El Dorado, Baroness Orczy [read the beginning after the end novel .TXT] 📗

effectual. And now, citizen Héron, I do not think that under the circumstances we need fear an ambuscade or any kind of trickery⁠—you hold the hostages. And if by any chance I and my men are attacked, or if we encounter armed resistance at the château, I will despatch a rider back straightway to you, and⁠—well, you will know what to do.”

His voice died away, merged in the soughing of the wind, drowned by the clang of metal, of horses snorting, of men living and breathing. Marguerite felt that beside her Armand had shuddered, and that in the darkness his trembling hand had sought and found hers.

She leaned well out of the window, trying to see. The gloom had gathered more closely in, and round her the veil of vapour from the horses’ steaming cruppers hung heavily in the misty air. In front of her the straight lines of a few fir trees stood out dense and black against the greyness beyond, and between these lines purple tints of various tones and shades mingled one with the other, merging the horizon line with the sky. Here and there a more solid black patch indicated the tiny houses of the hamlet of Le Crocq far down in the valley below; from some of these houses small lights began to glimmer like blinking yellow eyes. Marguerite’s gaze, however, did not rest on the distant landscape⁠—it tried to pierce the gloom that hid her immediate surroundings; the mounted men were all round the coach⁠—more closely round her than the trees in the forest. But the horses were restless, moving all the time, and as they moved she caught glimpses of that other coach and of Chauvelin’s ghostlike figure, walking rapidly through the mist. Just for one brief moment she saw the other coach, and Héron’s head and shoulders leaning out of the window. His sugar-loaf hat was on his head, and the bandage across his brow looked like a sharp, pale streak below it.

“Do not doubt it, citizen Chauvelin,” he called out loudly in his harsh, raucous voice, “I shall know what to do; the wolves will have their meal tonight, and the guillotine will not be cheated either.”

Armand put his arm round his sister’s shoulders and gently drew her back into the carriage.

“Little mother,” he said, “if you can think of a way whereby my life would redeem Percy’s and yours, show me that way now.”

But she replied quietly and firmly:

“There is no way, Armand. If there is, it is in the hands of God.”

XLVI Others in the Park

Chauvelin and his picked escort had in the meanwhile detached themselves from the main body of the squad. Soon the dull thud of their horses’ hoofs treading the soft ground came more softly⁠—then more softly still as they turned into the wood, and the purple shadows seemed to enfold every sound and finally to swallow them completely.

Armand and Marguerite from the depth of the carriage heard Héron’s voice ordering his own driver now to take the lead. They sat quite still and watched, and presently the other coach passed them slowly on the road, its silhouette standing out ghostly and grim for a moment against the indigo tones of the distant country.

Héron’s head, with its battered sugar-loaf hat, and the soiled bandage round the brow, was as usual out of the carriage window. He leered across at Marguerite when he saw the outline of her face framed by the window of the carriage.

“Say all the prayers you have ever known, citizeness,” he said with a loud laugh, “that my friend Chauvelin may find Capet at the château, or else you may take a last look at the open country, for you will not see the sun rise on it tomorrow. It is one or the other, you know.”

She tried not to look at him; the very sight of him filled her with horror⁠—that blotched, gaunt face of his, the fleshy lips, that hideous bandage across his face that hid one of his eyes! She tried not to see him and not to hear him laugh.

Obviously he too laboured under the stress of great excitement. So far everything had gone well; the prisoner had made no attempt at escape, and apparently did not mean to play a double game. But the crucial hour had come, and with it darkness and the mysterious depths of the forest with their weird sounds and sudden flashes of ghostly lights. They naturally wrought on the nerves of men like Héron, whose conscience might have been dormant, but whose ears were nevertheless filled with the cries of innocent victims sacrificed to their own lustful ambitions and their blind, unreasoning hates.

He gave sharp orders to the men to close up round the carriages, and then gave the curt word of command:

“En avant!”

Marguerite could but strain her ears to listen. All her senses, all her faculties had merged into that of hearing, rendering it doubly keen. It seemed to her that she could distinguish the faint sound⁠—that even as she listened grew fainter and fainter yet⁠—of Chauvelin and his squad moving away rapidly into the thickness of the wood some distance already ahead.

Close to her there was the snorting of horses, the clanging and noise of moving mounted men. Héron’s coach had taken the lead; she could hear the creaking of its wheels, the calls of the driver urging his beasts.

The diminished party was moving at foot-pace in the darkness that seemed to grow denser at every step, and through that silence which was so full of mysterious sounds.

The carriage rolled and rocked on its springs; Marguerite, giddy and overtired, lay back with closed eyes, her hand resting in that of Armand. Time, space and distance had ceased to be; only Death, the great Lord of all, had remained; he walked on ahead, scythe on skeleton shoulder, and beckoned patiently, but with a sure, grim hand.

There was another halt, the coach-wheels groaned and creaked on their axles, one