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Eleanor H. Porter - "Miss Billy Married"

Melvin L. Severy - "The Darrow Enigma"

Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman Julius - "Dust"

Harriet Beecher Stowe - "Queer Little Folks"

El Dorado

B >> Baroness Orczy >> El Dorado




Across the smooth brow the strange shadow made by the hair seemed
to find a reflex from within. Perhaps the reckless adventurer,
the careless gambler with life and liberty, saw through the walls
of this squalid room, across the wide, ice-bound river, and beyond
even the gloomy pile of buildings opposite, a cool, shady garden
at Richmond, a velvety lawn sweeping down to the river's edge, a
bower of clematis and roses, with a carved stone seat half covered
with moss. There sat an exquisitely beautiful woman with great
sad eyes fixed on the far-distant horizon. The setting sun was
throwing a halo of gold all round her hair, her white hands were
clasped idly on her lap.

She gazed out beyond the river, beyond the sunset, toward an
unseen bourne of peace and happiness, and her lovely face had in
it a look of utter hopelessness and of sublime self-abnegation.
The air was still. It was late autumn, and all around her the
russet leaves of beech and chestnut fell with a melancholy
hush-sh-sh about her feet.

She was alone, and from time to time heavy tears gathered in her
eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks.

Suddenly a sigh escaped the man's tightly-pressed lips. With a
strange gesture, wholly unusual to him, he passed his hand right
across his eyes.

"Mayhap you are right, Armand," he said quietly; "mayhap I do not
know what it is to love."

Armand turned to go. There was nothing more to be said. He knew
Percy well enough by now to realise the finality of his
pronouncements. His heart felt sore, but he was too proud to show
his hurt again to a man who did not understand. All thoughts of
disobedience he had put resolutely aside; he had never meant to
break his oath. All that he had hoped to do was to persuade Percy
to release him from it for awhile.

That by leaving Paris he risked to lose Jeanne he was quite
convinced, but it is nevertheless a true fact that in spite of
this he did not withdraw his love and trust from his chief. He
was under the influence of that same magnetism which enchained all
his comrades to the will of this man; and though his enthusiasm
for the great cause had somewhat waned, his allegiance to its
leader was no longer tottering.

But he would not trust himself to speak again on the subject.

"I will find the others downstairs," was all he said, "and will
arrange with Hastings for to-morrow. Good night, Percy."

"Good night, my dear fellow. By the way, you have not told me yet
who she is."

"Her name is Jeanne Lange," said St. Just half reluctantly. He
had not meant to divulge his secret quite so fully as yet.

"The young actress at the Theatre National?"

"Yes. Do you know her?"

"Only by name."

"She is beautiful, Percy, and she is an angel.... Think of my
sister Marguerite ... she, too, was an actress.... Good night,
Percy."

"Good night."

The two men grasped one another by the hand. Armand's eyes
proffered a last desperate appeal. But Blakeney's eyes were
impassive and unrelenting, and Armand with a quick sigh finally
took his leave.

For a long while after he had gone Blakeney stood silent and
motionless in the middle of the room. Armand's last words
lingered in his ear:

"Think of Marguerite!"

The walls had fallen away from around him--the window, the river
below, the Temple prison had all faded away, merged in the chaos
of his thoughts.

Now he was no longer in Paris; he heard nothing of the horrors
that even at this hour of the night were raging around him; he did
not hear the call of murdered victims, of innocent women and
children crying for help; he did not see the descendant of St.
Louis, with a red cap on his baby head, stamping on the
fleur-de-lys, and heaping insults on the memory of his mother.
All that had faded into nothingness.

He was in the garden at Richmond, and Marguerite was sitting on
the stone seat, with branches of the rambler roses twining
themselves in her hair.

He was sitting on the ground at her feet, his head pillowed in her
lap, lazily dreaming. whilst at his feet the river wound its
graceful curves beneath overhanging willows and tall stately elms.

A swan came sailing majestically down the stream, and Marguerite,
with idle, delicate hands, threw some crumbs of bread into the
water. Then she laughed, for she was quite happy, and anon she
stooped, and he felt the fragrance of her lips as she bent over
him and savoured the perfect sweetness of her caress. She was
happy because her husband was by her side. He had done with
adventures, with risking his life for others' sake. He was living
only for her.

The man, the dreamer, the idealist that lurked behind the
adventurous soul, lived an exquisite dream as he gazed upon that
vision. He closed his eyes so that it might last all the longer,
so that through the open window opposite he should not see the
great gloomy walls of the labyrinthine building packed to
overflowing with innocent men, women, and children waiting
patiently and with a smile on their lips for a cruel and unmerited
death; so that he should not see even through the vista of houses
and of streets that grim Temple prison far away, and the light in
one of the tower windows, which illumined the final martyrdom of a
boy-king.

Thus he stood for fully five minutes, with eyes deliberately
closed and lips tightly set. Then the neighbouring tower-clock of
St. Germain l'Auxerrois slowly tolled the hour of midnight.
Blakeney woke from his dream. The walls of his lodging were once
more around him, and through the window the ruddy light of some
torch in the street below fought with that of the lamp.

He went deliberately up to the window and looked out into the
night. On the quay, a little to the left, the outdoor camp was
just breaking tip for the night. The people of France in arms
against tyranny were allowed to put away their work for the day
and to go to their miserable homes to gather rest in sleep for the
morrow. A band of soldiers, rough and brutal in their movements,
were hustling the women and children. The little ones, weary,
sleepy, and cold, seemed too dazed to move. One woman had two
little children clinging to her skirts; a soldier suddenly seized
one of them by the shoulders and pushed it along roughly in front
of him to get it out of the way. The woman struck at the soldier
in a stupid, senseless, useless way, and then gathered her
trembling chicks under her wing, trying to look defiant.

In a moment she was surrounded. Two soldiers seized her, and two
more dragged the children away from her. She screamed and the
children cried, the soldiers swore and struck out right and left
with their bayonets. There was a general melee, calls of agony
rent the air, rough oaths drowned the shouts of the helpless.
Some women, panic-stricken, started to run.

And Blakeney from his window looked down upon the scene. He no
longer saw the garden at Richmond, the lazily-flowing river, the
bowers of roses; even the sweet face of Marguerite, sad and
lonely, appeared dim and far away.

He looked across the ice-bound river, past the quay where rough
soldiers were brutalising a number of wretched defenceless women,
to that grim Chatelet prison, where tiny lights shining here and
there behind barred windows told the sad tale of weary vigils, of
watches through the night, when dawn would bring martyrdom and
death.

And it was not Marguerite's blue eyes that beckoned to him now, it
was not her lips that called, but the wan face of a child with
matted curls hanging above a greasy forehead, and small hands
covered in grime that had once been fondled by a Queen.

The adventurer in him had chased away the dream.

"While there is life in me I'll cheat those brutes of prey," he
murmured.



CHAPTER XIII
THEN EVERYTHING WAS DARK

The night that Armand St. Just spent tossing about on a hard,
narrow bed was the most miserable, agonising one he had ever
passed in his life. A kind of fever ran through him, causing his
teeth to chatter and the veins in his temples to throb until he
thought that they must burst.

Physically he certainly was ill; the mental strain caused by two
great conflicting passions had attacked his bodily strength, and
whilst his brain and heart fought their battles together, his
aching limbs found no repose.

His love for Jeanne! His loyalty to the man to whom he owed his
life, and to whom he had sworn allegiance and implicit obedience!

These superacute feelings seemed to be tearing at his very
heartstrings, until he felt that he could no longer lie on the
miserable palliasse which in these squalid lodgings did duty for a
bed.

He rose long before daybreak, with tired back and burning eyes,
but unconscious of any pain save that which tore at his heart.

The weather, fortunately, was not quite so cold--a sudden and very
rapid thaw had set in; and when after a hurried toilet Armand,
carrying a bundle under his arm, emerged into the street, the mild
south wind struck pleasantly on his face.

It was then pitch dark. The street lamps had been extinguished
long ago, and the feeble January sun had not yet tinged with pale
colour the heavy clouds that hung over the sky.

The streets of the great city were absolutely deserted at this
hour. It lay, peaceful and still, wrapped in its mantle of gloom.
A thin rain was falling, and Armand's feet, as he began to descend
the heights of Montmartre, sank ankle deep in the mud of the road.
There was but scanty attempt at pavements in this outlying quarter
of the town, and Armand had much ado to keep his footing on the
uneven and intermittent stones that did duty for roads in these
parts. But this discomfort did not trouble him just now. One
thought--and one alone--was clear in his mind: he must see Jeanne
before he left Paris.

He did not pause to think how he could accomplish that at this
hour of the day. All he knew was that he must obey his chief, and
that he must see Jeanne. He would see her, explain to her that he
must leave Paris immediately, and beg her to make her preparations
quickly, so that she might meet him as soon as maybe, and
accompany him to England straight away.

He did not feel that he was being disloyal by trying to see
Jeanne. He had thrown prudence to the winds, not realising that
his imprudence would and did jeopardise, not only the success of
his chief's plans, but also his life and that of his friends. He
had before parting from Hastings last night arranged to meet him
in the neighbourhood of the Neuilly Gate at seven o'clock; it was
only six now. There was plenty of time for him to rouse the
concierge at the house of the Square du Roule, to see Jeanne for a
few moments, to slip into Madame Belhomme's kitchen, and there
into the labourer's clothes which he was carrying in the bundle
under his arm, and to be at the gate at the appointed hour.

The Square du Roule is shut off from the Rue St. Honore, on which
it abuts, by tall iron gates, which a few years ago, when the
secluded little square was a fashionable quarter of the city, used
to be kept closed at night, with a watchman in uniform to
intercept midnight prowlers. Now these gates had been rudely torn
away from their sockets, the iron had been sold for the benefit of
the ever-empty Treasury, and no one cared if the homeless, the
starving, or the evil-doer found shelter under the porticoes of
the houses, from whence wealthy or aristocratic owners had long
since thought it wise to flee.

No one challenged Armand when he turned into the square, and
though the darkness was intense, he made his way fairly straight
for the house where lodged Mademoiselle Lange.

So far he had been wonderfully lucky. The foolhardiness with
which he had exposed his life and that of his friends by wandering
about the streets of Paris at this hour without any attempt at
disguise, though carrying one under his arm, had not met with the
untoward fate which it undoubtedly deserved. The darkness of the
night and the thin sheet of rain as it fell had effectually
wrapped his progress through the lonely streets in their
beneficent mantle of gloom; the soft mud below had drowned the
echo of his footsteps. If spies were on his track, as Jeanne had
feared and Blakeney prophesied, he had certainly succeeded in
evading them.

He pulled the concierge's bell, and the latch of the outer door,
manipulated from within, duly sprang open in response. He
entered, and from the lodge the concierge's voice emerging,
muffled from the depths of pillows and blankets, challenged him
with an oath directed at the unseemliness of the hour.

"Mademoiselle Lange," said Armand boldly, as without hesitation he
walked quickly past the lodge making straight for the stairs.

It seemed to him that from the concierge's room loud vituperations
followed him, but he took no notice of these; only a short flight
of stairs and one more door separated him from Jeanne.

He did not pause to think that she would in all probability be
still in bed, that he might have some difficulty in rousing Madame
Belhomme, that the latter might not even care to admit him; nor
did he reflect on the glaring imprudence of his actions. He
wanted to see Jeanne, and she was the other side of that wall.

"He, citizen! Hola! Here! Curse you! Where are you?" came in a
gruff voice to him from below.

He had mounted the stairs, and was now on the landing just outside
Jeanne's door. He pulled the bell-handle, and heard the pleasing
echo of the bell that would presently wake Madame Belhomme and
bring her to the door.

"Citizen! Hola! Curse you for an aristo! What are you doing
there?"

The concierge, a stout, elderly man, wrapped in a blanket, his
feet thrust in slippers, and carrying a guttering tallow candle,
had appeared upon the landing.

He held the candle up so that its feeble flickering rays fell on
Armand's pale face, and on the damp cloak which fell away from his
shoulders.

"What are you doing there?" reiterated the concierge with another
oath from his prolific vocabulary.

"As you see, citizen," replied Armand politely, "I am ringing
Mademoiselle Lange's front door bell."

"At this hour of the morning?" queried the man with a sneer.

"I desire to see her."

"Then you have come to the wrong house, citizen," said the
concierge with a rude laugh.

"The wrong house? What do you mean?" stammered Armand, a little
bewildered.

"She is not here--quoi!" retorted the concierge, who now turned
deliberately on his heel. "Go and look for her, citizen; it'll
take you some time to find her."

He shuffled off in the direction of the stairs. Armand was vainly
trying to shake himself free from a sudden, an awful sense of
horror.

He gave another vigorous pull at the hell, then with one bound he
overtook the concierge, who was preparing to descend the stairs,
and gripped him peremptorily by the arm.

"Where is Mademoiselle Lange?" he asked.

His voice sounded quite strange in his own ear; his throat felt
parched, and he had to moisten his lips with his tongue before he
was able to speak.

"Arrested," replied the man.

"Arrested? When? Where? How?"

"When--late yesterday evening. Where?--here in her room.
How?--by the agents of the Committee of General Security. She and
the old woman! Basta! that's all I know. Now I am going back to
bed, and you clear out of the house. You are making a
disturbance, and I shall be reprimanded. I ask you, is this a
decent time for rousing honest patriots out of their morning
sleep?"

He shook his arm free from Armand's grasp and once more began to
descend.

Armand stood on the landing like a man who has been stunned by a
blow on the head. His limbs were paralysed. He could not for the
moment have moved or spoken if his life had depended on a sign or
on a word. His brain was reeling, and he had to steady himself
with his hand against the wall or he would have fallen headlong on
the floor. He had lived in a whirl of excitement for the past
twenty-four hours; his nerves during that time had been kept at
straining point. Passion, joy, happiness, deadly danger, and
moral fights had worn his mental endurance threadbare; want of
proper food and a sleepless night had almost thrown his physical
balance out of gear. This blow came at a moment when he was least
able to bear it.

Jeanne had been arrested! Jeanne was in the hands of those
brutes, whom he, Armand, had regarded yesterday with
insurmountable loathing! Jeanne was in prison--she was
arrested--she would be tried, condemned, and all because of him!

The thought was so awful that it brought him to the verge of
mania. He watched as in a dream the form of the concierge
shuffling his way down the oak staircase; his portly figure
assumed Gargantuan proportions, the candle which he carried looked
like the dancing flames of hell, through which grinning faces,
hideous and contortioned, mocked at him and leered.

Then suddenly everything was dark. The light had disappeared
round the bend of the stairs; grinning faces and ghoulish visions
vanished; he only saw Jeanne, his dainty, exquisite Jeanne, in the
hands of those brutes. He saw her as he had seen a year and a
half ago the victims of those bloodthirsty wretches being dragged
before a tribunal that was but a mockery of justice; he heard the
quick interrogatory, and the responses from her perfect lips, that
exquisite voice of hers veiled by tones of anguish. He heard the
condemnation, the rattle of the tumbril on the ill-paved streets--
saw her there with hands clasped together, her eyes--

Great God! he was really going mad!

Like a wild creature driven forth he started to run down the
stairs, past the concierge, who was just entering his lodge, and
who now turned in surly anger to watch this man running away like
a lunatic or a fool, out by the front door and into the street.
In a moment he was out of the little square; then like a hunted
hare he still ran down the Rue St. Honore, along its narrow,
interminable length. His hat had fallen from his head, his hair
was wild all round his face, the rain weighted the cloak upon his
shoulders; but still he ran.

His feet made no noise on the muddy pavement. He ran on and on,
his elbows pressed to his sides, panting, quivering, intent but
upon one thing--the goal which he had set himself to reach.

Jeanne was arrested. He did not know where to look for her, but
he did know whither he wanted to go now as swiftly as his legs
would carry him.

It was still dark, but Armand St. Just was a born Parisian, and he
knew every inch of this quarter, where he and Marguerite had years
ago lived. Down the Rue St. Honore, he had reached the bottom of
the interminably long street at last. He had kept just a
sufficiency of reason--or was it merely blind instinct?--to avoid
the places where the night patrols of the National Guard might be
on the watch. He avoided the Place du Carrousel, also the quay,
and struck sharply to his right until he reached the facade of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois.

Another effort; round the corner, and there was the house at last.
He was like the hunted creature now that has run to earth. Up the
two flights of stone stairs, and then the pull at the bell; a
moment of tense anxiety, whilst panting, gasping, almost choked
with the sustained effort and the strain of the past half-hour, he
leaned against the wall, striving not to fall.

Then the well-known firm step across the rooms beyond, the open
door, the hand upon his shoulder.

After that he remembered nothing more.



CHAPTER XIV
THE CHIEF

He had not actually fainted, but the exertion of that long run had
rendered him partially unconscious He knew now that be was safe,
that he was sitting in Blakeney's room, and that something hot and
vivifying was being poured down his throat.

"Percy, they have arrested her!" he said, panting, as soon as
speech returned to his paralysed tongue.

"All right. Don't talk now. Wait till you are better."

With infinite care and gentleness Blakeney arranged some cushions
under Armand's head, turned the sofa towards the fire, and anon
brought his friend a cup of hot coffee, which the latter drank
with avidity.

He was really too exhausted to speak. He had contrived to tell
Blakeney, and now Blakeney knew, so everything would be all right.
The inevitable reaction was asserting itself; the muscles had
relaxed, the nerves were numbed, and Armand lay back on the sofa
with eyes half closed, unable to move, yet feeling his strength
gradually returning to him, his vitality asserting itself, all the
feverish excitement of the past twenty-four hours yielding at last
to a calmer mood.

Through his half-closed eyes he could see his brother-in-law
moving about the room. Blakeney was fully dressed. In a sleepy
kind of way Armand wondered if he had been to bed at aH; certainly
his clothes set on him with their usual well-tailored perfection,
and there was no suggestion in his brisk step and alert movements
that he had passed a sleepless night.

Now he was standing by the open window. Armand, from where he
lay, could see his broad shoulders sharply outlined against the
grey background of the hazy winter dawn. A wan light was just
creeping up from the east over the city; the noises of the streets
below came distinctly to Armand's ear.

He roused himself with one vigorous effort from his lethargy,
feeling quite ashamed of himself and of this breakdown of his
nervous system. He looked with frank admiration on Sir Percy, who
stood immovable and silent by the window--a perfect tower of
strength, serene and impassive, yet kindly in distress.

"Percy," said the young man, "I ran all the way from the top of
the Rue St. Honore. I was only breathless. I am quite all right.
May I tell you all about it?"

Without a word Blakeney closed the window and came across to the
sofa; he sat down beside Armand, and to all outward appearances he
was nothing now but a kind and sympathetic listener to a friend's
tale of woe. Not a line in his face or a look in his eyes
betrayed the thoughts of the leader who had been thwarted at the
outset of a dangerous enterprise, or of the man, accustomed to
command, who had been so flagrantly disobeyed.

Armand, unconscious of all save of Jeanne and of her immediate
need, put an eager hand on Percy's arm.

"Heron and his hell-hounds went back to her lodgings last night,"
he said, speaking as if he were still a little out of breath.
"They hoped to get me, no doubt; not finding me there, they took
her. Oh, my God!"

It was the first time that he had put the whole terrible
circumstance into words, and it seemed to gain in reality by the
recounting. The agony of mind which he endured was almost
unbearable; he hid his face in his hands lest Percy should see how
terribly he suffered.

"I knew that," said Blakeney quietly. Armand looked up in
surprise.

"How? When did you know it?" he stammered.

"Last night when you left me. I went down to the Square du Roule.
I arrived there just too late."

"Percy!" exclaimed Armand, whose pale face had suddenly flushed
scarlet, "you did that?--last night you--"

"Of course," interposed the other calmly; "had I not promised you
to keep watch over her? When I heard the news it was already too
late to make further inquiries, but when you arrived just now I
was on the point of starting out, in order to find out in what
prison Mademoiselle Lange is being detained. I shall have to go
soon, Armand, before the guard is changed at the Temple and the
Tuileries. This is the safest time, and God knows we are all of
us sufficiently compromised already."

The flush of shame deepened in St. Just's cheek. There had not
been a hint of reproach in the voice of his chief, and the eyes
which regarded him now from beneath the half-closed lids showed
nothing but lazy bonhomie.

In a moment now Armand realised all the harm which his
recklessness had done, was still doing to the work of the League.
Every one of his actions since his arrival in Paris two days ago
had jeopardised a plan or endangered a life: his friendship with
de Batz, his connection with Mademoiselle Lange, his visit to her
yesterday afternoon, the repetition of it this morning,
culminating in that wild run through the streets of Paris, when at
any moment a spy lurking round a corner might either have barred
his way, or, worse still, have followed him to Blakeney's door.
Armand, without a thought of any one save of his beloved, might
easily this morning have brought an agent of the Committee of
General Security face to face with his chief.

"Percy," he murmured, "can you ever forgive me?"

"Pshaw, man!" retorted Blakeney lightly; "there is naught to
forgive, only a great deal that should no longer be forgotten;
your duty to the others, for instance, your obedience, and your
honour."

"I was mad, Percy. Oh! if you only could understand what she
means to me!"

Blakeney laughed, his own light-hearted careless laugh, which so
often before now had helped to hide what he really felt from the
eyes of the indifferent, and even from those of his friends.

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