Lazarre Part 46

She saw him, and understood his errand.

There was no chance. De Chaumont wheeled ready to introduce me to the marquis. I was not permitted to speak to him. But Eagle took my right arm and moved down the corridor with me.

Decently and at once the disguised gendarme fell behind where he could watch every muscle without alarming Madame de Ferrier. She appeared not to see him. I have no doubt he praised himself for his delicacy and her unconsciousness of my arrest.

"You must not think you can run away from me," she said.

"I was coming back," I answered, making talk.

My captor's person heaved behind me, signifying that he silently laughed. He kept within touch.

"Do you know the Tuileries well?" inquired Eagle.

"No. I have never been in the palace before."

"Nor I, in the state apartments."

We turned from the corridor into a suite in these upper rooms, the gendarme humoring Madame de Ferrier, and making himself one in the crowd around us. De Chaumont and the Marquis de Ferrier gave chase. I saw them following, as well as they could.

"This used to be the queen's dressing-room," said Eagle. We entered the last one in the suite.

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure."

"This is the room you told me you would like to examine?"

"The very one. I don't believe the Empire has made any changes in it.

These painted figures look just as Sophie described them."

Eagle traced lightly with her finger one of the shepherdesses dancing on the panel; and crossed to the opposite side of the room. People who pa.s.sed the door found nothing to interest them, and turned away, but the gendarme stayed beside us. Eagle glanced at him as if resenting his intrusion, and asked me to bring her a candle and hold it near a mark on the tracery. The gendarme himself, apologetic but firm, stepped to the sconce and took the candle. I do not know how the thing was done, or why the old spring and long unused hinges did not stick, but his back was toward us--she pushed me against the panel and it let me in.

And I held her and drew her after me, and the thing closed. The wall had swallowed us.

We stood on firm footing as if suspended in eternity. No sound from the swarming palace, not even possible noise made by the gendarme, reached us. It was like being earless, until she spoke in the hollow.

"Here's the door on the staircase, but it will not open!"

I groped over every inch of it with swift haste in the blackness.

"Hurry--hurry!" she breathed. "He may touch the spring himself--it moves instantly!"

"Does this open with a spring, too?"

"I don't know. Sophie didn't know!"

"Are you sure there is any door here?"

"She told me there was."

"This is like a door, but it will not move."

It sprang inward against us, a rush of air and a hollow murmur as of wind along the river, following it.

"Go--be quick!" said Madame de Ferrier.

"But how will you get out?"

"I shall get out when you are gone."

"O, Eagle, forgive me!" (Yet I would have dragged her in with me again!)

"I am in no danger. You are in danger. Goodbye, my liege."

Cautiously she pushed me through the door, begging me to feel for every step. I stood upon the top one, and held to her as I had held to her in pa.s.sing through the other wall.

I thought of the heavy days before her and the blank before me. I could not let go her wrists. We were fools to waste our youth. I could work for her in America. My vitals were being torn from me. I should go to the devil without her. I don't know what I said. But I knew the brute love which had risen like a lion in me would never conquer the woman who kissed me in the darkness and held me at bay.

"O Louis--O Lazarre! Think of Paul and Cousin Philippe! You shall be your best for your little mother! I will come to you sometime!"

Then she held the door between us, and I went down around and around the spiral of stone.

BOOK III

ARRIVING

I

Even when a year had pa.s.sed I said of my escape from the Tuileries: "It was a dream. How could it have happened?" For the adventures of my wandering fell from me like a garment, leaving the one changeless pa.s.sion.

Skenedonk and I met on the ship a New England minister, who looked upon and considered us from day to day. I used to sit in the stern, the miles stretching me as a rack stretches flesh and tendons. The minister regarded me as prostrated by the spider bite of that wicked Paris; out of which he learned I had come, by talking to my Oneida.

The Indian and I were a queer pair that interested him, and when he discovered that I bore the name of Eleazar Williams his friendship was sealed to us. Eunice Williams of Deerfield, the grandmother of Thomas Williams, was a traditional brand never s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning, in the minister's town of Longmeadow, where nearly every inhabitant was descended from or espoused to a Williams. Though he himself was born Storrs, his wife was born Williams; and I could have lain at his feet and cried, so open was the heart of this good man to a wanderer rebounding from a family that disowned the pretender. He was my welcome back to America. The breath of eastern pines, and the resinous sweetness of western plains I had not yet seen, but which drew me so that I could scarcely wait to land, came to me with that man. Before the voyage ended I had told him my whole history as far as I knew it, except the story of Madame de Ferrier; and the beginning of it was by no means new to him.

The New England Williamses kept a prayerful eye on that branch descending through the Iroquois. This transplanted Briton, returning from his one memorable visit to the England of his forefathers, despised my Bourbon claims, and even the French contraction of my name.

"What are you going to do now, Eleazar?" he inquired.

Hugging my old dream to myself, feeling my heart leap toward that western empire which must fascinate a young man as long as there remain any western lands to possess, I told him I intended to educate our Iroquois as soon as I could prepare myself to do it, and settle them where they could grow into a greater nation.

The man of G.o.d kindled in the face. He was a dark-eyed, square-browed, serious man, with black hair falling below his white band. His mouth had a sweet benign expression, even when he quizzed me about my dauphinhood.

A New England pastor was a flame that burned for the enlightenment of the nations. From that hour it was settled that I should be his pupil, and go with him to Longmeadow to finish my education.