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I Will Repay

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy >> I Will Repay




Anne Mie, pushed aside by Merlin's men when they forced their way into
Déroulède's study, had, nevertheless, followed them to the door. When the
curtains were drawn aside and the room filled with light, she had seen
Juliette enthroned, apparently calm and placid, upon the sofa.

It was instinct, the instinct born of her own rejected passion, which
caused her to read in the beautiful girl's face all that lay hidden
behind the pale, impassive mask. That same second sight made her
understand Merlin's hints and allusions. She caught every inflection
of his voice, heard everything, saw everything.

And in the midst of her anxiety and her terrors for the man she loved,
there was the wild, primitive, intensely human joy at the thought of
bringing that enthroned idol, who had stolen his love, down to earth at
last.

Anne Mie was not clever; she was simple and childish, with no
complexity of passions or devious ways of intellect. It was her
elemental jealousy which suggested the cunning plan for the unmasking
of Juliette. She would make the girl cringe and fear, threaten her
with discovery, and through her very terror shame her before Paul Déroulède.

And now it was all done; it had all occurred as she had planned it.
Paul knew that his love had been wasted upon a liar and a traitor, and
Juliette stood pale, humiliated, a veritable wreck of shamed humanity.

Anne Mie had triumphed, and was profoundly, abjectly wretched in her
triumph. Great sobs seemed to tear at her very heart-strings. She had
pulled down Paul's idol from her pedestal, but the one look she had
cast at his face had shown her that she had also wrecked his life.

He seemed almost old now. The earnest, restless gaze had gone from his
eyes; he was staring mutely before him, twisting between nerveless
fingers that blank scrap of paper, which had been the means of
annihilating his dream.

All energy of attitude, all strenght of bearing, which were his chief
characteristics, seemed to have gone. There was a look of complete
blankness, of hopelessness in his listless gesture.

"How he loved her!" sighed Anne Mie, as she tenderly wrapped the shawl
round Madame Déroulède's shoulders.

Juliette had said nothing; it seemed as if her very life had gone out
of her. She was a mere statue now, her mind numb, her heart dead, her
very existence a fragile piece of mechanism. But she was looking at
Déroulède. That one sense in her had remained alive: her sight.

She looked and looked: and saw every passing sign of mental agony on
his face: the look of recognition of her guilt, the bewilderment at the
appalling crash, and now that hideous deathlike emptiness of his soul
and mind.

Never once did she detect horror or loathing. He had tried to save her
from being further humiliated before his mother, but there was no
hatred or contempt in his eyes, when he realised that she had been
unmasked by a trick.

She looked and looked, for there was no hope in her, not even despair.
There was nothing in her mind, nothing in her soul, but a great
pall-like blank.

Then gradually, as the minutes sped on, she saw the strong soul within
him make a sudden fight against the darkness of his despair: the
movement of the fingers became less listless; the powerful, energetic
figure straightened itself out; remembrance of other matters, other
interests than his own began to lift the overwhelming burden of his
grief.

He remembered the letter-case containing the compromising papers. A
vague wonder arose in him as to Juliette's motives in warding off,
through her concealment of it, the inevitable moment of its discovery
by Merlin.

The thought that her entire being had undergone a change, and that she
now wished to save him, never once entered his mind; if it had, he
would have dismissed it as the outcome of maudlin sentimentality, the
conceit of the fop, who believes his personality to be irresistible.

His own self-torturing humility pointed but to the one conclusion: that
she had fooled him all along; fooled him when she sought his
protection; fooled him when she taught him to love her; fooled him,
above all, at the moment when, subjugated by the intensity of his
passion, he had for one brief second ceased to worship in order to love.

When the bitter remembrance of that moment of sweetest folly rushed
back to his aching brain, then at last did he look up at her with one
final, agonised look of reproach, so great, so tender, and yet so
final, that Anne Mie, who saw it, felt as if her own heart would break
with the pity of it all.

But Juliette had caught the look too. The tension of her nerves seemed
suddenly to relax. Memory rushed back upon her with tumultuous
intensity. Very gradually her knees gave beneath her, and at last she
knelt down on the floor before him, her golden head bent under the
burden of her guilt and her shame.





CHAPTER XVI

Under arrest.


Déroulède did not attempt to go to her.

Only presently, when the heavy footsteps of Merlin and his men were
once more heard upon the landing, she quietly rose to her feet.

She had accomplished her act of humiliation and repentance, there
before them all. She looked for the last time upon those whom she had
so deeply wronged, and in her heart spoke an eternal farewell to that
great, and mighty, and holy love which she had called forth and then
had so hopelessly crushed.

Now she was ready for the atonement.

Merlin had already swaggered into the room. The long and arduous
search throughout the house had not improved either his temper or his
personal appearance. He was more covered with grime than he had been
before, and his narrow forehead had almost disappeared beneath the
tangled mass of his ill-kempt hair, which he had perpetually tugged
forward and roughed up in his angry impatience.

One look at his face had already told Juliette what she wished to know.
He had searched her room, and found the fragments of burnt paper,
which she had purposely left in the ash-pan.

How he would act now was the one thing of importance left for Juliette
to ponder over. That she would not escape arrest and condemnation was
at once made clear to her. Merlin's look of sneering contempt, when he
glanced towards her, had told her that.

Déroulède himself had been conscious of a feeling of intense relief when
the men re-entered the room. The tension had become unendurable. When
he saw his dethroned madonna kneel in humiliation at his feet, an
overwhelming pain had wrenched his very heart-strings.

And yet he could not go to her. The passionate, human nature within
him felt a certain proud exultation at seeing her there.

She was not above him now, she was no longer akin to the angels.

He had given no further thought to his own immediate danger. Vaguely
he guessed that Merlin would find the leather case. Where it was he
could not tell; perhaps Juliette herself had handed it to the soldiers.
She had only hidden it for a few moments, out of impulse perhaps,
fearing lest, at the first instant of its discovery, Merlin might
betray her.

He remembered now those hints and insinuations which had gone out from
the Terrorist to Juliette whilst the search was being conducted in the
study. At the time he had merely looked upon these as a base attempt
at insult, and had tortured himself almost beyond bearing, in the
endeavour to refrain from punishing that evilmouthed creature, who
dared to bandy words with his madonna.

But now he understood, and felt his very soul writhing with shame at
the remembrance of it all.

Oh yes; the return of Merlin and his men, the presence of these grimy,
degraded brutes, was welcome now. He would have wished to crowd in the
entire world, the universe and its population, between him and his
fallen idol.

Merlin's manner towards him had lost nothing of its ironical
benevolence. There was even a touch of obsequiousness apparent in the
ugly face, as the representative of the people approached the popular
Citizen-Deputy.

"Citizen-Deputy," began Merlin, "I have to bring you the welcome news,
that we have found nothing in your house that in any way can cast
suspicion upon your loyalty to the Republic. My orders, however, were
to bring you before the Committee of Public Safety, whether I had found
proofs of your guilt or not. I have found none."

He was watching Déroulède keenly, hoping even at this eleventh hour to
detect a look or a sign, which would furnish him with the proofs for
which he was seeking. The slightest suggestion of relief on Déroulède's
part, a sight of satisfaction, would have been sufficient at this
moment, to convince him and the Committee of Public Safety that the
Citizen-Deputy was guilty after all.

But Déroulède never moved. He was sufficiently master of himself not to
express either surprise or satisfaction. Yet he felt both -
satisfaction not for his own safety, but because of his mother and Anne
Mie, whom he would immediately send out of the country, out of all
danger; and also because of her, of Juliette Marny, his guest, who,
whatever she may have done against him, had still a claim on his
protection. His feeling of surprise was less keen, and quite
transient. Merlin had not found the letter-case. Juliette, stricken
with tardy remorse perhaps, had succeeded in concealing it. The matter
had practically ceased to interest him. It was equally galling to owe
his betrayal or his ultimate safety to her.

He kissed his mother tenderly, bidding her good-bye, and pressed Anne
Mie's timid little hand warmly between his own. He dit what he could
to reassure them, but, for their own sakes, he dared say nothing before
Merlin, as to his plans for their safety.

After that he was ready to follow the soldiers.

As he passed close to Juliette he bowed, and almost inaudibly whispered:

"Adieu!"

She heard the whisper, but did not respond. Her look alone gave him
the reply to his eternal farewell.

His footsteps and those of his escort were heard echoing down the
staircase, then the hall door to open and shut. Through the open
window came the sound of hoarse cheering as the popular Citizen-Deputy
appeared in the street.

Merlin, with two men beside him, remained under the portico; he told
off the other two to escort Déroulède as far as the Hall of Justice, where
sat the members of the Committee of Public Safety. The Terrorist had a
vague fear that the Citizen-Deputy would speak to the mob.

An unruly crowd of women had evidently been awaiting his appearance.
The news had quickly spread along the streets that Merlin, Merlin
himself, the ardent, bloodthirsty Jacobin, had made a descent upon Paul
Déroulède's house, escorted by four soldiers. Such an indignity, put upon
the man they most trusted in the entire assembly of the Convention, had
greatly incensed the crowd. The women jeered at the soldiers as soon
as they appeared, and Merlin dared not actually forbid Déroulède to speak.

_"A la lanterne, vieux crétin!"_ shouted one of the women, thrusting her
fist under Merlin's nose.

"Give the word, Citizen-Deputy," rejoined another, "and we'll break his
ugly face. _Nous lui casserons la gueule!_"

"_A la lanterne! A la lanterne!"_

One word from Déroulède now would have caused an open riot, and in those
days selfdefence against the mob was construed into enmity against the
people.

Merlin's work, too, was not yet accomplished. He had had no intention
of escorting Déroulède himself; he had still important business to
transact inside the house which he had just quitted, and had merely
wished to get the Citizen-Deputy well out of the way, before he went
upstairs again.

Moreover, he had expected something of a riot in the streets. The
temper of the people of Paris was at fever heat just now. The hatred
of the populace against a certain class, and against certain
individuals, was only equalled by their enthusiasm in favour of others.

They had worshipped Marat for his squalor and his vices; they
worshipped Danton for his energy and Robespierre for his calm; they
worshipped Déroulède for his voice, his gentleness and his pity, for his
care of their children and the eloquence of his speech.

It was that eloquence which Merlin feared now; but he little knew the
type of man he had to deal with.

Déroulède's influence over the most unruly, the most vicious populace the
history of the world has ever known, was not obtained through fanning
its passions. That popularity, though briljant, is always ephemeral.
The passions of a mob will invariably turn against those who have
helped to rouse them. Marat did not live to see the waning of his
star; Danton was dragged to the guillotine by those whom he had taught
to look upon that instrument of death as the only possible and
unanswerable political argument; Robespierre succumbed to the orgies of
bloodshed he himself had brought about. But Déroulède remained master of
the people of Paris for as long as he chose to exert that mastery.
When they listened to him they felt better, nobler, less hopelessly
degraded.

He kept up in their poor, misguided hearts that last flickering sense
of manhood which their bloodthirsty tyrants, under the guise of
Fraternity and Equality, were doing their best to smother.

Even now, when he might have turned the temper of the small crowd
outside his door to his own advantage, he preferred to say nothing; he
even pacified them with a gesture.

He well knew that those whom he incited against Merlin now would, once
their blood was up, probably turn against him in less than half-an-hour.

Merlin, who all along had meant to return to the house, took his
opportunity now. He allowed Déroulède and the two men to go on ahead, and
beat a hasty retreat back into the house, followed by the jeers of the
women.

_"A la lanterne, vieux crétin!"_ they shouted as soon as the hall door
was once more closed in their faces. A few of them began hammering
against the door with their fists; then they realised that their
special favourite, Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, was marching along between two
soldiers, as if he were a prisoner. The word went round that he was
under arrest, and was being taken to the Hall of Justice - a prisoner.

This was not to be. The mob of Paris had been taught that it was the
master in the city, and it had learned its lesson well. For the moment
it had chosen to take Paul Déroulède under its special protection, and as a
guard of honour to him - the women in ragged kirtles, the men with bare
legs and stripped to the waist, the children all yelling, hooting, and
shrieking - followed him, to see that none dared harm him.





CHAPTER XVII

Atonement.


Merlin waited a while in the hall, until he heard the noise of the
shrieking crowd gradually die away in the distance, then with a grunt
of satisfaction he one more mounted the stairs.

All these events outside had occurred during a very few minutes, and
Madame Déroulède and Anne Mie had been too anxious as to what was happening
in the streets, to take any notice of Juliette.

They had not dared to step out on to the balcony to see what was going
on, and, therefore, did not understand what the reopening and shutting
of the front door had meant.

The next instant, however, Merlin's heavy, slouching footsteps on the
stairs had caused Anne Mie to look round in alarm.

"It is only the soldiers come back for me," said Juliette quietly.

"For you?"

"Yes; they are coming to take me away. I suppose they did not wish to
do it in the presence of Mr. Déroulède , for fear..."

She had no time to say more. Anne Mie was still looking at her in awed
and mute surprise, when Merlin entered the room.

In his hand he held a leather case, all torn, and split at one end, and
a few tiny scraps of half-charred paper. He walked straight up to
Juliette, and roughly thrust the case and papers into her face.

"These are yours?" he said roughly.

"Yes."

"I suppose you know where they were found?"

She nodded quietly in reply.

"What were these papers which you burnt?"

"Love letters."

"You lie!"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"As you please," she said curtly.

"What were these papers?" he repeated, with a loud obscene oath which,
however, had not the power to disturb the young firl's serenity.

"I have told you," she said: "love letters, which I wished to burn."

"Who was your lover?" he asked.

Then as she did not reply he indicated the street, where cries of
"Déroulède! Vive Déroulède!" still echoed from afar.

"Were the letters from him?"

"No."

"You had more than one lover, then?"

He laughed, and a hideous leer seemed further to distort his ugly
countenance.

He thrust his face quite close to hers, and she closed her eyes, sich
with the horror of this contact with the degraded wretch. Even Anne
Mie had uttered a cry of sympathy at sight of this evil-smelling,
squalid creature torturing, with his close proximity, the beautiful,
refined girl before him.

With a rough gesture he put his clawlike hand under her delicate chin,
forcing her to turn round and to look at him. She shuddered at the
loathsome touch, but her quietude never forsook her for a moment.

It was into the power of wretches such as this man, that she had
wilfully delivered the man she loved. This brutish creature's
familiarity put the finishing touch to her own degradation, but it gave
her the courage to carry through her purpose to the end.

"You had more than one lover, then?" said Merlin, with a laugh which
would have pleased the devil himself. "And you wished to send one of
them to the guillotine in order to make way for the other? Was that
it?"

"Was that it?" he repeated, suddenly seizing one of her wrists, and
giving it as savage twist, so that she almost screamed with the pain.

"Yes," she replied firmly.

"Do you know that you brought me here on a fool's errand?" he asked
viciously; "that the Citizen-Deputy Déroulède cannot be sent to the
guillotine on mere suspicion, eh? Did you know that, when you wrote
out that denunciation?"

"No; I did not know."

"You thought we could arrest him on mere suspicion?"

"Yes."

"You knew he was Innocent?"

"I knew it."

"Why did you burn your love letters?"

"I was afraid that they would be found, and would be brought under the
notice of the Citizen-Deputy."

"A splendid combination, _ma foi!_" said Merlin, with an oath, as he
turned to the two other women, who sat pale and shrinking in a corner
of the room, not understanding what was going on, not knowing what to
think or what to believe. They had known nothing of Déroulède's plans for
the escape of Marie Antoinette, they didn't know what the letter-case
had contained, and yet they both vaguely felt that the beautiful girl,
who stood up so calmly before the loathsome Terrorist, was not a
wanton, as she tried to make out, but only misguided, mad perhaps -
perhaps a martyr.

"Did you know anything of this?" queried Merlin roughly from trembling
Anne Mie.

"Nothing," she replied.

"No one knew anything of my private affairs or of my private
correspondence," said Juliette coldly; "as you say, it was a splendid
combination. I had hoped that it would succeed. But I understand now
that Citizen-Deputy Déroulède is a personage of too much importance to be
brought to trial on mere suspicion, and my denunciation of him was not
based on facts."

"And do you know, my fine aristocrat," sneered Merlin viciously, "that
it is not wise either to fool the Committee of Public Safety, or to
denounce without cause one of the representatives of the people?"

"I know," she rejoined quietly, "that you, Citizen Merlin, are
determined that someone shall pay for this day's blunder. You dare not
now attack the Citizen-Deputy, and so you must be content with me."

"Enough of this talk now; I have no time to bandy words with aristos,"
he said roughly.

"Come now, follow the men quietly. Resistance would only aggravate
your case."

"I am quite prepared to follow you. May I speak two words to my
friends before I go?"

"No."

"I may never be able to speak to them again."

"I have said No, and I mean No. Now then, forward. March! I have
wasted too much time already."

Juliette was too proud to insist any further. She had hoped, by one
word, to soften Madame Déroulède's and Anne Mie's heart towards her. She
did not know whether they believed that miserable lie which she had
been telling to Merlin; she only guessed that for the moment they still
thought her te betrayer of Paul Déroulède.

But that one word was not to be spoken. She would have to go forth to
her certain trial, to her probable death, under the awful cloud, which
she herself had brought over her own life.

She turned quietly, and walked towards the door, where the two men
already stood at attention.

Then it was that some heaven-born instinct seemed suddenly to guide
Anne Mie. The crippled girl was face to face with a psychological
problem, which in itself was far beyond her comprehension, but vaguely
she felt that it was a problem. Something in Juliette's face had
already caused her to bitterly repent her action towards her, and now,
as this beautiful, refined woman was about to pass from under the
shelter of this roof, to the cruel publicity and terrible torture of
that awful revolutionary tribunal, Anne Mie's whole heart went out to
her in boundless sympathy.

Before Merlin or the men could prevent her, she had run up to Juliette,
taken her hand, which hung listless and cold, and kissed it tenderly.

Juliette seemed to wake as if from a dream. She looked down at Anne
Mie with a glance of hope, almost of joy, and whispered:

"It was an oath - I swore it to my father and my dead brother. Tell
him."

Anne Mie could only nod; she could not speak, for her tears were
choking her.

"But I"ll atone - with my life. Tell him," whispered Juliette.

"Now then," shouted Merlin, "out of the way, hunchback, unless you want
to come along too."

"Forgive me," said Anne Mie through her tears.

Then the men pushed her roughly aside. But at the door Juliette turned
to her once more, and said:

"Pétronelle - take care of her..."

And with a firm step she followed the soldiers out of the room.

Presently the front door was heard to open, then to shut with a loud
bang, and the house in the Rue Ecole de Médecine was left in silence.





CHAPTER XVIII

In the Luxembourg prison.


Juliette was alone at last - that is to say, comparatively alone, for
there were too many aristocrats, too many criminels and traitors, in
the prisons of Paris now, to allow of any seclusion of those who were
about to be tried, condemned, and guillotined.

The young girl had been marched through the crowded streets of Paris,
followed by a jeering mob, who readily recognised in the gentle,
high-bred girl the obvious prey, which the Committee of Public Safety
was wont, from time to time to throw to the hungry hydra-headed dog of
the Revolution.

Lately she squalid spectators of the noisome spectacle on the Place de
la Guillotine had had few of these very welcome sights: an aristocrat -
a real, elegant, refined woman, with white hands and proud, pale face -
mounting the steps of the same scaffold on which perished the vilest
criminals and most degraded brutes.

Madame Guillotine was, above all, catholic in her tastes, her gaunt
arms, painted blood red, were open alike to the murderer and the thief,
the aristocrats of ancient lineage, and the proletariat from the gutter.

But lately the executions had been almost exclusively of a political
character. The Girondins were fighting their last upon the bloody
arena of the Revolution. One by one they fell still fighting, still
preaching moderation, still foretelling disaster and appealing to that
people, whom they had roused from one slavery, in order to throw it
headlong under a tyrannical yoke more brutish, more absolute than
before.

There were twelve prisons in Paris then, and forty thousand in France,
and they were all full. An entire army went round the country
recruiting prisoners. There was no room for separate cells, no room
for privacy, no cause or desire for the most elementary sense of
delicacy.

Women, men, children - alle were herded together, for one day, perhaps
two, and a night or so, and then death would obliterate the petty
annoyances, the womanly blushes caused by this sordid propinquity.

Death levelled all, erased everything.

When Marie Antoinette mounted the guillotine she had forgotten that for
six weeks she practically lived day and night in the immediate
companionship of a set of degraded soldiery.

Juliette, as she marched through the streets between two men of the
National Guard, and followed by Merlin, was hooted and jeered at,
insulted, pelted with mud. One woman tried to push past the soldiers,
and to strike her in the face - a woman! not thirty! - and who was
dragging a pale, squalid little boy by the hand.

"_Crache donc sur l'aristo, voyons!_" the womand said to this poor,
miserable litte scrap of humanity as the soldiers pushed her roughly
aside. "Spit on the aristocrat!" And the child tortured its own
small, parched mouth so that, in obedience to its mother, it might
defile and bespatter a beautiful, innocent girl.

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