Kilgorman Part 27

"Now hand me the end of the band," said he, "and come here and help me to haul.--Nerve yourself, cousin, and all will be well."

Between us, we had no difficulty in drawing the poor lady through the opening on to the roof; and when we let down the band for Miss Kit, her light, little form followed readily enough.

"Down," said the captain, crouching in the gutter of the parapet and beginning to crawl along it.

We followed painfully and slowly, finding the journey very long, and expecting any moment to hear the pursuer behind.

Presently we came to a halt, and saw our conductor remove some slates and discover an opening into the house below.

Once more the linen band came into requisition. The ladies were lowered into the room. The captain and I paused to set the slates, so that no one should be able to detect the place of our entrance. Then he swung himself over the parapet on to the ledge of the little window below, bidding me follow. Next moment we stood, all four of us, in a tiny chamber, no bigger than a cupboard, with nothing in it but a little bed, a chair, and a shelf, on which stood a loaf and a bottle of wine.

"Welcome to my humble quarters, cousins," said he. "They are neither large nor water-tight, but I natter myself they are airy and command an extensive view. We will be safe here till night, but then we must seek something more s.p.a.cious and secluded."

And with all the grace in the world, he poured out a gla.s.s of wine for my lady and begged her to drink it.

Presently Miss Kit said, with the first smile I had seen on her face that day,--

"I am too bewildered to ask questions, otherwise I should like to know how all this has come to pa.s.s."

"Not now," said he. "I am as bewildered and perplexed as you are.-- Gallagher, go to your daily work, but return early; and bring with you,"--here he handed me a gold piece--"provisions for a journey."

It was hard to be dismissed thus at a moment of peril. But my little lady's words and the smile that accompanied them made up for it.

"Yes. Come back early, Barry. We shall feel short of a protector while you are away."

And she held out her hand, which I kissed with a glare at the captain, who only laughed, and said,--

"Don't forget the provisions."

Little I thought as I groped my way down the tumble-down staircase how many weary months were to elapse before I was to hold that gentle little hand in mine again.

I had reached the stables, and was rubbing down a spent horse, when I became aware that a woman was standing at the gate. I recognised her at once as the woman who had pointed us out that morning when we entered our house, and my heart filled with forebodings as I saw her.

It was a relief when my employer presently ordered me to take a horse round to the house of a citizen in the suburbs. The woman had gone when I started, and after half-an-hour's trot I almost dismissed her from my mind. My orders were, after delivering the horse at its destination, to return on foot, calling on my way at the hay merchant's with an order.

This I duly performed; and was hastening back by way of the Rue Saint Honore, when two muskets were suddenly crossed in front of me, and a harsh voice said,--

"Regnier, you are arrested by order of the Committee of Public Safety."

"On what charge?" faltered I.

"On the accusation of the Citoyenne Souchard, who denounces you as the friend of royalism and of the miscreant Bailly."

"I am no friend of either," I exclaimed. "I do not--"

"Silence! march!" said the soldier.

Resistance was hopeless, escape impossible. In a daze I marched on, pointed at and hooted at by the pa.s.sers-by, amid cries of,--

"_A bas les mouchards! Mort aux aristocrates_!" [Saint Patrick! that I should be taken for an aristocrat.] "_Vive la guillotine_!"

I cared not what became of me now, but when presently my conductors actually turned towards the Island of the City, and I caught sight of the high roofs of the houses on the Quai Necker, a wild hope of seeing my little mistress once more took hold of me. Alas! it was but for a moment. The cold muzzle of the soldier's gun recalled me to myself.

I longed to know if the accuser, who seemed to know my name and all my movements, had joined the names of the ladies in my denunciation. If so, woe betide them and all of us. In the midst of my trouble the one thought that cheered me, despite the pang of jealousy that came with it, was that they were not without protection; and that Captain Lestrange, who had shown himself so ready of resource in the morning, might succeed even without my help in rescuing those innocent ones from the b.l.o.o.d.y hands of "the terror."

A chill went through me when it dawned upon me at last that I was being conducted to the fatal Conciergerie--that half-way house between life and death towards which so many roads converged, but from which only one, that to the guillotine, led.

An angry parley took place at the door between the jailer and my captors.

"Why here?" demanded the former; "we are packed to the bursting point."

"To-morrow you will have more room by fifty," said the other.

"This is not to-morrow," growled the hard-worked official.

"The _detenu_ is your parishioner," said the soldier.

"It is scandalous the slowness with which the Committee works," said the jailer. "Fifty a day goes no way; we want one hundred and fifty."

"You shall have it, Citizen Concierge. Patience!--Now, Regnier, enter, and adieu," said he, with a push from the b.u.t.t-end of his gun.

Beyond entering my name and a.s.signing me my night's quarters, no notice was taken of me by my jailers. I was allowed to wander on into the crowded courtyard, where of the hundreds who prowled about like caged animals none troubled themselves so much as to look up at the new unfortunate. Men and women of all sorts were there: gentlemen who held themselves aloof and had their little _cercle_ in one corner, with servants to attend them; rogues and thieves who quarrelled and gambled with one another, and made the air foul with their oaths; terrified women and children who huddled together for shelter from the impudent looks and words of the ruffians, who amused themselves by insulting them. Sick people were there with whom it was a race whether disease or the guillotine would claim them first. And philosophers were there, who looked with calm indifference on the scene, and jested and discussed among themselves.

Among this motley company I was lost, and, indeed, it would have troubled me to be anything else. I found leaning-room against the wall, and had no better wish than that the promised fifty who to-morrow were to feed the guillotine might count me in their number.

As soon as the short February day closed in, we were unceremoniously ordered within doors. Some of the more distinguished and wealthy retired to their private apartments; the women (though I heard they were not always so fortunate) were shut up in quarters of their own. Others retired in batches to chambers, for the use of which they had clubbed together in bands of twenty or thirty. The rest of us, comprising all the poorer prisoners, were huddled into great foul, straw-strewn rooms to sleep and pa.s.s the night as best we might.

Rough countryman as I have been, the thought of those nights in the Conciergerie turns my stomach even now. The low ceiling and small windows made the atmosphere, laden as it was with dirt of all sorts, choking and intolerable. The heat, even on a winter night, was oppressive. The noise, the groaning, the wrangling, the fighting, the pilfering, were distracting. Only twice in the night silence, and that but for a few moments at a time, prevailed.

Once was when the guard, accompanied by great dogs, made their nightly round, kicking us who lay in their way this side and that, and testing every bar and grating of our prison with hammers and staves. For the sake of the dogs, who were stern disciplinarians, we kept the peace till the bolt was once more turned upon us.

The other time the hush was of a more terrible kind, as I discovered that first night. A jangle of keys without imposed a sudden lull on the noise. The door opened, and in came the concierge and his turnkeys.

Every eye turned, not on the man or his myrmidons, but on the paper that he held in his hand. It was the list of prisoners who to-morrow were to appear before the Tribunal--that is to say, of the victims who the day after to-morrow were to ride in the tumbrels to the guillotine.

A deadly silence prevailed as the reading proceeded, broken only by the agonised shriek of some unfortunate, and the gradual sighs of relief of those whose names were omitted.

The ceremony over, the door (on the outside of which a turnkey had chalked the doomed names) swung to, and all once more was noise and babel. The victims drew together, embracing their friends and uttering their farewells. The others laughed louder than ever, like schoolboys who have escaped the rod. Morning came, and with it the summons. Those who quitted us we knew we should never see again. They would spend that night in the dungeon of the _cond.a.m.nes_; the next day the lumbering roll of the tumbrels would announce to us that they were on their way to the Place de la Revolution.

The first night, I confess, I was disappointed that the fatal list did not contain my name; but as days, and then weeks, and then months pa.s.sed, the love of life rose high within me, and I grew to tremble for that which I had once hoped for. Day by day I scrutinised the new arrivals in the vague expectation of seeing among them those I loved best. But they never came.

I made few, if any, acquaintances, for I resolved to keep my mouth shut.

Spies, I knew, infested the prisons as they did the streets, and many a chance word uttered in the confidence of the dungeon was reported and used as evidence against the victim. Now and again we were thrown into excitement by the arrival in our midst of some notable prisoner, before whose name, a few short weeks since, all Paris, nay, all France had trembled, but who now was marked down and doomed by his rivals in power.

And sometimes rumours of convulsions without penetrated the walls of our cells, and made us hope that, could we but endure a while, the end of "the terror" was not far distant.

I remember one night when a new prisoner whispered to me that the great Robespierre, at whose nod any head in Paris might drop into the dreadful basket, had been blown upon within the walls of the Convention itself.

"Death is marked on his face," said he; "and when he falls there is hope for us, for the people are sick of blood."

Alas! this same poor whisperer heard his name called out that very night, and fell grovelling at my side, as if I could help him.