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I Will Repay

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy >> I Will Repay




To have neglected it would have been, to her, equal to denying God.

She had but vague ideas of the doctrinal side of religion. Purgatory
was to her merely a word, but a word representing a real spiritual
state - one of expectancy, of restlessness, of sorrow. And vaguely,
yet derterminedly, she believed that her brother's soul suffered,
because she had been too weak to fulfil her oath.

The Church had not come to her rescue. The ministers of her religion
were scattered to the four corners of besieged, agonising France. She
had no one to help her, no one to comfort her. That very peaceful,
contemplative life she had led in the convent, only served to enhance
her feeling of the solemnity of her mission.

It was true, it was inevitable, because it was so hard.

To the few who, throughout those troublous times, had kept a feeling of
veneration for their religion, this religion had become one of
abnegation and martyrdom.

A spirit of uncompromising Jansenism seemed to call forth sacrifices
and renunciation, whereas the happy-go-lucky Catholicism of the past
century had only suggested an easy, flowered path, to a comfortable,
well-upholstered heaven.

The harder the task seemed with was set before her, the more real it
became to Juliette. God, she firmly believed, had at last, after ten
years, shown her the way to wreak vengeance upon her brother's
murderer. He had brought her to this house, caused her to see and hear
part of the conversation between Blakeney and Déroulède, and this at the
moment of all others, when even the semblance of a conspiracy against
the Republic would bring the one inevitable result in its train:
disgrace first, the hasty mock trial, the hall of justice, and the
guillotine.

She tried not to hate Déroulède. She wished to judge him coldly and
impartially, or rather to indict hime before the throne of God, and to
punish him for the crime he had commited ten years ago. Her personal
feelings must remain out of the question.

Had Charlotte Corday considered her own sensibilities, when with her
own hand she put and end to Marat?

Juliette remained on her knees for hours. She heard Anne Mie come
home, and Déroulède's voice of welcome on the landing. Thas was perhaps
the most bitter moment of this awful soul conflict, for it brought to
her mind the remembrance of those others who would suffer too, and who
were innocent - Madame Déroulède and poor, crippled Anne Mie. They had
done no wrong, and yet how heavily would they be punished!

And then the saner judgment, the human, material code of ethics gained
for a while the upper hand. Juliette would rise from her knees, dry
her eyes, prepare quietly to go to bed, and to forget all about the
awful, relentless Fate which dragged her to the fulfilment of its will,
and then sink back, broken-hearted, murmuring impassioned prayers for
forgiveness to her father, her brother, her God.

The soul was young and ardent, and it fought for abnegation, martyrdom,
and stern duty; the body was childlike, and it fought for peace,
contentment, and quiet reason.

The rational body was conquered by the passionate, powerful soul.

Blame not the shild, for in herself she was innocent. She was but
another of the many victims of this cruel, mad, hysterical time, that
spirit of relentless tyranny, forcing its doctrines upon the weak.

With the first break of dawn Juliette at last finally rose from her
knees, bathed her burning eyes and head, tidied her hair and dress,
then she sat down at the table, and began to write.

She was a transformed being now, no longer a child, essentially a woman
- a Joan of Arc with a mission, a Charlotte Corday going to martyrdom,
a human, suffering, erring soul, committing a great crime for the sake
of an idea.

She wrote out carefully and with a steady hand the denunciation of
Citizen-Deputy Déroulède which has become an historical document, and is
preserved in the chronicles of France.

You have all seen it at the Musée Carnavalet in its glass case, its
yellow paper and faded ink revealing nothing of the soul conflict of
which it was the culminating victory. The cramped, somewhat
schoolgirlish writing is the mute, pathetic witness of one of the
saddest tragedies, that era of sorrow and crime has ever known:

_To the Representatives of the People now sitting in Assembly at the
National Convention_

You trust and believe in the Representative of the people:
Citizen-Deputy Paul Déroulède. He is false, and a traitor to the Republic.
He is planning, and hopes to effect, the release of ci-devant Marie
Antoinette, widow of the traitor Louis Capet. Haste! ye
representatives of the people! proofs of his assertion, papers and
plans, are still in the house of the Citizen-Deputy Déroulède.
This statement is made by one who knows.

_I. The 23rd Fructidor._


When her letter was written she read it through carefully, made the one
or two little corrections, which are still visible in the document,
then folded her missive, hid it within the folds of her kerchief, and,
wrapping a dark cloak and hood round her, she slipped noiselessly out
of her room.

The house was all quiet and still. She shuddered a little as the cool
morning air fanned her hot cheeks: it seemed like the breath of ghosts.

She ran quickly down the stairs, and as rapidly as she could, pushed
back the heavy bolts of the front door, and slipped out into the street.

Already the city was beginning to stir. There was no time for sleep,
when so much had to be done for the safety of the threatened Republic.
As Juliette turned her steps towards the river, she met the crowd of
workmen, whom France was employing for her defence.

Behind her, in the Luxembourg Gardens, and all along the opposite bank
of the river, the furnaces were already ablaze, and the smiths at work
forging the guns.

At every step now Juliette came across the great placards, pinned to
the tall gallows-shaped posts, whic proclaim to every passing citizen,
that the people of France are up and in arms.

Right across the Place de l'Institut a procession of market carts,
laden with vegetables and a little fruit, wends its way slowly towards
the centre of the town. They each carry tiny tricolour flags, with a
Pike and Cap of Liberty surmounting the flagstaff.

They are good patriots the market-gardeners, who come in daily to feed
the starving mob of Paris, with the few handfuls of watery potatoes,
and miserable, vermin-eaten cabbages, which that fraternal Revolution
still allows them to grow without hindrance.

Everyone seems busy with their work thus early in the morning: the
business of killing does not begin until later in the day.

For the moment Juliette can get along quite unmolested: the women and
children mostly hurrying on towards the vast encampments in the
Tuileries, where lint, and bandages, and coats for the soldiers are
manufactured all the day.

The walls of all the houses bear the great patriotic device: "Liberté,
Egalité, Fraternité, sinon La Mort"; others are more political in their
proclamation: "La Republique une et indivisible."

But on the walls of the Louvre, of the great palace of whilom kings,
where the Roi Soleil held his Court, and flirted with the prettiest
women in France, there the new and great Republic has affixed its final
mandate.

A great poster glued to the wall bears the words: "La Loi concernan les
Suspects." Below the poster is a huge wooden box with a slit at the
top.

This is the latest invention for securing the safety of this one and
indivisible Republic.

Henceforth everyone becomes a traitor at one word of denunciation from
an idler or an enemy, and, as in the most tyrannical days of the
Spanish Inquisition one-half of the nation was set to spy upon the
other, that wooden box, with its slit, is put there ready to receive
denunciations from one mand against another.

Had Juliette paused but for the fraction of a second, had she stopped
to read the placard setting forth this odious law, had she only
reflected, then she would even now have turned back, and fled from that
gruesome box of infamies, as she would from a dangerous and noisome
reptile or from the pestilence.

But her long vigil, her prayers, her ecstatic visions of heroic martyrs
had now completely numbed her faculties. Her vitality, her
sensibilities were gone: she had become an automaton gliding to her
doom, without a thought or a tremor.

She drew the letter from her bosom, and with a steady hand dropped it
into the box. The irreclaimable had now occurred. Nothing she could
henceforth say or do, no prayers or agonised vigils, no miracles even,
could undo her action or save Paul Déroulède from trial and guillotine.

One or two groups of people hurrying to their work had seen her drop
the letter into the box. A couple of small children paused, finger in
mouth, gazing at her with inane curiosity; one woman uttered a coarse
jest, all of them shrugged their shoulders, and passed on, on their
way. Those who habitually crossed this spot were used to such sights.

That wooden box, with its mouthlike slit was like an insatiable monster
that was constantly fed, yet was still gaping for more.

Having done the deed Juliette turned, and as rapidly as she had come,
so she went back to her temporary home.

A home no more now; she must leave it at once, to-day if possible.
This much she knew, that she no longer could touch the bread of the man
she had betrayed. She would not appear at breakfast, she could plead a
headache, and in the afternoon Pétronelle should pack her things.

She turned into a little shop close by, and asked for a glass of milk
and a bit of bread. The woman who served her eyed her with some
curiosity, for Juliette just now looked almost out of her mind.

She had not yet begun to think, and she had ceased to suffer.

Both would come presently, and with them the memory of this last
irretrievable hour and a just estimate of what she had done.





CHAPTER XI

"Vengeance is mine".


The pretence of a headache enabled Juliette to keep in her room the
greater part of the day. She would have liked to shut herself out from
the entire world during those hours which she spent face to face with
her own thoughts and her own sufferings.

The sight of Anne Mie's pathetic little face as she brought her food
and delicacies and various little comforts, was positive torture to the
poor, harrowed soul.

At very sound in the great, silent house she started up, quivering with
apprehension and horror. Had the sword of Damocles, which she herself
had suspended, already fallen over the heads of those who had shown her
nothing but kindness?

She could not think of Madame Déroulède or of Anne Mie without the most
agonising, the most torturing shame.

And what of him - the man she had so remorselessly, so ruthlessly
betrayed to a tribunal which would know no mercy?

Juliette dared not think of him.

She had never tried to analyse her feelings with regard to him. At the
time of Charlotte Corday's trial, when his sonorous voice rang out in
its pathetic appeal for the misguided woman, Juliette had given him
ungrudging admiration. She remembered now how strongly his magnetic
personality had roused in her a feeling of enthusiasm for the poor
girl, who had come from the depths of her quiet provincial home, in
order to accomplish the horrible deed which would immortalise her name
through all the ages to come, and cause her countrymen to proclaim her
"greater than Brutus."

Déroulède was pleading for the life of that woman, and it was his very
appeal which had aroused Juliette's dormant energy, for the cause which
her dead father had enjoined her not to forget. It was Déroulède again
whom she had seen but a few weeks ago, standing alone before the mob
who would have torn her to pieces, haranguing them on her behalf,
speaking to them with that quiet, strong voice of his, ruling them with
the rule of love and pity, and turning their wrath to gentleness.

Did she hate him, then?

Surely, surley she hated him for having thrust himself into her life,
for having caused her brother's death and covered her father's
declining years with sorrow. And, above all, she hated him - indeed,
indeed it was hate! - for being the cause of this most hideous action
of her life: an action to which she had been driven against her will,
one of basest ingratitude and treachery, foreign to every sentiment
within her heart, cowardly, abject, the unconscious outcome of this
strange magnetism which emanated from him and had cast a spell over
her, transforming her individuality and will power, and making of her
an unconscious and automatic instrument of Fate.

She would not speak of God's finger again: it was Fate - pagan,
devilish Fate! - the weird, shrivelled women who sit and spin their
interminable thread. They had decreed; and Juliette, unable to fight,
blind and broken by the conflict, had succumbed to the Megaeras and
their relentless wheel.

At length silence and loneliness became unendurable. She called
Pétronelle, and ordered her to pack her boxes.

"We leave for England to-day", she said curtly.

"For England?" gasped the worthy old soul, who was feeling very happy
and comfortable in this hospitable house, and was loth to leave it.
"So soon?"

"Why, yes; we had talked of it for some time. We cannot remain here
always. My cousins De Crécy are there, and my aunt De Coudremont. We
shall be among friends, Pétronelle, if we ever get there."

"If we ever get there!" sighed poor Pétronelle; "we have but very little
money, _ma chérie,_ and no passports. Have you thought of asking M.
Déroulède for them."

"No, no," rejoined Juliette hastily; "I'll see to the passports
somehow, Pétronelle. Sir Percy Blakeney is English; he'll tell me what
to do."

"Do you know where he lives, my jewel?"

"Yes; I heard him tell Madame Déroulède last night that he was lodging with
a provincial named Brogard at the Sign of the Cruche Cassée. I'll go
seek him, Pétronelle; I am sure he will help me. The English are so
resourceful and practical. He'll get us our passports, I know, and
advise us as to the best way to proceed. Do you stay here and get all
our things ready. I'll not be long."

She took up a cloak and hood, and, throwing them over her arm, she
slipped out of the room.

Déroulède had left the house earlier in the day. She hoped that he had
not yet returned, and ran down the stairs quickly, so that she might go
out unperceived.

The house was quite peaceful and still. It seemed strange to Juliette
that there did not hang over it some sort of pall-like presentiment of
coming evil.

From the kitchen, at some little distance from the hall, Anne Mie's
voice was heard singing an old ditty:

"De ta tige détachée
Pauvre feuille désséchée
Où vas-tu?"


Juliette paused a moment. An awful ache had seized her heart; her eyes
unconsciously filled with tears, as they roamed round the walls of this
house which had sheltered her so hospitably, these three weeks past.

And now whither was she going? Like the poor, dead leaf of the song,
she was wastrel, torn from the parent bough, homeless, friendless,
having turned against the one hand which, in this great time of peril,
had been extended to her in kindness and in love.

Conscience was beginning to rise up against her, and that hydra-headed
tyrant Remorse. She closed her eyes to shut out the hideous vision of
her crime; she tried to forget this home which her treachery had
desecrated.


"Je vais où va toute chose
Où va la feuille de rose
Et la feuille de laurier,"

sang Anne Mie plaintively.

A great sob broke from Juliette's aching heart. The misery of it all
was more than she could bear. Ah, pity her if you can! She had fought
and striven, and been conquered. A girl's soul is so young, so
impressionable; and she had grown up with that one, awful,
all-pervading idea of duty to accomplish, a most solemn oath to fulfil,
one sworn to her dying father, and on the dead body of her brother.
She had begged for guidance, prayed for release, and the voice from
above had remained silent. Weak, miserable, cringing, the human soul,
when torn with earthly passion, must look ot its own strengh for the
fight.

And now the end had come. That swift, scarce tangible dream of peace,
which had flitted through her mind during the past few weeks, had
vanished with the dawn, and she was left desolate, alone with her great
sin and its lifelong expiation.

Scarce knowing what she did, she fell on her knees, there on that
threshold, which she was about to leave for ever. Fate had placed on
her young shoulders a burden too heavy for her to bear.

"Juliette!"

At first she did not move. It was his voice coming from the study
behind her. Its magic thrilled her, as it had done that day in the
Hall of Justice. Strong, passionate, tender, it seemed now to raise
every echo of response in her heart. She thought it was a dream, and
remained there on her knees lest it should be dispelled.

Then she heard his footsteps on the flagstones of the hall. Anne Mie's
plaintive singing had died away in the distance. She started, and
jumped to her feet, hastily drying her eyes. The momentary dream was
dispelled, and she was ashamed of her weakness.

He, the cause of all her sorrows, of her sin, and of her degradation,
had no right to see her suffer.

She would have fled out of the house now, but it was too late. He had
come out of his study, and, seeing her there on her knees weeping, he
came quickly forward, trying, with all the innate chivalry of his
upright nature, not to let her see that he had been a witness to her
tears.

"You are going out, mademoiselle?" he said courteously, as, wrapping
her cloak around her, she was turning towards the door.

"Yes, yes," she replied hastily; "a small errand, I..."

"Is it anything I can do for you?"

"No."

"If..." he added, with visible embarrassment, "if your errand would
brook a delay, might I crave the honour of your presence in my study
for a few moments?"

"My errand brooks of no delay, Citizen Déroulède," she said as composedly
as she could, "and perhaps on my return I might..."

"I am leaving almost directly, mademoiselle, and I would wish to bid
you good-bye."

He stood aside to allow her to pass, either out, through the street
door or across the hall to his study.

There had been no reproach in his voice towards the guest, who was thus
leaving him without a word of farewell. Perhaps if there had been any,
Juliette would have rebelled. As it was, an unconquerable magnetism
seemed to draw her towards him, and, making an almost imperceptible
sign of acquiescence, she glided past him into his room.

The study was dark and cool; for the room faced the west, and the
shutters had been closed, in order to keep out the hot August sun. At
first Juliette could see nothing, but she felt his presence near her,
as he followed her into the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

"It is kind of you, mademoiselle," he said gently, "to accede to my
request, which was perhaps presumptuous. But, you see, I am leaving
this house to-day, and I had a selfish longing to hear your voice
bidding me farewell."

Juliette's large, burning eyes were gradually piercing the semi-gloom
around her. She could see him distinctly now, standing close beside
her, in an attitude of the deepest, almost reverential respect.

The study was as usual neat and tidy, denoting the orderly habits of a
man of action and energy. On the ground there was a valise, ready
strapped as if or a journey, and on the top of it a bulky letter-case
of stout pigskin, secured with a small steel lock. Juliette's eyes
fastened upon this case with a look of fascination and of horror.
Obviously it contained Déroulède's papers, the plans for Marie Antoinette's
escape, the passports of which he had spoken the day before to his
friend, Sir Percy Blakeney - the proofs, in fact, which she had offered
to the representatives of the people, in support of her denunciation of
the Citizen-Deputy.

After his request he had said nothing more. He was waiting for her to
speak; but her voice felt parched; it seemed to her as if hands of
steel were gripping her throat, smothering the words she would have
longed to speak.

"Will you not wish me godspeed, mademoiselle?" he repeated gently.

"Godspeed?" Oh! the awful irony of it all! Should God speed him to a
mock trial and to the guillotine? He was going thither, though he did
not know it, and was even now trying to take the hand which had
deliberately sent him there.

At last she made an effort to speak, and in a toneless, even voice she
contrived to murmur:

"You are not going for long, Citizen-Deputy?"

"In these times, mademoiselle," he replied, "any farewell might be for
ever. But I am actually going for a month to the Conciergerie, to take
charge of the unfortunate prisoner there."

"For a month!" she repeated mechanically.

"Oh yes!" he said, with a smile. "You see, our present Government is
afraid that poor Marie Antoinette will exercise her fascinations over
any lieutenant-governor of her prison, if he remain near her long
enough, so a new one is appointed every month. I shall be in charge
during this coming Vendémiaire. I shall hope to return before the
equinox, but - who can tell?"

"In any case then, Citoyen Déroulède, the farewell I bid you to-night will
be a very long one."

"A month will seem a century to me," he said earnestly, "since I must
spend it without seeing you, but..."

He looked long and searchingly at her. He did not understand her in
her present mood, so scared and wild did she seem, so unlike that
girlish, light-hearted self, which had made the dull old house so
bright these past few weeks.

"But I should not dare to hope," he murmured, "that a similar reason
would cause you to call that month a long one."

She turned perhaps a trifle paler thant she had been hitherto, and her
eyes roamed round the room like those of a trapped hare seeking to
escape.

"You misunderstand me, Citoyen Déroulède," she said at last hurriedly.
"You have all been kind - very kind - but Pétronelle and I can no longer
trespass on your hospitality. We have friends in England, and many
enemies here..."

"I know," he interrupted quietly; "it would be the most arrant
selfishness on my part to suggest, that you should stay here an hour
longer than necessary. I fear that after to-day my roof may no longer
prove a sheltering one for you. But will you allow me to arrange for
your safety, as I am arranging for that of my mother and Anne Mie? My
English friend Sir Percy Blakeney, has a yacht in readiness off the
Normandy coast. I have already seen to your passports and to all the
arrangements of your journey as far as there, and Sir Percy, or one of
his friends, will see you safely on board the English yacht. He has
given me his promise that he will do this, and I trust him as I would
myself. For the journey through France, my name is a sufficient
guarantee that you will be unmolested; and if you will allow it, my
mother and Anne Mie will travel in your company. Then..."

"I pray you stop, Citizen Déroulède," she suddenly interrupted excitedly.
"You must forgive me, but I cannot allow thus to make any arrangements
for me. Pétronelle and I must do as best we can. All your time and
trouble should be spent for the benefit of those who have a claim upon
you, whilst I..."

"You speak unkindly, mademoiselle; there is no question of claim."

"And you have no right to think..." she continued, with a growing,
nervous excitement, drawing her hand hurriedly away, for he had tried
to seize it.

"Ah! pardon me," he interrupted earnestly, "there you are wrong. I
have the right to think of you and for you - the inalienable right
conferred upon me by my great love for you."

"Citizen-Deputy!"

"Nay, Juliette; I know my folly, and I know my presumption. I know the
pride of your caste and of your party, and how much you despise the
partisan of the squalid mob of France. Have I said that I aspired to
gain your love? I wonder if I have ever dreamed it? I only know,
Juliette, that you are to me something akin to the angels, something
white and ethereal, intangible, and perhaps ununderstandable. Yet,
knowing my folly, I glory in it, my dear, and I would not let you go
out of my life without telling you of that, which has made every hour
of the past few weeks a paradise for me - my love for you, Juliette."

He spoke in that low, impressive voice of his, and with those soft,
appealing tones with which she had once heard him pleading for poor
Charlotte Corday. Yet now he was not pleading for himself, not for his
selfish wish or for his own happiness, only pleading for his love, that
she should know of it, and, knowing it, have pity in her heart for him,
and let him serve her to the end.

He dit not say anything more for a while; he had taken her hand, which
she no longer withdrew from him, for there was sweet pleasure in
feeling his strong fingers close tremblingly over hers. He pressed his
lips upon her hand, upon the soft palm and delicate wrist, his burning
kisses bearing witness to the tumultuous passion, which his reverence
for her was holding in check.

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