In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy, G. A. Henty [pdf to ebook reader .TXT] 📗

from the house, and then slackened their pace. Presently they heard a number of footsteps clattering on the pavement; but fortunately they reached another turning before the party came up. They turned down and stood up in a doorway till the footsteps had passed, and then resumed their way.

"It is still too early for us to walk through the streets without exciting attention," Harry said. "We had better make down to the river and wait there till the town is quite astir."

In ten minutes they reached the river, and Harry found a seat for them at the foot of a pile of timber, where they were partially screened from observation. Hitherto the girls had not spoken a word since they had issued from the house. Virginie was dazed and frightened by the events of the night, and had hurried along almost mechanically holding Marie's hand. Marie's brain was too full to talk; her thoughts were with her father and mother and with her absent lover. She wondered that he had not come to her in spite of everything. Perhaps he was already a captive; perhaps, in obedience to his father's orders, he was in hiding, waiting events. That he could, even had his father commanded him, have left Paris as a fugitive without coming to see her, did not even occur to her as possible.

With these thoughts there was mingled a vague wonder at her own position. A few weeks since petted and cared for as the eldest daughter of one of the noblest families of France, now a fugitive in the streets under the sole care of this English boy. She had, the evening before, silently sided with Ernest. It had seemed to her wrong that he should be sent away, and the assertion of Harry that he intended to stay and watch over her and her sisters seemed at once absurd and presumptuous; but she already felt that she had been wrong in that opinion.

The decision and coolness with which he had at once taken the command from the moment he met them in the gallery, and the quickness with which he had seized the only mode of escape, had surprised and dominated her. Her own impulse, when on opening the door she heard the attack that was being made on the gate, was to draw back instantly and return to the side of her parents, and it was due to Harry only that she and her sisters had got safely away.

Hitherto, although after the incident of the mad dog she had exchanged her former attitude of absolute indifference to one of cordiality and friendliness, she had regarded him as a boy. Indeed she had treated and considered him as being very much younger than Ernest, and in some respects she had been justified in doing so, for in his light-hearted fun, his love of active exercise, and his entire absence of any assumption of age, he was far more boyish than Ernest. But although her thoughts were too busy now to permit her to analyse her feelings, she knew that she had been mistaken, and felt a strange confidence in this lad who had so promptly and coolly assumed the entire command of the party, and had piloted them with such steady nerve through the danger.

As for Jeanne, she felt no surprise and but little alarm. Her confidence in her protector was unbounded. Prompt and cool as he was himself, she was ready on the instant to obey his orders, and felt a certain sensation of pride at the manner in which her previous confidence in him was being justified.

After placing the girls in their shelter Harry had left them and stood leaning against the parapet of the quay as if carelessly watching the water, but maintaining a vigilant look-out against the approach of danger. The number of passers-by increased rapidly. The washerwomen came down to the boats moored in the stream and began their operation of banging the linen with wooden beaters. Market-women came along with baskets, the hum and stir of life everywhere commenced, and Paris was fairly awake.

Seeing that it was safe now to proceed, Harry returned to his companions. He had scarcely glanced at them before, and now looked approvingly at their disguises, to which the marquise had, during the long hours of the night, devoted the most zealous attention. Marie had been made to look much older than she was. A few dark lines carefully traced on her forehead, at the corners of her eyes and mouth, had added many years to her appearance, and she could have passed, except to the closest observer, as the mother of Virginie, whose dress was calculated to make her look even younger than she was. The hands and faces of all three had been slightly tinged with brown to give them a sun-burnt aspect in accordance with their peasant dresses, and so complete was the transformation that Harry could scarcely suppress a start of surprise as he looked at the group.

"It would be safe now, mademoiselle," he said to Marie, "for us to proceed. There are plenty of people about in the streets; but as the news has, no doubt, already been spread that the daughters of the Marquis de St. Caux had left the house before those charged with their father's arrest arrived, it will be better for you not to keep together. I would suggest that you should walk on with Virginie. I will follow with Jeanne a hundred yards behind, so that I can keep you in sight, and will come up if anyone should accost you."

Marie at once rose, and taking the child's hand set out. They had to traverse the greater part of Paris to reach their destination. It was a trial for Marie, who had never before been in the streets of Paris except with her mother and closely followed by two domestics, and even then only through the quiet streets of a fashionable quarter. However, she went steadily forward, tightly holding Virginie's hand and trying to walk as if accustomed to them in the thick heavy shoes which felt so strangely different to those which she was in the habit of wearing.

From time to time she addressed an encouraging word to Virginie as she felt her shrink as they approached groups of men lounging outside the wine-shops, for there was but little work done in Paris, and the men of the lower class spent their time in idleness, in discussions of the events of the day, or in joining the mobs which, under one pretext or another, kept the streets in an uproar.

Fortunately Marie knew the way perfectly and there was no occasion for her to ask for directions, for she had frequently driven with her mother to visit Louise Moulin. The latter occupied the upper floor of a house in a quiet quarter near the fortifications in the north-western part of the town. A message had been sent to her the night before, and she was on the look-out for her visitors, but she did not recognize them, and she uttered a cry of surprise as Marie and Virginie entered the room.

"Is it you, mademoiselle?" she exclaimed in great surprise. "And you, my little angel? My eyes must be getting old, indeed, that I did not recognize you; but you are finely disguised. But where is Mademoiselle Jeanne?"

"She will be here in a moment, Louise; she is just behind. But you must not call me mademoiselle; you must remember that we are your nieces Marie and Jeanne, and that you are our aunt Louise Moulin, whom we have come to stay with."

"I shall remember in time," the old woman said. "I have been talking about you to my neighbours for the last week, of how your good father and mother have died, and how you were going to journey to Paris under the charge of a neighbour, who was bringing a waggon load of wine from Burgundy, and how you were going to look after me and help me in the house since I am getting old and infirm, and the young ones were to stop with me till they were old enough to go out to service. Ah, here is Mademoiselle Jeanne!"

"Here is Jeanne," Marie corrected; "thank God we have all got here safely. This, Louise, is a young English gentleman who is going to remain in Paris at present, and to whom we are indebted for having got us safely here."

"And your mother," Louise Moulin exclaimed, "the darling lamb I nursed, what of her and your father? I fear, from the message I got last night, that some danger threatens them."

"They have, I fear, been arrested by the sans culottes," Marie said mournfully as she burst into tears, feeling, now that the strain was over, the natural reaction after her efforts to be calm. For her mother's sake she had held up to the last, and had tried to make the parting as easy as possible.

"The wretches!" the old woman said, stamping her foot. "Old as I am I feel that I could tear them to pieces. But there I am chattering away, and you must be faint with hunger. I have a nice soup ready on the fire, a plate of that will do good to you all. And you too, monsieur, you will join us, I hope?"

Harry was nothing loth, for his appetite was always a healthy one. When he had finished he said:

"Madame Moulin, I have been thinking that it would be an advantage if you would take a lodging for me. If you would say that a youth whose friends are known to you has arrived from Dijon, to make his way in Paris, and they have asked you to seek a lodging for him; it will seem less strange than if I went by myself. I should like it to be near, so that you can come to me quickly should anything out of the way occur. I should like to look in sometimes to see that all is well. You could mention to your neighbours that I travelled up with the same waggon with your nieces.

"I will do that willingly," the old woman said; "but first, my dears, you must have some rest; come in here." And she led the way to the next room. "There is a bed for you, Mademoiselle Marie, and one for the two young ones. The room is not like what you are accustomed to, but I dared not buy finer things, though I had plenty of money from your mother to have furnished the rooms like a palace; but you see it would have seemed strange to my neighbours; but, at least, everything is clean and sweet."

Leaving the girls, who were worn out with weariness and anxiety, to sleep, she rejoined Harry.

"Now, monsieur, I will do your business. It is a comfort to me to feel that some one will be near of whom I can ask advice, for it is a terrible responsibility for an old woman in such dreadful times as these, when it seems to me that everyone has gone mad at once. What sort of a chamber do you want?"

"Quite a small one," Harry answered, "just such a chamber as a young clerk on the look-out for employment and with his pocket very slenderly lined, would desire."

"I know just such a one," the old woman said. "It is a house a few doors away and has been tenanted by a friend of mine, a young workwoman, who was married four days ago—it is a quiet place, and the people keep to themselves, and do not trouble about their neighbours' affairs."

"That will just suit me," Harry said. "I suppose there is no porter below, so that I can go in or out without being noticed."

"Oh, we have no porters in this quarter, and you can go in and out as you like."

Half an hour later the matter was settled, and Harry was installed in his apartment, which was a little room scantily furnished, at the top of the house, the window looking into the street in front.

CHAPTER VI An Anxious Time

Harry and the girls had brought bundles of clothes with them in their flight, as it would have looked strange had they arrived without any clothes save those they wore. Harry had brought with him only underlinen, as he had nothing else which would be of service to him now. No sooner had Louise Moulin left him than he went out and purchased, at a second-hand shop, a workman's suit. This he carried home, and dressing himself in it descended the stairs again and set out to retrace his steps across Paris.

When he reached the mansion of the marquis he found a crowd of people going in and out. Those leaving the house were laden with articles of furniture, clocks, pictures, bedding, and other