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

quietly and open the door. Try and hide your fears, grumble in an audible voice at being interrupted in your cooking, and tell the soldiers at once that they will find mademoiselle in the boudoir. Go, for God’s sake!” she added, whilst suppressed emotion suddenly made her young voice vibrate; “go, before they break open that door!”

Madame Belhomme, impressed and cowed, obeyed like an automaton. She turned and marched fairly straight out of the room. It was not a minute too soon. From outside had already come the third and final summons:

“Open, in the name of the people!”

After that a crowbar would break open the door.

Madame Belhomme’s heavy footsteps were heard crossing the antechamber. Armand still knelt at Jeanne’s feet, holding her trembling little hand in his.

“A love-scene,” she whispered rapidly, “a love-scene⁠—quick⁠—do you know one?”

And even as he had tried to rise she held him back, down on his knees.

He thought that fear was making her distracted.

“Mademoiselle⁠—” he murmured, trying to soothe her.

“Try and understand,” she said with wonderful calm, “and do as I tell you. Aunt Marie has obeyed. Will you do likewise?”

“To the death!” he whispered eagerly.

“Then a love-scene,” she entreated. “Surely you know one. Rodrigue and Chimene! Surely⁠—surely,” she urged, even as tears of anguish rose into her eyes, “you must⁠—you must, or, if not that, something else. Quick! The very seconds are precious!”

They were indeed! Madame Belhomme, obedient as a frightened dog, had gone to the door and opened it; even her well-feigned grumblings could now be heard and the rough interrogations from the soldiery.

“Citizeness Lange!” said a gruff voice.

“In her boudoir, quoi!”

Madame Belhomme, braced up apparently by fear, was playing her part remarkably well.

“Bothering good citizens! On baking day, too!” she went on grumbling and muttering.

“Oh, think⁠—think!” murmured Jeanne now in an agonised whisper, her hot little hand grasping his so tightly that her nails were driven into his flesh. “You must know something that will do⁠—anything⁠—for dear life’s sake.⁠ ⁠… Armand!”

His name⁠—in the tense excitement of this terrible moment⁠—had escaped her lips.

All in a flash of sudden intuition he understood what she wanted, and even as the door of the boudoir was thrown violently open Armand⁠—still on his knees, but with one hand pressed to his heart, the other stretched upwards to the ceiling in the most approved dramatic style, was loudly declaiming:

“Pour venger son honneur il perdit son amour,
Pour venger sa maitresse il a quitté le jour!”

Whereupon Mademoiselle Lange feigned the most perfect impatience.

“No, no, my good cousin,” she said with a pretty moue of disdain, “that will never do! You must not thus emphasise the end of every line; the verses should flow more evenly, as thus.⁠ ⁠…”

Héron had paused at the door. It was he who had thrown it open⁠—he who, followed by a couple of his sleuthhounds, had thought to find here the man denounced by de Batz as being one of the followers of that irrepressible Scarlet Pimpernel. The obviously Parisian intonation of the man kneeling in front of citizeness Lange in an attitude no ways suggestive of personal admiration, and coolly reciting verses out of a play, had somewhat taken him aback.

“What does this mean?” he asked gruffly, striding forward into the room and glaring first at mademoiselle, then at Armand.

Mademoiselle gave a little cry of surprise.

“Why, if it isn’t citizen Héron!” she cried, jumping up with a dainty movement of coquetry and embarrassment. “Why did not Aunt Marie announce you?⁠ ⁠… It is indeed remiss of her, but she is so ill-tempered on baking days I dare not even rebuke her. Won’t you sit down, citizen Héron? And you, cousin,” she added, looking down airily on Armand, “I pray you maintain no longer that foolish attitude.”

The febrileness of her manner, the glow in her cheeks were easily attributable to natural shyness in face of this unexpected visit. Héron, completely bewildered by this little scene, which was so unlike what he expected, and so unlike those to which he was accustomed in the exercise of his horrible duties, was practically speechless before the little lady who continued to prattle along in a simple, unaffected manner.

“Cousin,” she said to Armand, who in the meanwhile had risen to his knees, “this is citizen Héron, of whom you have heard me speak. My cousin Belhomme,” she continued, once more turning to Héron, “is fresh from the country, citizen. He hails from Orléans, where he has played leading parts in the tragedies of the late citizen Corneille. But, ah me! I fear that he will find Paris audiences vastly more critical than the good Orléanese. Did you hear him, citizen, declaiming those beautiful verses just now? He was murdering them, say I⁠—yes, murdering them⁠—the gaby!”

Then only did it seem as if she realised that there was something amiss, that citizen Héron had come to visit her, not as an admirer of her talent who would wish to pay his respects to a successful actress, but as a person to be looked on with dread.

She gave a quaint, nervous little laugh, and murmured in the tones of a frightened child:

“La, citizen, how glum you look! I thought you had come to compliment me on my latest success. I saw you at the theatre last night, though you did not afterwards come to see me in the greenroom. Why! I had a regular ovation! Look at my flowers!” she added more gaily, pointing to several bouquets in vases about the room. “Citizen Danton brought me the violets himself, and citizen Santerre the narcissi, and that laurel wreath⁠—is it not charming?⁠—that was a tribute from citizen Robespierre himself.”

She was so artless, so simple, and so natural that Héron was completely taken off his usual mental balance. He had expected to find the usual setting to the dramatic episodes which he was wont to conduct⁠—screaming women, a man either at bay, sword in hand, or hiding in a linen cupboard or up a chimney.

Now everything puzzled him. De Batz⁠—he was quite sure⁠—had spoken