I Will Repay, Baroness Orczy [best ebook pdf reader android TXT] 📗

these placards, fitfully illumined by a torch of resin, towers above a group of children busy tearing up scraps of old linen⁠—their mothers’, their sisters’ linen⁠—in order to make lint for the wounded.

Loud curses and suppressed mutterings fill the smoke-laden air.

The people of France, in arms against tyranny, is bending its broad back before the most cruel, the most absolute and brutish slave-driving ever exercised over mankind.

Not even medieval Christianity has ever dared such wholesale enforcements of its doctrines, as this constitution of Liberty and Fraternity.

Merlin’s “Law of the Suspect” has just been formulated. From now onward each and every citizen of France must watch his words, his looks, his gestures, lest they be suspect. Of what⁠—of treason to the Republic, to the people? Nay, worse! lest they be suspect of being suspect to the great era of Liberty.

Therefore in the smithies and among the groups of tent-makers a moment’s negligence, a careless attention to the work, might lead to a brief trial on the morrow and the inevitable guillotine. Negligence is treason to the higher interests of the Republic.

Blakeney dragged Anne Mie away from the sight. These roaring furnaces frightened her; he took her down the Place St. Michel, towards the river. It was quieter here.

“What dreadful people they have become,” she said, shuddering; “even I can remember how different they used to be.”

The houses on the banks of the river were mostly converted into hospitals, preparatory for the great siege. Some hundred mètres lower down, the new children’s hospital, endowed by Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, loomed, white, clean, and comfortable-looking, amidst its more squalid fellows.

“I think it would be best not to sit down,” suggested Blakeney, “and wiser for you to throw your hood away from your face.”

He seemed to have no fears for himself; many had said that he bore a charmed life; and yet ever since Admiral Hood had planted his flag on Toulon Arsenal, the English were more feared than ever, and The Scarlet Pimpernel more hated than most.

“You wished to speak to me about Paul Déroulède,” he said kindly, seeing that the young girl was making desperate efforts to say what lay on her mind. “He is my friend, you know.”

“Yes; that is why I wished to ask you a question,” she replied.

“What is it?”

“Who is Juliette de Marny, and why did she seek an entrance into Paul’s house?”

“Did she seek it, then?”

“Yes; I saw the scene from the balcony. At the time it did not strike me as a farce. I merely thought that she had been stupid and foolhardy. But since then I have reflected. She provoked the mob of the street, wilfully, just at the very moment when she reached M. Déroulède’s door. She meant to appeal to his chivalry, and called for help, well knowing that he would respond.”

She spoke rapidly and excitedly now, throwing off all shyness and reserve. Blakeney was forced to check her vehemence, which might have been thought “suspicious” by some idle citizen unpleasantly inclined.

“Well? And now?” he asked, for the young girl had paused, as if ashamed of her excitement.

“And now she stays in the house, on and on, day after day,” continued Anne Mie, speaking more quietly, though with no less intensity. “Why does she not go? She is not safe in France. She belongs to the most hated of all the classes⁠—the idle, rich aristocrats of the old regime. Paul has several times suggested plans for her emigration to England. Madame Déroulède, who is an angel, loves her, and would not like to part from her, but it would be obviously wiser for her to go, and yet she stays. Why?”

“Presumably because⁠—”

“Because she is in love with Paul?” interrupted Anne Mie vehemently. “No, no; she does not love him⁠—at least⁠—Oh! sometimes I don’t know. Her eyes light up when he comes, and she is listless when he goes. She always spends a longer time over her toilet, when we expect him home to dinner,” she added, with a touch of naive femininity. “But⁠—if it be love, then that love is strange and unwomanly; it is a love that will not be for his good⁠—”

“Why should you think that?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl simply. “Isn’t it an instinct?”

“Not a very unerring one in this case, I fear.”

“Why?”

“Because your own love for Paul Déroulède has blinded you⁠—Ah! you must pardon me, mademoiselle; you sought this conversation and not I, and I fear me I have wounded you. Yet I would wish you to know how deep is my sympathy with you, and how great my desire to render you a service if I could.”

“I was about to ask a service of you, monsieur.”

“Then command me, I beg of you.”

“You are Paul’s friend⁠—persuade him that that woman in his house is a standing danger to his life and liberty.”

“He would not listen to me.”

“Oh! a man always listens to another.”

“Except on one subject⁠—the woman he loves.”

He had said the last words very gently but very firmly. He was deeply, tenderly sorry for the poor, deformed, fragile girl, doomed to be a witness of that most heartrending of human tragedies, the passing away of her own scarce-hoped-for happiness. But he felt that at this moment the kindest act would be one of complete truth. He knew that Paul Déroulède’s heart was completely given to Juliette de Marny; he too, like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted the beautiful girl and her strange, silent ways, but, unlike the poor hunchback, he knew that no sin which Juliette might commit would henceforth tear her from out the heart of his friend; that if, indeed, she turned out to be false, or even treacherous, she would, nevertheless, still hold a place in Déroulède’s very soul, which no one else would ever fill.

“You think he loves her?” asked Anne Mie at last.

“I am sure of it.”

“And she?”

“Ah! I do not know. I would trust your instinct⁠—a woman’s⁠—sooner than my own.”

“She is false, I tell you, and is hatching treason against Paul.”

“Then all we can do