Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

Chapter III

Chapter IIIThe next evening Deroulède was to leave his mother and his home for his new quarters within the Conciergerie, in his capacity as temporary lieutenant, which function he intended to utilize for the furtherance of the great plan he and his comrades had conceived, to effect the unfortunate Queen’s escape.

He had said good-by to his mother, who had already retired to her room, and now stood in his study, ready to go, the fateful casket in a small valise which he held in his hand.

“Tell Mlle. Juliette that if she will favor me with her presence, I would wish to bid her good-by,” he said to his servant, “and in half an hour see that a carriage is at the door, to take me and my luggage.”

Five minutes later she came in, tall and graceful. Her cheeks were very pale, her lips trembled slightly, and there was a wild, curious look in her large, wide-open eyes.

“It is kind of you, mademoiselle, to grant my request,” he said, with a timidity most unusual in this man accustomed to face and speak to the most unruly mob the world has ever known, “and to come to bid me godspeed.”

“You are not going for long, Citizen Deroulède?” she asked.

She seemed strangely nervous and agitated, and once almost seemed as if she would fall. He led her to the sofa, and took a low seat beside her.

“In these times, mademoiselle, any farewell might be forever. But I am actually going for a month to take charge of the unfortunate prisoner at the Conciergerie.”

“In anv case, then, Citizen Deroulède, the farewell I bid you to-night will be a very long one.”

“A month will seem a century to me, since I am destined to spend it without seeing you,” he said, as if involuntarily; “but——”

He paused, and looked long and searchingly into those eyes, that still wore that wild, haggard gaze. Then he whispered, almost inaudibly:

“But I should not dare to hope that the same reason would cause you to call that month a long one.”

She turned perhaps a trifle paler than before, and drew her hand hurriedly away, for he had tried to seize it.

“You misunderstand me, Citizen,” she said; “I meant that I cannot stay any longer under Mme. Deroulède’s hospitable roof. I have already trespassed too long on her kindness, and——”

“You have not been happy with us?” he said, half reproachfully, half sadly; “you wish to leave us?”

“For God’s sake, do not speak like that!” she said, almost wildly. “You do not know, you do not understand, or else——”

“Yes, I understand, Juliette,” he said, with the determination of the strong man wishing at any cost to know what fate has in store for him. “I understand your sweet, innocent nature, I understand your beauty, which God gave you as a mirror to your angelic mind. How could I have lived all these days under the same roof with you without learning the sweet lesson which the angels from heaven have taught me—to love you, Juliette?”

It was useless now for her to attempt to withdraw her hand, for he had seized it in both his, and was covering it and the tiny wrist with kisses, aye, and with hot tears, tears of an emotion so deep, and so pathetic to witness in a strong man.

Juliette had tried to rise, to tear herself away. In an agony of mind, she tried to stop her ears, tried not to hear this man’s voice telling her of his love, this man whom she had dogged, whose hospitality she had betrayed to serve her own vengeance. She tried to think of him only as the murderer of her brother, the guilty cause of her stricken father's early tragic death. She made every effort to conjure up the picture of the boy brought home on a stretcher to die, of the old man holding out a trembling hand toward her, and muttering feebly, “Juliette, live to avenge us both!” But oh! that picture would not stay before her throbbing eyes. Instead of it, she saw this man at her feet, telling her with a voice that forced its way in spite of all to her heart, “I love you, Juliette!”

And she—what had she done? She had forced her way into his house at peril of her own life, had dogged his footsteps, watched his every movement, and—oh, the horror of it!—finally denounced him to those who know no pity. And all in pursuit of the implacable vengeance that had seemed a sacred duty until, a few moments ago, she first had heard those words, and, womanlike, had begun to pity. And having pitied, hatred made way for its twin brother love, with whom it so often walks hand in hand. Ah! if she could but forget, could but undo what was irrevocably done, could but allow her hand to rest in his, her ears to listen to what he had to say! . . .

“Open, in the name of the Republic!”

Deroulède leapt to his feet as this ominous summons, the meaning of which he knew all too well, sounded outside his street door. A minute elapsed while the Auvergnat’s timorous hands were heard to fumble with the chain and bolts. Juliette had also jumped, horror-stricken, from her couch. Her eyes, dilated and haggard, were fixed with a look of terror on the door, which, in another moment, she knew would open before the members of the Committee of Public Safety, Marat and his fraternity, whom her own hand had summoned hither. Deroulède was now deathly pale. Like a wild animal at bay, he looked round at the walls of his study, up toward heaven, or down toward hell, to find some place to which to flee with his precious casket, that lay still there, in the valise close to his hand.

Already the sound of the heavy footsteps, the muttered curses and oaths, had filled the hall, and were now heard rapidly approaching the study door. One common terror for an instant now held these two enthralled. For a space of a minute their thoughts, their longings, and desires met over the safety of the precious casket. The next Juliette had seized the valise and thrown it on the sofa. Then reseating herself, with the gesture of a queen and the grace of a Parisienne she spread the ample folds of her skirts over the compromising bundle, and, as the door was thrown violently open, she said, in calm, somewhat haughty tones:

“How strange it is, Citizen Deroulède, that in the year 1793 Frenchmen so easily forget what is due to women, and interrupt a tête-à-tête without so much as saying ‘Gare!’ Your pleasure, citizens?”

Marat, followed by some half-dozen men, each wearing the red cap and cockade and tricolor sash, had entered the room, and the cunning eyes of the dreaded terrorist had wandered first ironically from one to the other of the two young people, then suspiciously to the desk and other furniture round him.

“What is the meaning of this strange visit, Citizen Marat?” said Deroulède, who had tried to recover his calm and self-possession.

“Information has been laid against you, Citizen-Deputy," said Marat, “by an anonymous writer, that you have just now in your possession correspondence intended for the Widow Capet; and the Committee of Public Safety has entrusted me and these citizens to seize such correspondence and make you answerable for its presence in your house.”

“Always supposing such correspondence to exist,” said Deroulède, sneeringly. “I should have thought my services to the Republic had been too widely known to allow a nameless enemy’s denunciations to weigh against them.”

“The Committee of Public Safety is bound to do its duty by the people whose representatives they are,” said Marat, doggedly; " but you know best, Citizen Deroulède, whether you have anything to hide. If the accusation prove a calumny, so much the better for you. I presume,” he added sneeringly, “that you do not propose to offer any resistance while these citizens and I search your house.”

Deroulède answered nothing, and quietly handed over a bunch of keys to one of the men, who, aided by the others, proceeded to unlock the desk and turn over every scrap of paper he came across.

Deroulède dared not turn toward Juliette; he felt that at this moment her life, as well as his own, lay in a look, in a quiver of the eyelid. The terrorist’s eyes were fixed unceasingly upon him, and he dared not attempt to read in Juliette's what was passing in her mind.

The girl, though very pale, seemed to have complete mastery over her nerves. She still sat on the sofa, enthroned queen-like, the folds of her silken gown hiding that which would have sent her enemy to the scaffold, him whom she hated so bitterly, whose hand had slain her brother, driven her father to despair, but whose voice had so strangely moved her just now when he said, “I love you, Juliette!”

The men, after a fruitless search through the desk, had turned over every article of furniture that might have contained papers or correspondence, and were now preparing for their further search throughout the house.

“I shall have to ask you, Citizen Deroulède,” said Marat, with mock urbanity, “to accompany us while we execute our painful duty. I can assure you that if we find nothing compromising against you, we will soon restore you to a tête-à-tête which the citizeness is so wrathful at seeing interrupted.”

The request was practically a command, and Deroulède prepared to follow, vainly trying to force his brain to find a way out of the situation of deadly peril in which so many were now involved. Juliette’s impulsive act had merely succeeded in involving her into the tangled meshes, without saving the conspirators or the unhappy Queen. Marat and his men would surely return. The comedy could not be kept up through another visit from them. Discovery was imminent. What was passing in that young girl’s mind while Deroulède reluctantly followed the human bloodhounds out of the room?

She listened till the sound of their heavy footsteps died away down the passage, then she rose, and picked up the valise. Cautiously she opened the window, and peeped out. . . . Four more men were stationed outside in the street, guarding the exit. Escape, therefore, in that quarter was impossible. She hesitated for one brief instant, then she quietly slipped out of the door, down the semi-dark passage, up the carpeted stairs, still carrying the fateful valise in her hand.

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