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I Will Repay

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy >> I Will Repay




Pierre, the old Duc's devoted valet, dressed him as quickly as he
could. M. le Duc insisted on having his _habit de cérémonie,_ the rich
suit of black velvet with the priceless lace and diamond buttons, which
he had worn when they laid le Roi Soleil to his eternal rest.

He put on his orders and buckled on his sword. The gorgeous clothes,
which had suited him so well in the prime of his manhood, hung somewhat
loosely on his attenuated frame, but he looked a grand and imposing
figure, with his white hair tied behind with a great black bow, and the
fine jabot of beautiful point d'Angleterre falling in a soft cascade
below his chin.

Then holding himself as upright as he could, he sat in his invalid
chair, and four flunkeys in full livery carried him to the deathbed of
his son.

All the house was astir by now. Torches burned in great sockets in the
vast hall and along the massive oak stairway, and hundreds of candles
flickered ghostlike in the vast apartments of the princely mansion.

The numerous servants were arrayed on the landing, all dressed in the
rich livery of the ducal house.

The death of an heir of the Marnys is an event that history makes a
note of.

The old Duc's chair was placed close to the bed, where lay the dead
body of the young Vicomte. He made no movement, nor dit he utter a
word or sigh. Some of those who were present at the time declared that
his mind had completely given way, and that he neither felt nor
understood the death of his son.

The Marquis de Villefranche, who had followed his friend to the last,
took a final leave of the sorrowing house.

Juliette scarcely noticed him. Her eyes were fixed on her father. She
would not look at her brother. A childlike fear had seized her, there,
suddenly, between these two silent figures: the living and the dead.

But just as the Marquis was leaving the room, the old man spoke for the
first time.

"Marquis," he said very quietly, "you forget - you have not yet told me
who killed my son."

"It was in a fair fight, M. de Duc," replied the young Marquis, awed in
spite of all his frivolity, his light-heartedness, by this strange,
almost mysterious tragedy.

"Who killed my son, M. le Marquis?" repeated the old man mechanically.
"I have the right to know," he added with sudden, weird energy.

"It was M. Paul Déroulède, M. le Duc," replied the Marquis. "I repeat, it
was in fair fight."

The old Duc sighed as if in satisfaction. Then with a courteous
gesture of farewell reminiscent of the _grand siècle_ he added:

"All thanks from me and mine to you, Marquis, would seem but a mockery.
Your devotion to my son is beyond human thanks. I'll not detain you
now. Farewell."

Escorted by two lacqueys, the Marquis passed out of the room.

"Dismiss all the servants, Juliette; I have something to say," said the
old Duc, and the young girl, silent, obedient, did as her father bade
her.

Father and sister were alone with their dead. As soon as the last
hushed footsteps of the retreating servants died away in the distance.
The Duc de Marny seemed to throw away the lethargy which had enveloped
him until now. With a quick, feverish gesture he seized his daughter's
wrist, and murmured excitedly:

"His name. You heard his name, Juliette?"

"Yes, father," replied the child.

"Paul Déroulède! Paul Déroulède! You'll not forget it?"

"Never, father!"

"He killed your brother! You understand that? Killed my only son, the
hope of my house, the last descendant of the most glorious race that
has ever added lustre to the history of France."

"In fair fight, father!" protested the child.

"'Tis not fair for a man to kill a boy," retorted the old man, with
furious energy.

"Déroulède is thirty: my boy was scarce out of his teens: may the vengeance
of God fall upon the murderer!"

Juliette, awed, terrified, was gazing at her father with great,
wondering eyes. He seemed unlike himself. His face wore a curious
expression of ecstasy and of hatred, also of hope and exultation,
whenever he looked steadily at her.

That the final glimmer of a tottering reason was fast leaving the poor,
aching head she was too young to realise. Madness was a word that had
only a vague meaning for her. Though she did not understand her father
at the present moment, though she was half afraid of him, she would
have rejected with scorn and horror any suggestion that he was mad.

Therefore when he took her hand and, drawing her nearer to the bed and
to himself, placed it upon her dead brother's breast, she recoiled at
the touch of the inanimate body, so unlike anything she had ever
touched before, but she obeyed her father without any question, and
listened to his words as to those of a sage.

"Juliette, you are now fourteen, and able to understand what I am going
to ask of you. If I were not chained to this miserable chair, if I
were not a hopeless, abject cripple, I would not depute anyone, not
even you, my only child, to do that, which God demands that one of us
should do."

He paused a moment, then continued earnestly:

"Remember, Juliette, that you are of the house of Marny, that you are a
Catholic, and that God hears you now. For you shall swear an oath
before Him and me, an oath from which only death can relieve you. Will
you swear, my child?"

"If you wish it, father."

"You have been to confession lately, Juliette?"

"Yes, father; also to holy communion, yesterday," replied the child.
"It was the Fête-Dieu, you know."

"Then you are in a state of grace, my child?"

"I was yesterday morning, father," replied the young girl naïvely, "but I
have committed some little sins since then."

"Then make your confession to God in your heart now. You must be in a
state of grace when you speak the oath."

The child closed her eyes, and as the old man watched her, he could see
the lips framing the words of het spirituel confession.

Juliette made the sign of the cross, then opened her eyes and looked at
her father.

"I am ready, father," she said; "I hope God has forgiven me the little
sins of yesterday."

"Will you swear, my child?"

"What, father?"

"That you will avenge your brother's death on his murderer?"

"But, father..."

"Swear it, my child!"

"How can I fulfil that oath, father? - I don't understand..."

"God will guide you, my child. When you are older you will understand."

For a moment Juliette still hesitated. She was just on that borderland
between childhood and womanhood when all the sensibilities, the nervous
system, the emotions, are strung to their highest pitch.

Throughout her short life she had worshipped her father with a
whole-hearted, passionate devotion, which had completely blinded her to
his weakening faculties and the feebleness of his mind.

She was also in that initial stage of enthusiastic piety which
overwhelms every girl of temperament, if she be brought up in the Roman
Catholic religion, when she is first initiated into the mysteries of
the Sacraments.

Juliette had been to confession and communion. She had been confirmed
by Monseigneur, the Archbishop. Her ardent nature had responded to the
full to the sensuous and ecstatic expressions of the ancient faith.

And somehow her father's wish, her brother's death, all seemed mingled
in her brain with that religion, for which in her juvenile enthusiasm
she would willingly have laid down her life.

She thought of all the saints, whose lives she had been reading. Her
young heart quivered at the thought of _their_ sacrifices, their
martyrdoms, their sense of duty.

An exaltation, morbid perhaps, superstitious and overwhelming, took
possession of her mind; also, perhaps, far back in the innermost
recesses of her heart, a pride in her own importance, her mission in
life, her individuality: for she was a girl after all, a mere child,
about to become a woman.

But the old Duc was waxing impatient.

"Surely you do not hesitate, Juliette, with your dead brother's body
clamouring mutely for revenge? You, the only Marny left now! - for
from this day I too shall be as dead."

"No, father," said the young girl in an awed whisper, "I do not
hesitate. I will swear, just as you bid me."

"Repeat the words after me, my child."

"Yes, father."

"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me..."

"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me," repeated
Juliette firmly.

"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."

"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."

"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death, his
ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death."

"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death, his
ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death," said Juliette
solemnly.

"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day
if I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."

"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day
if I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."

The child fell upon her knees. The oath was spoken, the old man was
satisfied.

He called for his valet, and allowed himself quietly to be put to bed.

One brief hour had transformed a child into a woman. A dangerous
transformation when the brain is overburdened with emotions, when the
nerves are overstrung and the heart full to breaking.

For the moment, however, the childlike nature reasserted itself for the
last time, for Juliette, sobbing, had fled out of the room, to the
privacy of her own apartment, and thrown herself passionately into the
arms of kind old Pétronelle.





CHAPTER I

Paris :1793

The outrage.


It would have been very difficult to say why Citizen Déroulède was quite so
popular as he was. Still more difficult would it have been to state
the reason why he remained immune from the prosecutions, which were
being conducted at the rate of several scores a day, now against the
moderate Gironde, anon against the fanatic Mountain, until the whole of
France was transformed into one gigantic prison, that daily fed the
guillotine.

But Déroulède remained unscathed. Even Merlin's law of the suspect had so
far failed to touch him. And when, last July, the murder of Marat
brought an entire holocaust of victims to the guillotine - from Adam
Lux, who would have put up a statue in honour of Charlotte Corday, with
the inscription: "Greater than Brutus", to Charlier, who would have had
her publicly tortured and burned at the stake for her crime - Déroulède
alone said nothing, and was allowed to remain silent.

The most seething time of that seething revolution. No one knew in the
morning if his head would still be on his own shoulders in the evening,
or if it would be held up by Citizen Samson the headsman, for the
sansculottes of Paris to see.

Yet Déroulède was allowed to go his own way. Marat once said of him: "Il
n'est pas dangereux." The phrase had been taken up. Within the
precincts of the National Convention, Marat was still looked upon as
the great protagonist of Liberty, a martyr to his own convictions
carried to the extreme, to squalor and dirt, to the downward levelling
of man to what is the lowest type in humanity. And his sayings were
still treasured up: even the Girondins did not dare to attack his
memory. Dead Marat was more powerful than his living presentment had
been.

And he had said that Déroulède was not dangerous. Not dangerous to
Republicanism, to liberty, to that downward, levelling process, the
tearing down of old traditions, and the annihilation of past
pretensions.

Déroulède had once been very rich. He had had sufficient prudence to give
away in good time that which, undoubtedly, would have been taken away
from him later on.

But when he gave willingly, at a time when France needed it most, and
before she had learned how to help herself to what she wanted.

And somehow, in this instance, France had not forgotten: an invisible
fortress seemed to surround Citizen Déroulède and keep his enemies at bay.
They were few, but they existed. The National Convention trusted him.
"He was not dangerous" to them. The people looked upon him as one of
themselves, who gave whilst he had something to give. Who can gauge
that most elusive of all things: _Popularity?_

He lived a quiet life, and had never yielded to the omni-prevalent
temptation of writing pamphlets, but lived alone with his mother and
Anne Mie, the little orphaned cousin whom old Madame Déroulède had taken
care of, ever since the child could toddle.

Everyone knew his house in the Rue Ecole de Médecine, not far from the
one wherein Marat lived and died, the only solid, stone house in the
midst of a row of hovels, evil-smelling and squalid.

The street was narrow then, as it is now, and whilst Paris was cutting
off the heads of her children for the sake of Liberty and Fraternity,
she had no time to bother about cleanliness and sanitation.

Rue Ecole de Médecine did little credit to the school after which it was
named, and it was a most unattractive crowd that usually thronged its
uneven, muddy pavements.

A neat gown, a clean kerchief, were quite an unusual sight down this
way, for Anne Mie seldom went out, and old Madame Déroulède hardly ever
left her room. A good deal of brandy was being drunk at the two
drinking bars, one at each end of the long, narrow street, and by five
o'clock in the afternoon it was undoubtedly best for women to remain
indoors.

The crowd of dishevelled elderly Amazons who stood gossiping at the
street corner could hardly be called women now. A ragged petticoat, a
greasy red kerchief round the head, a tattered, stained shift - to this
pass of squalor and shame had Liberty brought the daughters of France.

And they jeered at any passer-by less filthy, less degraded than
themselves.

"Ah! voyons l'aristo!" they shouted every time a man in decent clothes,
a woman with tidy cap and apron, passed swiftly down the street.

And the afternoons were very lively. There was always plenty to see:
first and foremost, the long procession of tumbrils, winding its way
from the prisons to the Place de la Révolution. The forty-four thousand
sections of the Committee of Public Safety sent their quota, each in
their turn, to the guillotine.

At one time these tumbrils contained royal ladies and gentlemen,
_ci-devant_ dukes and princesses, aristocrats from every county in
France, but now this stock was becoming exhausted. The wretched Queen
Marie Antoinette still lingered in the Temple with her son and
daughter. Madame Elisabeth was still allowed to say her prayers in
peace, but _ci-devant_dukes and counts were getting scarce: those who
had not perished at the hand of Citizen Samson were plying some trade
in Germany or England.

There were aristocratic joiners, innkeepers, and hairdressers. The
proudest names in France were hidden beneath trade signs in London and
Hamburg. A good number owed their lives to that mysterious Scarlet
Pimpernel, that unknown Englishman who had snatched scores of victims
from the clutches of Tinville the Prosecutor, and sent M. Chauvelin,
baffled, back to France.

Aristocrats were getting scarce, so it was now the turn of deputies of
the National Convention, of men of letters, men of science or of art,
men who had sent others to the guillotine a twelvemonth ago, and men
who had been loudest in defence of anarchy and its Reign of Terror.

They had revolutionised the Calendar: the Citizen-Deputies, and every
good citizen of France, called this 19th day of August 1793 the 2nd
Fructidor of the year I. of the New Era.

At six o'clock on that afternoon a young girl suddenly turned the angle
of the Rue Ecole de Médecine, and after looking quickly to the right and
left she began deliberately walking along the narrow street.

It was crowded just then. Groups of excited women stood jabbering
before every doorway. It was the home-coming hour after the usual
spectacle on the Place de la Révolution. The men had paused at the
various drinking booths, crowding the women out. It would be the turn
of these Amazons next, at the brandy bars; for the moment they were
left to gossip, and to jeer at the passer-by.

At first the young girl did not seem to heed them. She walked quickly
along, looking defiantly before her, carrying her head erect, and
stepping carefully from cobblestone to cobblestone, avoiding the mud,
which could have dirtied her dainty shoes.

The harridans passed the time of day to her, and the time of day meant
some obscene remark unfit for women's ears. The young girl wore a
simple grey dress, with fine lawn kerchief neatly folded across her
bosom, a large hat with flowing ribbons sat above the fairest face that
ever gladdened men's eyes to see.

Fairer still it would have been, but for the look of determination
which made it seem hard and old for the girl's years.

She wore the tricolour scarf round her waist, else she had been more
seriously molested ere now. But the Pepublican colours were her
safeguard: whilst she walked quietly along, no one could harm her.

Then suddenly a curious impulse seemed to seize her. It was just
outside the large stone house belonging to Citizen-Deputy Déroulède. She
had so far taken no notice of the groups of women which she had come
across. When they obstructed the footway, she had calmly stepped out
into the middle of the road.

It was wise and prudent, for she could close her ears to obscene
language and need pay no heed to insult.

Suddenly she threw up her head defiantly.

"Will you please let me pass?" she said loudly, as a dishevelled Amazon
stood before her with arms akimbo, glancing sarcastically at the lace
petticoat, which just peeped beneath the young girl's simple grey
frock.

"Let her pass? Let her pass? Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the old woman,
turning to the nearest group of idlers, and apostrophising them with a
loud oath. "Did _you_ know, citizeness, that this street had been
specially made for aristos to pass along?"

"I am in a hurry, will you let me pass at once?" commanded the young
girl, tapping her foot impatiently on the ground.

There was the whole width of the street on her right, plenty of room
for her to walk along. It seemed positive madness to provoke a quarrel
singlehanded against this noisy group of excited females, just home
from the ghastly spectacle around the guillotine.

And yet she seemed to do it wilfully, as if coming to the end of her
patience, all her proud, aristocratic blood in revolt against this
evil-smelling crowd which surrounded her.

Half-tipsy men and noisome, naked urchins seemed to have sprung from
everywhere.

"Oho, quelle aristo!" they shouted with ironical astonishment, gazing
at the young girl's face, fingering her gown, thrusting begrimed,
hate-distorted faces close to her own.

Instinctively she recoiled and backed towards the house immediately on
her left. It was adorned with a porch made of stout oak beams, with a
tiled roof; an iron lantern descended from this, and there was a stone
parapet below, and a few steps, at right angles from the pavement, led
up to the massive door.

On these steps the young girl had taken refuge. Proud, defiant, she
confronted the howling mob, which she had so wilfully provoked.

"Of a truth, Citizeness Margot, that grey dress would become you well!"
suggested a young man, whose red cap hung in tatters over an evil and
dissolute-looking face.

"And all that fine lace would make a splendit jabot round the aristo's
neck when Citizen Samson holds up her head for us to see," added
another, as with mock elegance he stooped and with two very grimy
fingers slightly raised the young girl's grey frock, displaying the
lace-edged petticoat beneath.

A volley of oaths and loud, ironical laughter greeted this sally.

"'Tis mighty fine lace to be thus hidden away," commented an elderly
harridan. "Now, would you believe it, my fine madam, but my legs are
bare underneath my kirtle?"

"And dirty, too, I'll lay a wager," laughed another. "Soap is dear in
Paris just now."

"The lace on the aristo's kerchief would pay the baker's bill of a
whole family for a month!" shouted an excited voice.

Heat and brandy further addled the brains of this group of French
citizens; hatred gleamed out of every eye. Outrage was imminent. The
young girl seemed to know it, but she remained defiant and
self-possessed, gradually stepping back and back up the steps, closely
followed by her assailants.

"To the Jew with the gewgaw, then!" shouted a thin, haggard female
viciously, as she suddenly clutched at the young girl's kerchief, and
with a mocking, triumphant laugh tore it from het bosom.

This outrage seemed to be the signal for the breaking down of the final
barriers which ordinary decency should have raised. The language and
vituperation became such as no chronicler could record.

The girl's dainty white neck, her clear skin, the refined contour of
shoulders and bust, seemed to have aroused the deadliest lust of hate
in these wretched creatures, rendered bestial by famine and squalor.

It seemed almost as if one would vie with the other in seeking for
words which would most offend these small aristocratic ears.

The young girl was now crouching against the doorway, her hands held up
to her ears to shut out the awful sounds. She did not seem frightened,
only appalled at the terrible volcano which she had provoked.

Suddenly a miserable harridan struck her straight in the face, with
hard, grimy fist, and a long shout of exultation greeted this monstrous
deed.

Then only did the girl seem to lose her selfcontrol.

""A moi," she shouted loudly, whilst hammering with both hands against
the massive doorway. "A moi! Murder! Murder! Citoyen Déroulède, à moi!"

But her terror was greeted with renewed glee by her assailants. They
were now roused to the highest point of frenzy: the crowd of brutes
would in the nex moment have torn the helpless girl from her place of
refuge and dragged her into the mire, an outraged prey, for the
satisfaction of an ungovernable hate.

But just as half-a-dozen pairs of talon-like hands clutched frantically
at her skirts, the door behind her was quickly opened. She felt her
arm seized firmly, and herself dragged swiftly within the shelter of
the threshold.

Her senses, overwrought by the terrible adventure which she had just
gone through, were threatening to reel; she heard the massive door
close, shutting out the yells of baffled rage, the ironical laughter,
the obscene words, which sounded in her ears like the shrieks of
Dante's damned.

She could not see her rescuer, for the hall into which he had hastily
dragged her was only dimly lighted. But a peremptory voice said
quickly:

"Up the stairs, the room straight in front of you, my mother is there.
Go quickly."

She had fallen on her knees, cowering against the heavy oak beam which
supported the ceiling, and was straining her eyes to catch sight of the
man, to whom at this moment she perhaps owed more than her life: but he
was standing against the doorway, with his hand on the latch.

"What are you going to do?" she murmured.

"Prevent their breaking into my house in order to drag you out of it,"
he replied quietly; "so, I pray you, do as I bid you."

Mechanically she obeyed him, drew herself to her feet, and, turning
towards the stairs, began slowly to mount the shallow steps. Her knees
were shaking under her, her whole body was trembling with horror at the
awesome crisis she had just traversed.

She dared not look back at her rescuer. Her head was bent, and her
lips were murmuring half-audible words as she went.

Outside the hooting and yelling was becoming louder and louder.
Enraged fists were hammering violently against the stout oak door.

At the top of the stairs, moved by an irresistible impulse, she turned
and looked into the hall.

She saw his figure dimly outlined in the gloom, one hand on the latch,
his head thrown back to watch her movements.

A door stood ajar immediately in front of her. She pushed it open and
went within.

At that moment he too opened the door below. The shrieks of the
howling mob once more resounded close to her ears. It seemed as if
they had surrounded him. She wondered what was happening, and
marvelled how he dared to face that awful crowd alone.

The room into which she had entered was gay and cheerful-looking with
its dainty chintz hangings and graceful, elegant pieces of furniture.
The young girl looked up, as a kindly voice said to her, from out the
depths of a capacious armchair:

"Come in, come in, my dear, and close the door behind you! Did those
wretches attack you? Never mind. Paul will speak to them. Come here,
my dear, and sit down; there's no cause now for fear."

Without a word the young girl came forward. She seemed now to be
walking in a dream, the chintz hangings to be swaying ghostlike around
her, the yells and shrieks below to come from the very bowels of the
earth.

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