In the Reign of Terror Part 27

"You are wearing yourself out, Harry," she said one evening as they were sitting by the fire, while Virginie was tending Louise in the next room. "I can see it in your face. It is of no use your trying to deceive me. You tell us every day that you hope soon to get hold of the captain of a boat sailing for England; but I know that in reality you are making no progress. All those months when we were hoping to get Marie out of prison--though it seemed next to impossible--you told us not to despair, and I knew you did not despair yourself; but now it is different. I am sure that you do in your heart almost give up hope. Why don't you trust me, Harry?

I may not be able to do much, but I might try to cheer you. You have been comforting us all this time. Surely it is time I took my turn. I am not a child now."

"I feel like one just at present," Harry said unsteadily with quivering lips. "I feel sometimes as if--as we used to say at school--I could cry for twopence. I know, Jeanne, I can trust you, and it isn't because I doubted your courage that I have not told you exactly how things are going on, but because it is entirely upon you now that Louise and Virginie have to depend, and I do not wish to put any more weight on your shoulders; but it will be a relief to me to tell you exactly how we stand."

Harry then told her how completely he had failed with the sailors, and how an actual feeling of hostility against him had arisen.

"I think I could have stood that, Jeanne; but it is that terrible committee that tries me. It is so awful hearing these fiends marking out their victims and exulting over their murder, that at times I feel tempted to throw myself upon some of them and strangle them."

"It must be dreadful, Harry," Jeanne said soothingly. "Will it not be possible for you to give out that you are ill, and so absent yourself for a time from their meetings? I am sure you look ill--ill enough for anything. As to the sailors, do not let that worry you. Even if you could hear of a ship at present it would be of no use. I couldn't leave Louise; she seems to me to be getting worse and worse, and the doctor you called in three days ago thinks so too. I can see it by his face. I think he is a good man. The woman whose sick child I sat up with last night tells me the poor all love him. I am sure he guesses that we are not what we seem.

He said this morning to me:

"' I cannot do much for your grandmother. It is a general break-up.

I have many cases like it of old people and women upon whom the anxiety of the times has told. Do not worry yourself with watching, child. She will sleep quietly, and will not need attendance. If you don't mind I shall have you on my hands. Anxiety affects the young as well as the old.'

"At anyrate, you see, we cannot think of leaving here at present.

Louise has risked everything for us. It is quite impossible for us to leave her now, so do not let that worry you. We are all in G.o.d's hands, Harry, and we must wait patiently what He may send us."

"We will wait patiently," Harry said. "I feel better now, Jeanne, and you shall not see me give way again. What has been worrying me most is the thought that it would have been wiser to have carried out some other plan--to have put you and Virginie, for instance, in some farmhouse not far from Paris, and for you to have waited there till the storm blew over."

"You must never think that, Harry," Jeanne said earnestly. "You know we all talked it over dozens of times, Louise and all of us, and we agreed that this was our best chance, and Marie when she came out quite thought so too. So, whatever comes, you must not blame yourself in the slightest. Wherever we were we were in danger, and might have been denounced."

"I arranged it all, Jeanne. I have the responsibility of your being here."

"And to an equal extent you would have had the responsibility of our being anywhere else. So it is of no use letting that trouble you. Now, as to the sailors, you know I have made the acquaintance of some of the women in our street. Some of them are sailors' wives, and possibly through them I may be able to hear about ships. At anyrate I could try."

"Perhaps you could, Jeanne; but be very, very careful what questions you put, or you might be betrayed."

"I don't think there is much fear of that, Harry. The women are more outspoken than the men. Some of them are with what they call the people; but it is clear that others are quite the other way.

You see trade has been almost stopped, and there is great suffering among the sailors and their families. Of course I have been very careful not to seem to have more money than other people; but I have been able to make soups and things--I have learned to be quite a cook from seeing Louise at work--and I take them to those that are very poor, especially if they have children ill, and I think I have won some of their hearts."

"You win everyone's heart who comes near you, Jeanne, I think,"

Harry said earnestly.

Jeanne flushed a rosy red, but said with a laugh:

"Now, Harry, you are turning flatterer. We are not at the chateau now, sir, so your pretty speeches are quite thrown away; and now I shall go and take Virginie's place and send her in to you."

And so another month went by, and then the old nurse quietly pa.s.sed away. She was buried, to the girls' great grief, without any religious ceremony, for the priests were all in hiding or had been murdered, and France had solemnly renounced G.o.d and placed Reason on His throne.

In the meantime Jeanne had been steadily carrying on her work among her poorer neighbours, sitting up at night with sick children, and supplying food to starving little ones, saying quietly in reply to the words of grat.i.tude of the women:

"My grandmother has laid by savings during her long years of service. She will not want it long, and we are old enough to work for ourselves; besides, our brother Henri will take care of us. So we are glad to be able to help those who need it."

While she worked she kept her ears open, and from the talk of the women learned that the husbands of one or two of them were employed in vessels engaged in carrying on smuggling operations with England.

A few days after the death of Louise one of these women, whose child Jeanne had helped to nurse through a fever and had brought round by keeping it well supplied with good food, exclaimed:

"Oh, how much we owe you, mademoiselle, for your goodness!"

"You must not call me mademoiselle," Jeanne said, shaking her head.

"It would do you harm and me too if it were heard."

"It comes so natural," the woman said with a sigh. "I was in service once in a good family before I married Adolphe. But I know that you are not one of those people who say there is no G.o.d, because I saw you kneel down and pray by Julie's bed when you thought I was asleep. I expect Adolphe home in a day or two. The poor fellow will be wild with delight when he sees the little one on its feet again. When he went away a fortnight ago he did not expect ever to see her alive again, and it almost broke his heart. But what was he to do? There are so many men out of work that if he had not sailed in the lugger there would have been scores to take his place, and he might not perhaps have been taken on again."

"He has been to England, has he not?" Jeanne asked.

"Yes; the lugger carries silks and brandy. It is a dangerous trade, for the Channel is swarming with English cruisers. But what is he to do? One must live."

"Is your husband in favour of the new state of things?" Jeanne asked.

"Not in his heart, mademoiselle, any more than I am, but he holds his tongue. Most of the sailors in the port hate these murdering tyrants of ours; but what can we do?"

"Well, Marthe, I am sure I can trust you, and your husband can help me if he will."

"Surely you can trust me," the woman said. "I would lay down my life for you, and I know Adolphe would do so too when he knows what you have done for us."

"Well, then, Marthe, I and my sister and my brother Henri are anxious to be taken to England. We are ready to pay well for a pa.s.sage, but we have not known how to set about it."

"I thought it might be that," Marthe said quietly; "for anyone who knows the ways of gentlefolk, as I do, could see with half an eye that you are not one of us. But they say, mademoiselle, that your brother is a friend of Robespierre, and that he is one of the committee here."

"He is only pretending, Marthe, in order that no suspicion should fall upon us. But he finds that the sailors distrust him, and he cannot get to speak to them about taking a pa.s.sage, so I thought I would speak to you, and you can tell me when a boat is sailing and who is her captain."

"Adolphe will manage all that for you, never fear," the woman said. "I know that many a poor soul has been hidden away on board the smuggler's craft and got safely out of the country; but of course it's a risk, for it is death to a.s.sist any of the suspects.

Still the sailors are ready to run the risk, and indeed they haven't much fear of the consequences if they are caught, for the sailor population here are very strong, and they would not stand quietly by and see some of their own cla.s.s treated as if they had done some great crime merely because they were earning a few pounds by running pa.s.sengers across to England. Why they have done it from father to son as far as they can recollect, for there has never been a time yet when there were not people who wanted to pa.s.s from France to England and from England to France without asking the leave of the authorities. I think it can be managed, mademoiselle, especially, as you say, you can afford to pay, for if one won't take you, another will. Trade is so bad that there are scores of men would start in their fishing-boats for a voyage across the Channel in the hope of getting food for their wives and families."

"I was sure it was so, Marthe, but it was so difficult to set about it. Everyone is afraid of spies, and it needs some one to warrant that we are not trying to draw them into a snare, before anyone will listen. If your husband will but take the matter up, I have no doubt it can be managed."

"Set your mind at ease; the thing is as good as done. I tell you there are scores of men ready to undertake the job when they know it is a straightforward one."

"That is good news indeed, Jeanne," Harry said, when the girl told him of the conversation. "That does seem a way out of our difficulties. I felt sure you would be able to manage it, sooner or later, among the poor people you have been so good to. Hurry it on as much as you can, Jeanne. I feel that our position is getting more and more dangerous. I am afraid I do not play my part sufficiently well. I am not forward enough in their violent councils. I cannot bring myself to vote for proposals for ma.s.sacre when there is any division among them. I fear that some have suspicions. I have been asked questions lately as to why I am staying here, and why I have come. I have been thinking for the last few days whether it would not be better for us to make our way down to the mouth of the river and try and bribe some fishermen in the villages there who would not have that feeling against me that the men here have, to take us to sea, or if that could not be managed, to get on board some little fishing-boat at night and sail off by ourselves in the hopes of being picked up by an English cruiser."

Harry indeed had for some days been feeling that danger was thickening round him. He had noticed angry glances cast at him by the more violent of the committee, and had caught sentences expressing doubt whether he had really been Robespierre's secretary. That evening as he came out from the meeting he heard one man say to another:

"I tell you he may have stolen it, and perhaps killed the citizen who bore it. I believe he is a cursed aristocrat. I tell you I shall watch him. He has got some women with him; the maire, who saw the paper, told me so. I shall make it my business to get to the bottom of the affair, and we will make short work with him if we find things are as I believe."

Harry felt, therefore, that the danger was even more urgent than he had expressed it to Jeanne, and he had returned intending to propose immediate flight had not Jeanne been beforehand with her news. Even now he hesitated whether even a day's delay might not ruin them.

"Have you told me all, Harry?" Jeanne asked.

"Not quite all, Jeanne. I was just thinking it over. I fear the danger is even more pressing than I have said;" and he repeated the sentence he had overheard. "Even now," he said, "that fellow may be watching outside or making inquiries about you. He will hear nothing but praise; but that very praise may cause him to doubt still more that you are not what you seem."

"But why can we not run away at once?" Virginie said. "Why should we wait here till they come and take us and carry us away and kill us?"

"That is what I was thinking when I came home, Virginie; but the risk of trying to escape in a fishing-boat by ourselves would be tremendous. You see, although I have gone out sailing sometimes on the river in England, I know very little about it, and although we might be picked up by an English ship, it would be much more likely that we should fall into the hands of one of the French gunboats.

So I look upon that as a desperate step, to be taken only at the last moment. And now that Jeanne seems to have arranged a safe plan, I do not like trying such a wild scheme. A week now, and perhaps all might be arranged; but the question is--Have we a week? Have we more than twenty-four hours? What do you think, Jeanne?"

"I do not see what is best to do yet," Jeanne said, looking steadily in the fire. "It is a terrible thing to have to decide; but I see we must decide." She sat for five minutes without speaking, and then taking down her cloak from the peg on which it hung she said; "I will go round to Marthe Pichon again and tell her we are all so anxious for each other, that I don't think we can judge what is really the best. Marthe will see things more clearly and will be able to advise us."

"Yes, that will be the best plan."