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I Will Repay

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy >> I Will Repay




The old lady continued to prattle on. She had taken the girl's hand in
hers, and was gently forcing her down on to a low stool beside her
armchair. She was talking about Paul, and said something about Anne
Mie, and then about the National Convention, and those beasts and
savages, but mostly about Paul.

The noise outside had subsided. The girl felt strangely sick and
tired. Her head seemed to be whirling round, the furniture to be
dancing round her; the old lady's face looked at her through a swaying
veil, and then - and then...

Tired Nature was having her way at last; she folded the quivering young
body in her motherly arms, and wrapped the aching senses beneath her
merciful mantle of unconsciousness.





CHAPTER II

Citizen-Deputy.


When, presently, the young girl awoke, with a delicious feeling of rest
and well-being, she had plenty of leisure to think.

So, then, this was his house! She was actually a guest, a rescued protégé,
beneath the roof of Citoyen Déroulède.

He had dragged her from the clutches of the howling mob which she had
provoked; his mother had made her welcome, a sweet-faced, young girl
scarce out of her teens, sad-eyed and slightly deformed, had waited
upon her and made her happy and comfortable.

Juliette de Marny was in the house of the man, whom she had sworn
before her God and before her father to pursue with hatred and revenge.

Ten years had gone by since then.

Lying upon the sweet-scented bed which the hospitality of the Déroulèdes
had provided for her, she seemed to see passing before her the spectres
of these past ten years - the first four, after her brothers death,
until the old Duc de Marny's body slowly followed his soul to its grave.

After that last glimmer of life beside the deathbed of his son, the old
Duc had practically ceased to be. A mute, shrunken figure, he merely
existed; his mind vanished, his memory gone, a wreck whom Nature
fortunately remembered at last, and finally took away from the invalid
chair which had been his world.

Then came those few years at the Convent of the Ursulines. Juliette
had hoped that she had a vocation; her whole soul yearned for a
secluded, a religious, life, for great barriers of solemn vows and days
spent in prayer and contemplation, to interpose between herself and the
memory of that awful night when, obedient to her father's will, she had
made the solemn oath to avenge her borther's death.

She was only eighteen when she first entered the convent, directly
after her father's death, when she felt very lonely - both morally and
mentally lonely - and followed by the obsession of that oath.

She never spoke of it to anyone except to her confessor, and he, a
simple-minded man of great learning and a total lack of knowledge of
the world, was completely at a loss how to advise.

The Archbishop was consulted. He could grant a dispensation, and
release her of that most solemn vow.

When first this idea was suggested to her, Juliette was exultant. Her
entire nature, which in itself was wholesome, light-hearted, the very
reverse of morbid, rebelled against this unnatural task placed upon her
young shoulders. It was only religion - the strange, warped religion
of that extraordinary age - which kept her to it, which forbade her
breaking lightly that most unnatural oath.

The Archbishop was a man of many duties, many engagements. He agreed
to give this strange "cas de conscience" his most earnest attention.
He would make no promises. But Mademoiselle de Marny was rich: a
munificent donation to the poor of Paris, or to some cause dear to the
Holy Father himself, might perhaps be more acceptable to God than the
fulfilment of a compulsory vow.

Juliette, within the convent walls, was waiting patiently for the
Archbishop's decision at the very moment, when the greatest upheaval
the world has ever known was beginning to shake the very foundations of
France.

The Archbishop had other thins now to think about than isolated cases
of conscience. He forgot all about Juliette, probably. He was busy
consoling a monarch for the loss of his throne, and preparing himself
and his royal patron for the scaffold.

The Convent of the Ursulines was scattered during the Terror. Everyone
remembers the Thermidor massacres, and the thirty-four nuns, all
daughters of ancient families of France, who went so cheerfully to the
scaffold.

Juliette was one of those who escaped condemnation. How or why, she
herself could not have told. She was very young, and still a
postulant; she was allowed to live in retirement with Pétronelle, her old
nurse, who had remained faithful through all these years.

Then the Archbishop was prosecuted and imprisoned. Juliette made
frantic efforts to see him, but all in vain. When he died, she looked
upon her spiritual guide's death as a direct warning from God, that
nothing could relieve her of her oath.

She had watched the turmoils of the Revolution through the attic window
of her tiny apartment in Paris. Waited upon by faithful Pétronelle, she
had been forced to live on the savings of that worthy old soul, as all
her property, all the Marny estates, the _dot_ she took with her to the
convent - everything, in fact - had been seized by the Revolutionary
Government, self appointed to level fortunes, as well as individuals.

From that attic window she had seen beautiful Paris writhing under the
pitiless lash of the demon of terror which it had provoked; she had
heard the rumble of the tumbrils, dragging day after day their load of
victims to the insatiable maker of this Revolution of Fraternity - the
Guillotine.

She had seen the gay, light-hearted people of this Star-City turned to
howling beasts of prey, its women changed to sexless vultures, with
murderous talons implanted in everything that is noble, high or
beautiful.

She was not twenty when the feeble, vacillating monarch and his
imperious consort were dragged back - a pair of humiliated prisoners -
to the capital from which they had tried to flee.

Two years later, she had heard the cries of an entire people exulting
over a regicide. Then the murder of Marat, by a young girl like
herself, the pale-faced, large-eyed Charlotte, who had commited a crime
for the sake of a conviction. "Greater than Brutus!" some had called
her. Greater than Joan of Arc, for it was to a mission of evil and of
sin that she was called from the depths of her Breton village, and not
to one of glory and triumph.

"Greater than Brutus!"

Juliette followed the trial of Charlotte Corday with all the passionate
ardour of her exalted temperament.

Just think what an effect it must have had upon the mind of this young
girl, who for nine years - the best of her life - had also lived with
the idea of a sublime mission pervading her very soul.

She watched Charlotte Corday at her trial. Conquering her natural
repulsion for such scenes, and the crowds which usually watched them,
she had forced her way into the foremost rank of the narrow gallery
which overlooked the Hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

She heard the indictment, heard Tinville's speech and the calling of
the witnesses.

"All this is unnecessary. I killed Marat!"

Juliette heard the fresh young voice ringing out clearly aboven the
murmur of voices, the howls of execration; she saw the beautiful young
face, clear, calm, impassive.

"I killed Marat!"

And there in the special space allotted to the Citizen-Deputies,
sitting among those who represented the party of the Moderate Gironde,
was Paul Déroulède, the man whom she had sworn to pursue with a vengeance
as great, as complete, as that which guided Charlotte Corday's hand.

She watched him during the trial, and wondered if he had any
presentiment of the hatred which dogged him, like unto the one which
had dogged Marat.

He was very dark, almost swarthyn a son of the South, with brown hair,
free from powder, thrown back and revealing the brow of a student
rather than that of a legislator. He watched Charlotte Corday
earnestly, and Juliette who watched him saw the look of measureless
pity, which softened the otherwise hard look of his close-set eyes.

He made an impassioned speech for the defence: a speech which has
become historic. It would have cost any other man his head.

Juliette marvelled at his courage; to defend Charlotte Corday was
equivalent to acquiescing in the death of Marat: Marat, the friend of
the people; Marat, whom his funeral orators had compared to the Great,
the Sacred Leveller of Mankind!

But Déroulède's speech was not a defence, it was an appeal. The most
eloquent man of that eloquent age, his words seemed to find that hidden
bit of sentiment which still lurked in the hearts of these strange
protagonists of Hate.

Everyone round Juliette listened as he spoke: "It is Citoyen Déroulède!"
whispered the bloodthirsty Amazons, who sat knitting in the gallery.

But there was no further comment. A huge, magnificently-equipped
hospital for sick children had been thrown open in Paris that very
morning, a gift to the nation from Citoyen Déroulède. Surely he was
privileged to talk a little, if it pleased him. His hospital would
cover quite a good many defalcations.

Even the rabid Mountain, Danton, Merlin, Santerre, shrugged their
shoulders. "It is Déroulède, let him talk an he list. Murdered Marat said
of him that he was not dangerous."

Juliette heard it all. The knitters round her ware talking loudly.
Even Charlotte was almost forgotten whilst Déroulède talked. He had a fine
voice, of strong calibre, which echoed powerfully through the hall.

He was rather short, but broad-shouldered and well knit, with an
expressive hand, which looked slender and delicate below the fine lace
ruffle.

Charlotte Corday was condemned. All Déroulède's eloquence could not save
her.

Juliette left the court in a state of mad exultation. She was very
young: the scenes she had witnessed in the past two years could not
help but excite the imagination of a young girl, left entirely to her
own intellectual and moral resources.

What scenes! Great God!

And now to wait for an opportunity! Charlotte Corday, the
half-educated litte provincial should not put to shame Mademoiselle de
Marny, the daughter of a hundred dukes, of those who had made France
before she took to unmaking herself.

But she could not formulate any definite plans. Pétronelle, poor old
soul, her only confidante, was not of the stuff that heroines are made
of. Juliette felt impelled by duty, and duty at best is not so prompt
a counsellor as love or hate.

Her adventure outside Déroulède's house had not been premeditated. Impulse
and coincidence had worked their will with her.

She had been in the habit, daily, for the past month, of wandering down
the Rue Ecole de Médecine, ostensibly to gaze at Marat's dwelling, as
crowds of idlers were wont to do, but really in order to look at
Déroulède's house. Once or twice she saw him coming or going from home.
Once she caught sight of the inner hall, and of a young girl in a dark
kirtle and snow-white kerchief bidding him good-bye at his door.
Another time she caught sight of him at the corner of the street,
helping that same young girl over the muddy pavement. He had just met
her, and she was carrying a basket of provisions: he took it from her
and carried it to the house.

Chivalrouse - eh? - and innately so, evidently, for the girl was
slightly deformed: hardly a hunchback, but weak and
unattractive-looking, with melancholy eyes, and a pale, pinched face.

It was the thought of that little act of simple chivalry, witnessed the
day before, which caused Juliette to provoke the scene which, but for
Déroulède's timely interference, might have ended so fatally. But she
reckoned on that interference: the whole thing had occurred to her
suddenly, and she had carried it through.

Had not her father said to her that when the time came, God would show
her a means to the end?

And now she was inside the house of the man who had murdered her
brother and sent her sorrowing father, a poor, senseless maniac,
tottering to the grave.

Would God's finger point again, and show her what to to next, how best
to accomplish what she had sworn to do?






CHAPTER III

Hospitality.


"Is there anything more I can do for you now, mademoiselle?"

The gentle, timid voice roused Juliette from the contemplation of the
past.

She smiled at Anne Mie, and held her hand out towards her.

"You have all been so kind," she said, "I want to get up now and thank
you all."

"Don't move unless you feel quite well."

"I am quite well now. Those horrid people frightened me so, that is
why I fainted."

"They would have half-killed you, if..."

"Will you tell me where I am?" asked Juliette.

"In the house of M. Paul Déroulède - I should have said of Citizen-Deputy
Déroulède. He rescued you from the mob, and pacified them. He has such a
beautiful voice that he can make anyone listen to him, and..."

"And you are fond of him, mademoiselle?" added Juliette, suddenly
feeling a mist of tears rising to her eyes.

"Of course I am fond of him,' rejoined the other girl simply, whilst a
look of the most tender-hearted devotion seemed to beautify her pale
face. "He and Madame Déroulède have brought me up; I never knew my
parents. They have cared for me, and he has taught me all I know."

"What do they call you, mademoiselle?"

"My name is Anne Mie."

"And mine, Juliette - Juliette Marny," she added after a slight
hesitation. "I have no parents either. My old nurse, Pétronelle, has
brought me up, and - But tell me more about M. Déroulède - I owe him so
much, I'd like to know him better."

"Will you not let me arrange your hair?" said Anne Mie as if purposely
evading a direct reply. "M. Déroulède is in the salon with madame. You
can see him then."

Juliette asked no more questions, but allowed Anne Mie to tidy her hair
for her, to lend her a fresh kerchief and generally to efface all
traces of her terrible adventure. She felt puzzled and tearful. Anne
Mie's gentleness seemed somehow to jar on her spirits. She could not
understand the girl's position in the Déroulède household. Was she a
relative, or a superior servant? In these troublous times she might
easily have been both.

In any case she was a childhood's companion of the Citizen-Deputy -
whether on an equal or a humbler footing, Juliette would have given
much to ascertain.


With the marvellous instinct peculiar to women of temperament, she had
already divined Anne Mie's love for Déroulède. The poor young cripple's
very soul seemed to quiver magnetically at the bare mention of his
name, her whole face became transfigured: Juliette even thought her
beautiful then.

She looked at herself critically in the glass, and adjusted a curl,
which looked its best when it was rebellious. She scrutinised her own
face carefully; why? she could not tell: another of those subtle
feminine instincts perhaps.

The becoming simplicity of the prevailing mode suited her to
perfection. The waist line, rather high but clearly defined - a
precursor of the later more accentuated fashion - gave grace to her
long slender limbs, and emphasised the lissomeness of her figure. The
kerchief, edged with fine lace, and neatly folded across her bosom,
softened the contour of her girlish bust and shoulders.

And her hair was a veritable glory round her dainty, piquant face.
Soft, fair, and curly, it emerged in a golden halo from beneath the
prettiest little lace rap imaginable.

She turned and faced Anne Mie, ready to follow her out of the room, and
the young crippled girl sighed as she smoothed down the folds of her
own apron, and gave a final touch to the completion of Juliette's
attire.

The time before the evening meal slipped by like a dream-hour for
Juliette.

She had lived so much alone, had led such an introspective life, that
she had hardly realised and understood all that was going on around
her. At the time when the inner vitality of France first asserted
itself and then swept away all that hindered its mad progress, she was
tied to the invalid chair of her half-demented father; then, after
that, the sheltering walls of the Ursuline Convent had hidden from her
mental vision the true meaning of the great conflict, between the Old
Era and the New.

Déroulède was neither a pedant nor yet a revolutionary: his theories were
Utopian and he had an extraordinary overpowering sympathy for his
fellow-men.

After the first casual greetings with Juliette, he had continued a
discussion with his mother, which the young girl's entrance had
interrupted.

He seemed to take but little notice of her, although at times his dark,
keen eyes would seek hers, as if challenging her for a reply.

He was talking of the mob of Paris, whom he evidently understood so
well. Incidents such as the one which Juliette had provoked, had led
to rape and theft, often to murder, before now: but outside
Citizen-Deputy Déroulède's house everything was quiet, half-an-hour after
Juliette's escape from that howling, brutish crowd.

He had merely spoken to them, for about twenty minutes, and they had
gone away quite quietly, without even touching one hair of his head.
He seemed to love them: to know how to separate the little good that
was in them, from that hard crust of evil, which misery had put around
their hearts.

Once he addressed Juliette somewhat abruptly: "Pardon me, mademoiselle,
but for your own sake we must guard you a prisoner here awhile. No one
would harm you under this roof, but it would not be safe for you to
cross the neighbouring streets to-night."

"But I must go, monsieur. Indeed, indeed I must!" she said earnestly.
"I am deeply grateful to you, but I could not leave Pétronelle."

"Who is Pétronelle?"

"My dear old nurse, monsieur. She has never left me. Think how
anxious and miserable she must be, at my prolonged absence."

"Where does she live?"

"At No. 15 Rue Taitbout, but..."

"Will you allow me to take her a message? - telling her that you are
safe and under my roof, where it is obviously more prudent that you
should remain at present."

"If you think it best, monsieur," she replied.

Inwardly she was trembling with excitement. God had not only brought
her to this house, but willed that she should stay in it.

"In whose name shall I take the message, mademoiselle?" he asked.

"My name is Juliette Marny."

She watched him keenly as she said it, but there was not the slightest
sign in his expressive face, to show that he had recognised the name.

Ten years is a long time, and every one had lived through so much
during those years! A wave of intense wrath swept through Juliette's
soul, as she realised that he had forgotten. The name meant nothing to
him! It did not recall to him the fact that his hand was stained with
blood. During ten years she had suffered, she had fought with herself,
fought for him as it were, against the Fate which she was destined to
mete out to him, whilst he had forgotten, or at least had ceased to
think.

He bowed to her and went out of the room.

The wave of wrath subsided, and she was left alone with Madame Déroulède:
presently Anne Mie came in.

The three women chatted together, waiting for the return of the master
of the house. Juliette felt well and, in spite of herself, almost
happy. She had lived so long in the miserable, little attic alone with
Pétronelle that she enjoyed the well-being of this refined home. It was
not so grand or gorgeous of course as her father's princely palace
opposite the Louvre, a wreck now, since it was annexed by the
Committee of National Defence, for the housing of soldiery. But the
Déroulèdes' home was essentially a refined one. The delicate china on the
tall chimney-piece, the few bits of Buhl and Vernis Martin about the
room, the vision through the open doorway of the supper-table spread
with a fine white cloth, and sparkling with silver, all spoke of
fastidious tastes, of habits of luxury and elegance, which the spirit
of Equality and Anarchy had not succeeded in eradicating.

When Déroulède came back, he brought an atmosphere of breezy cheerfulness
with him.

The street was quiet now, and when walking past the hospital - his own
gift to the Nation - he had been loudly cheered. One or two ironical
voices had asked him what he had done with the aristo and her lace
furbelows, but it remained at that and Mademoiselle Marny need have no
fear.

He had brought Pétronelle along with him: his careless, lavish
hospitality would have suggested the housing of Juliette's entire
domestic establishment, had she possessed one.

As it was, the worthy old soul's deluge of happy tears had melted his
kindly heart. He offered her and her young mistress shelter, until the
small cloud should have rolled by.

After that he suggested a journey to England. Emigration now was the
only real safety, and Mademoiselle Marny had unpleasantly draw on
herself the attention of the Paris rabble. No doubt, within the next
few days her name would figure among the "suspect." She would be
safest out of the country, and could not do better than place herself
under the guidance of that English enthusiast, who had helped so many
persecuted Frenchmen to escape from the terrors of the Revolution: the
man who was such a thorn in the flesh of the Committee of Public
Safety, and who went by the nickname of The Scarlet Pimpernel.





CHAPTER IV

The faithful house-dog.


After supper they talked of Charlotte Corday.

Juliette clung to the vision of that heroine, and liked to talk of her.
She appeared as a justification of her own actions, which somehow
seemed to require justification.

She loved to hear Paul Déroulède talk; liked to provoke his enthusiasm and
to see his stern, dark face light up with the inward fire of the
enthusiast.

She had openly avowed herself as the daughter of the Duc de Marny.
When she actually named her father, and her brother killed in duel, she
saw Déroulède looking long and searchingly at her. Evidently he wondered
if she knew everything: but she returned his gaze fearlessly and
frankly, and he apparently was satisfied.

Madame Déroulède seemed to know nothing of the circumstances of that duel.
Déroulède tried to draw Juliette out, to make her speak of her brother.
She replied to his questions quite openly, but there was nothing in
what she said, suggestive of the fact that she knew who killed her
brother.

She wanted him to know who she was. If he feared an enemy in her,
there was yet time enough for him to close his doors against her.

But less than a minute later, he had renewed his warmest offers of
hospitality.

"Until we can arrange for your journey to England," he added with a
short sigh, as if reluctant to part from her.

To Juliette his attitude seemed one of complete indifference for the
wrong he had done to her and to her father: feeling that she was an
avenging spirit, with flaming sword in hand, pursuing her brother's
murderer like a relentless Nemesis, she would have preferred to see him
cowed before her, even afraid of her, though she was only a young and
delicate girl.

She dit not understand that in the simplicity of his heart, he only
wished to make amends. The quarrel with the young Vicomte de Marny had
been forced upon him, the fight had been honourable and fair, and on
his side fought with every desire to spare the young man. He had
merely been the instrument of Fate, but he felt happy that Fate once
more used him as her tool, this time to save the sister.

Whilst Déroulède and Juliette talked together Anne Mie cleared the
supper-table, then came and sat on a low stool at madame's feet. She
took no part in the conversation, but every now and then Juliette felt
the girl's melancholy eyes fixed almost reproachfully upon her.

When Juliette had retired with Pétronelle, Déroulède took Anne Mie's hand in
his.

"You will be kind to my guest, Anne Mie, won't you? She seems very
lonely, and has gone through a great deal."

"Not more than I have," murmured the young girl involuntarily.

"You are not happy, Anne Mie? I thought..."

"Is a wretched, deformed creature ever happy?" she said with sudden
vehemence, as tears of mortification rushed to her eyes, in spite of
herself.

"I dit not think that you were wretched," he replied with some sadness,
"and neither in my eyes, nor in my mother's, are you in any way
deformed."

Her mood changed at once. She clung to him, pressing his hand between
her own.

"Forgive me! I - I don't know what's the matter with me to-night," she
said with a nervous little laugh. "Let me see, you asked me to be kind
to Mademoiselle Marny, did you not?"

He nodded with a smile.

"Of course I'll be kind to her. Isn't every one kind to one who is
young and beautiful, and has great, appealing eyes, and soft, curly
hair? Ah me! how easy is the path in life for some people! What do
you want me to do, Paul? Wait on her? Be her little maid? Soothe her
nerves or what? I'll do it all, though in her eyes I shall remain both
wretched and deformed, a creature to pity, the harmless, necessary
house-dog..."

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