The Red City Part 22

"_Bonjour, monsieur._ We amuse ourselves well, and forget a little,"

said Du Vallon. "Ah, the Vicomte de Courval! Enchanted to see you here.

Allow me to present Monsieur de Malerive. He is making a fortune with the ice-cream, but he condescends to give us a lesson now and then.

Gentlemen, the Vicomte de Courval." The foils were lowered and men bowed. Scarce any knew him, but several came forward and said pleasant things, while, as they left to return to their fencing, Schmidt made his brief comments. "That is the Chevalier Pontgibaud, Rene,--the slight man,--a good soldier in the American war. The Vicomte de Noailles is a partner of Bingham."

"Indeed!" said Rene. "He is in trade, as I am--a Noailles!"

"Yes; may you be as lucky. He has made a fortune, they say."

"Take a turn with the marquis," said Du Vallon. The marquis taught fencing. De Courval replied, "With pleasure," and the clatter of foils began again, while Du Vallon and Schmidt fell apart into quiet talk.

"The young man is a clerk and I hear has won credit and money. _Bon chien, bonne cha.s.se._ Do you know his story? Ah, my sad Avignon! La Rochefoucauld told me they killed his father; but of course you know all about it."

"No, I have heard but little," said Schmidt. "I know only that his father was murdered. Des Aguilliers told me that; but as De Courval has not, does not, speak of it, I presume him to have his reasons. Pray let us leave it here."

"As you please, _mon ami_." But Du Vallon thought the German strangely lacking in curiosity.

The time pa.s.sed pleasantly. De Courval did better with Tiernay, who taught French to the young women and was in the shabby splendor of clothes which, like their owner, had seen better days.

They went away late. Yes, he was to have lessons from Du Vallon, who had courteously criticized his defense as weak. But the remedy had answered the German's purpose. Here was something to learn which as yet the young man did badly. The lessons went on, and Schmidt at times carried him away into the country with fowling-pieces, and they came home loaded with wood pigeons; and once, to De Courval's joy, from the Welsh hills with a bear on the back of their chaise and rattles for Pearl from what De Courval called the _serpent a sonnettes_--"a nice Jacobin snake, _Mademoiselle_." And so the quiet life went on in the Quaker house with books, walks, and the round of simple duties, while the young man regained his former vigor.

The spring came in with flowers and blossoms in the garden, and, on the 21st of May, Citizen Genet was to arrive in this year of '93. The French frigate _Ambuscade_, lying in the river and hearing from Chester in due season, was to warn the republicans with her guns of the coming of the minister.

"Come," said Schmidt, as the cas.e.m.e.nts shook with the signal of three cannon. "Pearl said she would like to see it, and the farce will be good. We are going to be amused; and why not?"

"Will Friend de Courval go with us?" asked Margaret. Walks with the young woman were somehow of late not so easily had. Her mother had constantly for her some interfering duties. He was glad to go.

At the signal-guns, thousands of patriots gathered in front of the State House, and in what then was called the Mall, to the south of it. Schmidt and the young people paused on the skirts of the noisy crowd, where were many full of liquor and singing the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" with drunken variations of the tune. "A sight to please the devil of laughter," said Schmidt. "There are saints for the virtues, why not devils for men's follies? The mischief mill for the grinding out of French Jacobins from Yankee grain will not run long. Let us go on around the Mall and get before these foolish folk. Ah, to insult this perfect day of May with drunkenness! Is there not enough of gladness in the upspring of things that men must crave the flattery of drink?" He was in one of those moods when he was not always, as he said, understandable, and when his English took on queer ways.

Pausing before the gray jail at the corner of Delaware, Sixth Street, and Walnut, they saw the poor debtors within thrust out between the bars of the windows long rods with bags at the end to solicit alms. Schmidt emptied his pockets of shillings, and they went on, the girl in horror at the blasphemies of those who got no coin. Said Schmidt: "Our friend Wynne lay there in the war for months. Ask Madam Darthea for the tale, De Courval. 'T is pretty, and worth the ear of attention. When I rule the world there will be no prisons. I knew them once too well."

So rare were these glimpses of a life they knew not of that both young people, surprised, turned to look at him.

"Wert thou in jail, sir?" said the Pearl.

"Did I say so? Life is a jail, my good Margaret; we are all prisoners."

The girl understood, and asked no more. Crossing the Potter's Field, now Washington Square, they leaped over the brook that ran through it from the northwest.

"Here below us lie the dead prisoners of your war, Pearl. The jail was safe, but now they are free. G.o.d rest their souls! There's room for more." Scarcely was there room in that summer of '93. Pa.s.sing the Bettering House on Spruce Street Road, and so on and out to the Schuylkill, they crossed the floating bridge, and from the deep cutting where Gray's Lane descended to the river, climbed the slope, and sat down and waited.

Very soon across the river thousands of men gathered and a few women.

The bridge was lined with people and some collected on the bank and in the lane below them, on the west side of the stream.

Hauterive, the French consul at New York, and Mr. Duponceau and Alexander Dallas of the Democratic Club, stood near the water on the west end of the bridge, waiting to welcome Genet. "I like it very well,"

said Schmidt; "but the play will not run long."

"Oh, they are coming!" cried Margaret. This was interesting. She was curious, excited and with her bonnet off, as De Courval saw, bright-eyed, eager, and with isles of color mysteriously pa.s.sing over her face, like rose clouds at evening.

A group of hors.e.m.e.n appeared on the top of the hill above them, one in front. "Genet, I suppose," said De Courval. A good-looking man, florid, smiling, the tricolor on the hat in his hand, he bowed to right and left, and honored with a special salute mademoiselle, near-by on the bank. He had the triumphant air of a very self-conscious conqueror.

Cheers greeted him. "_Vive la republique!_ D----George Washington!

Hurrah for Citizen Genet!" with waving of French flags. He stopped below them in the lane. A boy in the long pantaloons of protest, with the red cap of the republic on his head, was lifted up to present a bouquet of three colors made of paper flowers. Citizen Genet gave him the fraternal kiss of liberty, and again the crowd cheered. "Are these people crazy?" asked the Quaker maiden, used to Friends' control of emotion.

"Mad? Yes, a little." Genet had paused at the bridge. Mr. Dallas was making him welcome to the capital. David Rittenhouse stood by, silent in adoration, his attention divided between Genet and a big bun, for he had missed his dinner.

"It is all real," said the German. "The bun doth equally well convince.

Oh, David, didst thou but dream how comic thou art!" Meanwhile De Courval by turns considered the fair face and the crowd, too tragically reminded to be, like Schmidt, altogether amused.

But surely here indeed was comedy, and for many of this careless mult.i.tude a sad ending of politics in the near summer months.

The crowd at the water's-edge closed around Genet, while the group of four or five men on horseback who followed him came to a halt on the roadway just below where were seated Schmidt and his companions. The riders looked around them, laughing. Then one spoke to a young secretary, and the man thus addressed, turning, took off his hat and bowed low to the Quaker maid.

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried De Courval, springing up as the attaches moved on.

"_C'est Carteaux!_ It is he!"

Schmidt heard him; the girl to the left of Schmidt less plainly. "What is it?" she cried to De Courval. His face as she saw it was of a sudden white, the eyes wide open, staring, the jaw set, the hands half-open, the figure as of a wild creature about to leap on its prey. "Take care!"

said Schmidt. "Take care! Keep quiet!" He laid a strong hand on De Courval's shoulder. "Come away! People are looking at you."

"Yes, yes." He straightened, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"Art thou ill?" asked Margaret.

"No, no. I am glad--glad as never before. Let us go. It will keep. It will keep." She looked at him with wonder. They climbed the bank and went up the hill across the Woodlands, Andrew Hamilton's estate, and homeward by the middle ferry at High Street, no one speaking.

The girl, troubled and apprehensive, walked on, getting now and then from the bonnet's seclusion a quick side glance at a face a little flushed and wearing a look of unwonted satisfaction. Schmidt was as silent as his companions. Comedy again, he thought, and as ever behind it the shadow tragedy. "If I were that man, I should be afraid--a secretary of this accursed envoy. I must know more. Ah, here is the other man behind the every-day De Courval."

De Courval went in and up-stairs to his room and at the five-o'clock supper showed no sign of the storm which had swept over him. After the meal he followed his mother, and as usual read aloud to her a chapter of the French Bible. Then at dusk he pulled out on the river, and, finding refreshment in a cold plunge, rowed to sh.o.r.e, returning in full control of the power to consider with Schmidt, as now he knew he must do, a situation not so simple as it seemed when he set eyes on his enemy.

"I have been waiting for you, Rene. I guess enough to know this for a very grave matter. You will want to tell me."

"I have often wanted to talk to you, but, as you may or may not know, it was also too painful to discuss until the need came; but now it has come."

"You will talk to me, Rene, or not, as seems the better to you."

"I shall speak, and frankly; but, sir, wait a little."

Without replying further, the German took up a book and read. The young man let fall his head on his hands, his elbows on a table. He had tried to forget, but now again with closed eyes and, with that doubtful gift of visual recall already mentioned he saw the great, dimly lighted hall at Avignon, the blood-stained murderers, the face of his father, his vain appeal. The tears rained through his fingers. He seemed to hear again: "Yvonne! Yvonne!" and at last to see, with definiteness sharpened by the morning's scene, the sudden look of ferocity in a young man's face--a man not much older than himself. He had thought to hear from it a plea for mercy. Ah, and to-day he had seen it gay with laughter. One day it would not laugh. He wiped away tears as he rose. The German gentleman caught him to his broad breast. "What is it, my son? Ah, I would that you were my son! Let us have it out--all of it. I, too, have had my share of sorrow. Let me hear, and tell it quietly. Then we can talk."

Thus it came about that with a sense of relief Rene told his story of failing fortunes, of their chateau in ruins, and of how, on his return from Avignon, he had found his mother in a friendly farm refuge. He told, too, with entire self-command of the tragedy in the papal city, his vain pursuit of Carteaux, their flight to England, and how on the voyage his mother had wrung from him the whole account of his father's death.

"Does she know his name?" asked Schmidt.

"Carteaux? Yes. I should not have told it, but I did. She would have me tell it."

"And that is all." For a little while the German, lighting his pipe, walked up and down the room without a word. Then at last, sitting down, he said: "Rene, what do you mean to do?"

"Kill him."

"Yes, of course," said Schmidt, coolly; "but--let us think a little. Do you mean to shoot him as one would a mad dog?"

"Certainly; and why not?"