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

and he swore that he could not leave Paris until she came with him.

It seemed a terrible deadlock, for she could not bear to think of him alone in those awful Paris streets, where she knew that spies would always be tracking him. She had no illusions as to the impression which she had made on Héron; she knew that it could only be a momentary one, and that Armand would henceforth be in daily, hourly danger.

At last she promised him that she would take the advice of his chief; they would both be guided by what he said. Armand would confide in him tonight, and if it could be arranged she would hurry on her preparations and, mayhap, be ready to join him in a week.

“In the meanwhile, that cruel man must not risk your dear life,” she said. “Remember, Armand, your life belongs to me. Oh, I could hate him for the love you bear him!”

“Sh⁠—sh⁠—sh!” he said earnestly. “Dear heart, you must not speak like that of the man whom, next to your perfect self, I love most upon earth.”

“You think of him more than of me. I shall scarce live until I know that you are safely out of Paris.”

Though it was horrible to part, yet it was best, perhaps, that he should go back to his lodgings now, in case Héron sent his spies back to her door, and since he meant to consult with his chief. She had a vague hope that if the mysterious hero was indeed the noble-hearted man whom Armand represented him to be, surely he would take compassion on the anxiety of a sorrowing woman, and release the man she loved from bondage.

This thought pleased her and gave her hope. She even urged Armand now to go.

“When may I see you tomorrow?” he asked.

“But it will be so dangerous to meet,” she argued.

“I must see you. I could not live through the day without seeing you.”

“The theatre is the safest place.”

“I could not wait till the evening. May I not come here?”

“No, no. Héron’s spies may be about.”

“Where then?”

She thought it over for a moment.

“At the stage-door of the theatre at one o’clock,” she said at last. “We shall have finished rehearsal. Slip into the guichet of the concierge. I will tell him to admit you, and send my dresser to meet you there; she will bring you along to my room, where we shall be undisturbed for at least half an hour.”

He had perforce to be content with that, though he would so much rather have seen her here again, where the faded tapestries and soft-toned hangings made such a perfect background for her delicate charm. He had every intention of confiding in Blakeney, and of asking his help for getting Jeanne out of Paris as quickly as may be.

Thus this perfect hour was past; the most pure, the fullest of joy that these two young people were ever destined to know. Perhaps they felt within themselves the consciousness that their great love would rise anon to yet greater, fuller perfection when Fate had crowned it with his halo of sorrow. Perhaps, too, it was that consciousness that gave to their kisses now the solemnity of a last farewell.

XI The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel

Armand never could say definitely afterwards whither he went when he left the Square du Roule that evening. No doubt he wandered about the streets for some time in an absent, mechanical way, paying no heed to the passersby, none to the direction in which he was going.

His mind was full of Jeanne, her beauty, her courage, her attitude in face of the hideous bloodhound who had come to pollute that charming old-world boudoir by his loathsome presence. He recalled every word she uttered, every gesture she made.

He was a man in love for the first time⁠—wholly, irremediably in love.

I suppose that it was the pangs of hunger that first recalled him to himself. It was close on eight o’clock now, and he had fed on his imaginings⁠—first on anticipation, then on realisation, and lastly on memory⁠—during the best part of the day. Now he awoke from his daydream to find himself tired and hungry, but fortunately not very far from that quarter of Paris where food is easily obtainable.

He was somewhere near the Madeleine⁠—a quarter he knew well. Soon he saw in front of him a small eating-house which looked fairly clean and orderly. He pushed open its swing-door, and seeing an empty table in a secluded part of the room, he sat down and ordered some supper.

The place made no impression upon his memory. He could not have told you an hour later where it was situated, who had served him, what he had eaten, or what other persons were present in the dining-room at the time that he himself entered it.

Having eaten, however, he felt more like his normal self⁠—more conscious of his actions. When he finally left the eating-house, he realised, for instance, that it was very cold⁠—a fact of which he had for the past few hours been totally unaware. The snow was falling in thin close flakes, and a biting northeasterly wind was blowing those flakes into his face and down his collar. He wrapped his cloak tightly around him. It was a good step yet to Blakeney’s lodgings, where he knew that he was expected.

He struck quickly into the Rue St. Honoré, avoiding the great open places where the grim horrors of this magnificent city in revolt against civilisation were displayed in all their grim nakedness⁠—on the Place de la Révolution the guillotine, on the Carrousel the open-air camps of workers under the lash of slave-drivers more cruel than the uncivilised brutes of the Far West.

And Armand had to think of Jeanne in the midst of all these horrors. She was still a petted actress today, but who could tell if on the morrow the terrible law of the “suspect” would not reach her in