The Trampling of the Lilies Part 15

With that he went in quest of Dame Capoulade to ascertain whether she possessed any potion that would induce sleep. He told her that the Captain was seriously injured, and that unless he slept he might die, and, quickened by the terror of what might befall her in such a case, the woman presently produced a small phial full of a brown, viscous fluid. What it might be he had no notion, being all unversed in the mysteries of the pharmacopoeia; but she told him that it had belonged to her now defunct husband, who had always said that ten drops of it would make a man sleep the clock round.

He experimented on the Captain with ten drops, and within a quarter of an hour of taking the draught of red wine in which it was administered, Charlot's deep breathing proclaimed him fast asleep.

That done, La Boulaye sent Guyot below to his post once more, and returning to the room in which they had supped, he paced up and down for a full hour, revolving in his mind the matter of saving Mademoiselle and her mother. At last, towards ten o'clock, he opened the cas.e.m.e.nt, and calling down to Guyot, as Charlot had done, he bade him bring the women up again. Now Guyot knew of the high position which Caron occupied in the Convention, and he had seen the intimate relations in which he stood to Tardivet, so that unhesitatingly he now obeyed him.

La Boulaye closed the window, and crossed slowly to the fire. He stirred the burning logs with his boot, then stood there waiting. Presently the stairs creaked, next the door opened, and Guyot ushered in Mademoiselle.

"The elder citoyenne refuses to come, Citizen-deputy," said the soldier.

"They both insisted that it was not necessary, and that the Citoyenne here would answer your questions."

Almost on the point of commanding the soldier to return for the Marquise, Caron caught the girl's eye, and her glance was so significant that he thought it best to hear first what motives she had for thus disobeying him.

"Very well," he said shortly. "You may go below, Guyot. But hold yourself in readiness lest I should have need of you."

The soldier saluted and disappeared. Scarce was he gone when Mademoiselle came hurrying forward.

"Monsieur Caron," she cried "Heaven is surely befriending us. The soldiers are drinking themselves out of their wits. They will be keeping a slack watch presently."

He looked at her for a moment, fathoming the purport of what she said.

"But," he demanded at last, "why did not the Marquise obey my summons, and accompany you?"

"She was afraid to leave the coach, Monsieur. Moreover, she agreed with me that it would not be necessary."

"Not necessary?" he echoed. "But it is necessary. When last you were here I told you I did not intend you should return to the coach. This is my plan, Citoyenne. I shall keep Guyot waiting below while you and your mother are fortifying yourselves by supper here. Then I shall dismiss him with a recommendation that he keep a close watch upon the carriage, and the information that you will not be returning to it to-night. A half-hour later or so, when things are quiet, I shall find a way out for you by the back, after which the rest must remain in your hands. More I cannot do."

"You can," she cried; "you can."

"If you will enlighten me," said he, with the faintest touch of irony.

She looked at his stern, sardonic face and solemn grey eyes, and for a moment it almost seemed to her that she hated him more than anybody in the world. He was so pa.s.sionless, so master of himself, and he addressed her in a tone which, whilst it suggested that he accounted himself most fully her equal, made her feel that he was really her better by much.

If one of these two was an aristocrat, surely that one was the Citizen-deputy La Boulaye.

"If you had but the will you would do it, Monsieur," she answered him.

"It is not mine to enlighten you; I know not how."

"I have the very best will in the world, Citoyenne," said he. "Of that I think that I am giving proof."

"Aye, the will to do nothing that will shame your manhood," she rejoined. "That is all you think of. It was because your manhood bade you that you came to my rescue--so you said when you declined my thanks.

It is this manhood of yours, I make no doubt, that is now prevailing upon you to deliver two unprotected women out of the hands of these brigands."

"In Heaven's name, Citoyenne," quoth the astonished Deputy, "out of what sentiment would you have me act, and, indeed, so that I save you, how can it concern you by what sentiment I am prompted?"

She paused a moment before replying. Her eyes were downcast, and some of the colour faded from her cheeks. She came a step nearer, which brought her very close to him.

"Monsieur," she faltered very shyly, "in the old days at Bellecour you would have served me out of other sentiments."

He started now in spite of himself, and eyed her with a sudden gleam of hope, or triumph, or mistrust, or perhaps of all three. Then his glance fell, and his voice was wistful.

"But the old days are dead, Mademoiselle."

"The days, yes," she answered, taking courage from his tone. "But love Monsieur, is everlasting--it never dies, they say."

And now it was La Boulaye who drew closer, and this man who had so rigidly schooled himself out of all emotions, felt his breath quickening, and his pulses throbbing faster and faster. To him it seemed that she was right, and that love never died--for the love for her, which he believed he had throttled out of existence long ago, seemed of a sudden to take life as vigorously as ever. And then it was as if some breeze out of the past bore to his nostrils the smell of the violets and of the moist earth of that April morning when she had repulsed him in the woods of Bellecour. His emotion died down. He drew back, and stood rigid before her.

"And if it were to live, Citoyenne," he said--the resumption of the Republican form of address showed that he had stepped back into the spirit as well as in the flesh "what manner of fool were I to again submit it to the lash of scorn it earned when first it was discovered?"

"But that belonged to the old days," she cried, "and it is dead with the old days.'

"It is vain to go back, Citoyenne," he cut in, and his voice rang harsh with determination.

She bit her lip under cover of her bent head. If she had hated him before how much more did she not hate him now? And but a moment back it had seemed to her that she had loved him. She had held out her hands to him and he had scorned them; in her eagerness she had been unmaidenly, and all that she had earned had been humiliation. She quivered with shame and anger, and sinking into the nearest chair she burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.

Thus by accident did she stumble upon the very weapon wherewith to make an utter rout of all Caron's resolutions. For knowing nothing of the fountain from which those tears were springing, and deeming them the expression of a grief pure and unalloyed--saving, perhaps, by a worthy penitence--he stepped swiftly to her side.

"Mademoiselle," he murmured, and his tone was as gentle and beseeching as it had lately been imperious. "Nay, Mademoiselle, I implore you!"

But her tears continued, and her sobs shook the slender frame as if to shatter it. He dropped upon his knees. Scarcely knowing what he did, he set his arm about her waist in a caress of protection.

A long curl of her black, unpowdered hair lay against his cheek.

"Mademoiselle," he murmured, and she took comfort at the soothing tone.

From it she judged him malleable now, that had been so stern and unyielding before. She raised her eyes, and through her tears she turned their heavenly blue full upon the grey depths of his.

"You will not believe me, Monsieur," she complained softly. "You will not believe that I can have changed with the times; that I see things differently now. If you were to come to me again as in the woods at Bellecour--" She paused abruptly, her cheeks flamed scarlet, and she covered them with her hands.

"Suzanne!" he cried, seeking to draw those hands away. "Is it true, this? You care, beloved!"

She uncovered her face at last. Again their eyes met.

"I was right," she whispered. "Love never dies, you see."

"And you will marry me, Suzanne?" he asked incredulously.

She inclined her head, smiling through her tears, and he would have caught her to him but that she rose of a sudden.

"Hist!" she cried, raising her finger: "someone is coming."

He listened, holding his breath, but no sound stirred. He went to the door and peered out. All was still. But the interruption served to impress him with the fact that time was speeding, and that all unsuspicious though Guyot might be as yet, it was more than possible that his suspicions would be aroused if she remained there much longer.

He mentioned this, and he was beginning to refer to his plan for their escape when she thrust it aside, insisting that they must depart in their coach, so that their treasure might also be saved.

"Be reasonable, Suzanne," he cried. "It is impossible."

A cloud of vexation swept across her averted face.

"Nay, surely not impossible," she answered. "Listen, Caron, there are two treasures in that coach. One is in money and in gold and silver plate; the other is in gems, and amounts to thrice the value of the rest. This latter is my dowry. It is a fortune with which we can quit France and betake ourselves wherever our fancy leads us. Would you ask me to abandon that and come to you penniless, compelled thereby to live in perpetual terror in a country where at any moment an enemy might cast at me the word aristocrate, and thereby ruin me?"