After Dark, Wilkie Collins [best short novels .txt] 📗

book,” he said quietly, “you should not live another hour. Don’t cry, Rose,” he continued, turning again to his sister: “I will take care of your book for you until you can keep it yourself.”

“You will do this! you will do that!” cried Danville, growing more and more exasperated, and letting his anger got the better even of his cunning now. “Talk less confidently of the future—you don’t know what it has in store for you. Govern your tongue when you are in my presence; a day may come when you will want my help—my help; do you hear that?”

Trudaine turned his face from his sister, as if he feared to let her see it when those words were spoken.

“The man who followed me to-day was a spy—Danville’s spy!” That thought flashed across his mind, but he gave it no utterance. There was an instant’s pause of silence; and through it there came heavily on the still night air the rumbling of distant wheels. The sound advanced nearer and nearer—advanced and ceased under the window.

Danville hurried to it, and looked out eagerly. “I have not hastened my return without reason. I wouldn’t have missed this arrest for anything!” thought he, peering into the night.

The stars were out, but there was no moon. He could not recognize either the coach or the persons who got out of it, and he turned again into the interior of the room. His wife had sunk into a chair, her brother was locking up in a cabinet the book which he had promised to take care of for her. The dead silence made the noise of slowly ascending footsteps on the stairs painfully audible. At last the door opened softly.

“Citizen Danville, health and fraternity!” said Lomaque, appearing in the doorway, followed by his agents. “Citizen Louis Trudaine?” he continued, beginning with the usual form.

Rose started out of her chair; but her brother’s hand was on her lips before she could speak.

“My name is Louis Trudaine,” he answered.

“Charles!” cried his sister, breaking from him and appealing to her husband, “who are these men? What are they here for?”

He gave her no answer.

“Louis Trudaine,” said Lomaque, slowly, drawing the order from his pocket, “in the name of the Republic, I arrest you.”

“Rose, come back,” cried Trudaine.

It was too late; she had broken from him, and in the recklessness of terror, had seized her husband by the arm.

“Save him!” she cried. “Save him, by all you hold dearest in the world! You are that man’s superior, Charles—order him from the room!”

Danville roughly shook her hand off his arm.

“Lomaque is doing his duty. Yes,” he added, with a glance of malicious triumph at Trudaine, “yes, doing his duty. Look at me as you please—your looks won’t move me. I denounced you! I admit it—I glory in it! I have rid myself of an enemy, and the State of a bad citizen. Remember your secret visits to the house in the Rue de Clery!”

His wife uttered a cry of horror. She seized his arm again with both hands—frail, trembling hands—that seemed suddenly nerved with all the strength of a man’s.

“Come here—come here! I must and will speak to you!”

She dragged him by main force a few paces back, toward an unoccupied corner of the room. With deathly cheeks and wild eyes she raised herself on tiptoe, and put her lips to her husband’s ear. At that instant Trudaine called to her:

“Rose, if you speak I am lost!”

She stopped at the sound of his voice, dropped her hold on her husband’s arm, and faced her brother, shuddering.

“Rose,” he continued, “you have promised, and your promise is sacred. If you prize your honor, if you love me, come here—come here, and be silent.”

He held out his hand. She ran to him; and, laying her head on his bosom, burst into a passion of tears.

Danville turned uneasily toward the police agents. “Remove your prisoner,” he said. “You have done your duty here.”

“Only half of it,” retorted Lomaque, eying him attentively. “Rose Danville—”

“My wife!” exclaimed the other. “What about my wife?”

“Rose Danville,” continued Lomaque, impassibly, “you are included in the arrest of Louis Trudaine.”

Rose raised her head quickly from her brother’s breast. His firmness had deserted him—he was trembling. She heard him whispering to himself, “Rose, too! Oh, my God! I was not prepared for that.” She heard these words, and dashed the tears from her eyes, and kissed him, saying:

“I am glad of it, Louis. We risked all together—we shall now suffer together. I am glad of it!”

Danville looked incredulously at Lomaque, after the first shock of astonishment was over.

“Impossible!” he exclaimed. “I never denounced my wife. There is some mistake; you have exceeded your orders.”

“Silence!” retorted Lomaque, imperiously. “Silence, citizen, and respect to a decree of the Republic!”

“You blackguard! show me the arrest-order!” said Danville. “Who has dared to denounce my wife?”

“You have!” said Lomaque, turning on him with a grin of contempt. “You—and ‘blackguard’ back in your teeth! You, in denouncing her brother! Aha! we work hard in our office; we don’t waste time in calling names—we make discoveries. If Trudaine is guilty, your wife is implicated in his guilt. We know it; and we arrest her.”

“I resist the arrest,” cried Danville. “I am the authority here. Who opposes me?”

The impassible chief agent made no answer. Some new noise in the street struck his quick ear. He ran to the window and looked out eagerly.

“Who opposes me?” reiterated Danville.

“Hark!” exclaimed Lomaque, raising his hand. “Silence, and listen!”

The heavy, dull tramp of men marching together became audible as he spoke. Voices humming low and in unison the Marseillaise hymn, joined solemnly with the heavy, regular footfalls. Soon the flare of torch-light began to glimmer redder and redder under the dim, starlight sky.

“Do you hear that? Do you see the advancing torch-light?” cried Lomaque, pointing exultingly into the street. “Respect to the national hymn, and to the man who holds in the hollow of his hand the destinies of all France! Hat off, Citizen Danville! Robespierre is in the street. His bodyguard, the Hard-hitters, are lighting him on his way to the Jacobin Club! Who shall oppose you, did you say? Your master and mine; the man whose signature is at the bottom of this order—the man who with a scratch of his pen can send both our heads rolling together into the sack of the guillotine! Shall I call to him as he passes the house? Shall I tell him that Superintendent Danville resists me in making an arrest? Shall I? Shall I?” And in the immensity of his contempt, Lomaque seemed absolutely to rise in stature, as he thrust the arrest order under Danville’s eyes and pointed to the signature with the head of his stick.

Rose looked round in terror, as Lomaque spoke his last words—looked round, and saw her husband recoil before the signature on the arrest order, as if the guillotine itself had suddenly arisen before him. Her brother felt her shrinking back in his arms, and trembled for the preservation of her self-control if the terror and suspense of the arrest lasted any longer.

“Courage, Rose, courage!” he said. “You have behaved nobly; you must not fail now. No, no! Not a word more. Not a word till I am able to think clearly again, and to decide what is best. Courage, love; our lives depend on it. Citizen,” he continued, addressing himself to Lomaque, “proceed with your duty—we are ready.”

The heavy marching footsteps outside were striking louder and louder on the ground; the chanting voices were every moment swelling in volume; the dark street was flaming again with the brightening torch-light, as Lomaque, under pretext of giving Trudaine his hat, came close to him, and, turning his back toward Danville, whispered: “I have not forgotten the eve of the wedding and the bench on the river bank.”

Before Trudaine could answer, he had taken Rose’s cloak and hood from one of his assistants, and was helping her on with it. Danville, still pale and trembling, advanced a step when he saw these preparations for departure, and addressed a word or two to his wife; but he spoke in low tones, and the fast-advancing march of feet and sullen low roar of singing outside drowned his voice. An oath burst from his lips, and he struck his fist, in impotent fury, on a table near him.

“The seals are set on everything in this room and in the bedroom,” said Magloire, approaching Lomaque, who nodded and signed to him to bring up the other police agents at the door.

“Ready,” cried Magloire, coming forward immediately with his men, and raising his voice to make himself heard. “Where to?”

Robespierre and his Hard-hitters were passing the house. The smoke of the torch-light was rolling in at the window; the tramping footsteps struck heavier and heavier on the ground; the low sullen roar of the Marseillaise was swelling to its loudest, as Lomaque referred for a moment to his arrest-order, and then answered:

“To the prison of St. Lazare!”

CHAPTER III.

The head jailer of St. Lazare stood in the outer hall of the prison, two days after the arrest at Trudaine’s lodgings, smoking his morning pipe. Looking toward the courtyard gate, he saw the wicket opened, and a privileged man let in, whom he soon recognized as the chief agent of the second section of Secret Police. “Why, friend Lomaque,” cried the jailer, advancing toward the courtyard, “what brings you here this morning, business or pleasure?”

“Pleasure, this time, citizen. I have an idle hour or two to spare for a walk. I find myself passing the prison, and I can’t resist calling in to see how my friend the head jailer is getting on.” Lomaque spoke in a surprisingly brisk and airy manner. His eyes were suffering under a violent fit of weakness and winking; but he smiled, notwithstanding, with an air of the most inveterate cheerfulness. Those old enemies of his, who always distrusted him most when his eyes were most affected, would have certainly disbelieved every word of the friendly speech he had just made, and would have assumed it as a matter of fact that his visit to the head jailer had some specially underhand business at the bottom of it.

“How am I getting on?” said the jailer, shaking his head. “Overworked, friend—overworked. No idle hours in our department. Even the guillotine is getting too slow for us!”

“Sent off your batch of prisoners for trial this morning?” asked Lomaque, with an appearance of perfect unconcern.

“No; they’re just going,” answered the other. “Come and have a look at them.” He spoke as if the prisoners were a collection of pictures on view, or a set of dresses just made up. Lomaque nodded his head, still with his air of happy, holiday carelessness. The jailer led the way to an inner hall; and, pointing lazily with his pipe-stem, said: “Our morning batch, citizen, just ready for the baking.”

In one corner of the hall were huddled together more than thirty men and women of all ranks and ages; some staring round them with looks of blank despair; some laughing and gossiping recklessly. Near them lounged a guard of “Patriots,” smoking, spitting, and swearing. Between the patriots and the prisoners sat, on a rickety stool, the second jailer—a humpbacked man, with an immense red mustache—finishing his breakfast of broad beans, which he scooped out of a basin with his knife, and washed down with copious draughts of wine from a bottle. Carelessly as Lomaque looked at the shocking scene before him, his quick eyes contrived to take note of every prisoner’s face, and to descry in a few minutes Trudaine and his sister