseemly argument. She had already trusted him too much. A little tremour crept over her heart—she remembered the September madness, the horror, and the blood,—and the colour ebbed slowly from her cheeks as she bent forward and took her pen again.

  Dangeau saw her whiten, and in an instant his mood changed. Her hand shook, and he guessed the cause. He had frightened her; she did not trust him. The thought stabbed very deep, but he too fell silent, and resumed his work, though with a heavy heart. When she rose to go, he looked up, hesitated a moment, and then said:

  “Citoyenne.”

  “Yes, Citizen.”

  “Citoyenne, it would be wiser not to express to others the sentiments you have avowed to-night. They are not safe—for Marie Roche.”

  “No, Citizen.”

  Mademoiselle’s back was towards him, and he had no means of discovering how she took his warning.

  “That process of purging, of which I spoke, goes forward apace,” he continued slowly; “those who have sinned against the people must expiate their sins, it may be in blood.”

  “Yes, Citizen.”

  Something drove him on—that subtle instinct which drives us all at times, the desire to probe deeply, to try to the uttermost.

  “They and their innocent children, perhaps,” he said gloomily, and her own case was in his mind. “What do your priests say—is it not ‘to the third and fourth generation’?”

  She turned and faced him then, very pale, but quite composed. There was no coward blood in her.

  “You are trying to tell me that you will denounce me,” she said quietly.

  The words fell like a thunderbolt. All the blood in Dangeau’s body seemed to rush violently to his head, and for a moment he lost himself. He was by her side, his hands catching at her shoulders, where they lay heavy, shaking.

  “Look me in the face and say that again!” he thundered in the voice his section knew.

  “Ah!” cried Mademoiselle,—“what do you mean, Monsieur? This is an outrage, release me!”

  His hands fell, but his eyes held hers. They blazed upon her like heated steel, and the anger in them burned her.

  “Ah! you dare not say it again,” he said very low.

  “Monsieur, I dare.” Her gaze met his, and a strange excitement possessed her. She would have been less than woman had she not felt her power—more than woman had she not used it.

  Dangeau spoke again, his voice muffled with passion. “You dare say I, Jacques Dangeau, am a spy, an informer, a betrayer of trust?”

  Mademoiselle’s composure began to return. This man shook when he touched her; she was stronger than he. There was no danger.

  “Not quite that, Citizen,” she said quietly. “But I did not know what a patriot might consider his duty.”

  He turned away, and bent over his table, arranging a paper here, closing a drawer there. After a few moments he came to where she stood, and looked fixedly at her for a short time. His former look she had met, but before this her eyes dropped.

  “Citoyenne,” he said slowly, “I ask your pardon. I had hoped that—” He paused, and began again. “I am no informer—you may have reliance on my honour and my friendship. I warned you because I saw you friendless and inexperienced. These are dangerous times—times of change and development. I believe with all my heart in the goal towards which we are striving, but many will fall by the way—some from weakness, some by the sword. I was but offering a hand to one whom I saw in danger of stumbling.”

  His altered tone and grave manner softened Aline’s mood. “Indeed, Citizen,” she cried on the impulse, “you have been very kind to me. I am not ungrateful—I have too few friends for that.”

  “Do you count me a friend, Citoyenne?”

  Mademoiselle drew back a shade.

  “What is a friend—what is friendship?” she said more lightly.

  And Dangeau sought for cool and temperate words.

  “Friendship is mutual help, mutual good-will—a bond which is rooted in honour, confidence, and esteem. A friend is one who will neither be oppressive in prosperity nor faithless in adversity,” he said.

  “And are you such a friend, Citizen?”

  “If you will accept my friendship, you will learn whether I am such a friend or not.”

  The measured words, the carefully controlled voice, emboldened Mademoiselle. She threw a searching glance at the dark, downcast features above her, and her youth went out to his.

  “I will try this friendship of yours, Citizen,” she said, with a little smile, and she held out her hand to him.

  Dangea
u flushed deeply. His self-control shook, but only for a moment. Then he raised the slim hand, and, bending to meet it, kissed it as if it had been the Queen’s, and he a devout Loyalist.

  It was Aline’s turn to wake and wonder that night, acting out the little scene a hundred times. Why that flame of sudden anger—that tempest which had so shaken her? What was this power which drew her on to experiment, to play, with forces beyond her understanding? She felt again the weight of his hands upon her, her flesh tingled, and she blushed hotly in the darkness. No one had ever touched her so before. Wild anger woke in her, and wilder tears came burning to her burning cheeks. Truly a girl’s heart is a strange thing. The shyest maid will weave dream-tales of passionate love, in which she plays the heroine to every gallant hero history holds or romance presents. Their dream kisses leave her modesty untouched, their fervent speeches bring no faintest flush to her virgin cheeks. Comes then an actual lover, and all at once is changed. The garment of her dreams falls from her, and leaves her naked and ashamed. A look affronts, a word offends, and a touch goes near to make her swoon.

  Aline lay trembling at her thoughts. He had touched, had held her. His strong hands had bruised the tender flesh. She had seen a man in wrath—had known that it was for her to raise or quell the storm. And then that kiss—it tingled yet, and she threw out her hand in protest. All her pride rose armed. She, a Rochambeau, daughter of as haughty a house as any France nourished, to lie here dreaming because a bourgeois had kissed her hand!—this was a scourge to bring blood. It certainly brought many tears, and at the last she knelt for a long while praying. The waters of her soul stilled at the familiar words of peace, and settled back into a virgin calm. As yet only the surface had been ruffled by the first breath which heralded the approaching storm. It had rippled under the touch, tossed for an hour, flung up a drop or two of salt, indignant spray, and sunk again to sleep and silence. Below, the deeps lay all untroubled, but in them strange things were moving. For when she slept she dreamed a strange dream, and disquieting. She thought she was at Rochambeau once more, and she wondered why her heart did not leap for joy, instead of being heavy and troubled, beyond anything she could remember.