The Trampling of the Lilies Part 34

"It is nothing," she answered, in a dejected voice. "At least, nothing that need cause you uneasiness. They have sentenced La Boulaye to death," she announced, a spasm crossing her averted face.

He took a deep breath of relief.

"G.o.d knows they've sentenced innocent men enough. It is high time they began upon one another. It augurs well-extremely well."

They were alone in Henriette's kitchen; the faithful woman was at market. Mademoiselle was warming herself before the fire. Ombreval stood by the window. He had spent the time of her absence in the care of his clothes, and he had contrived to dress himself with some semblance of his old-time elegance which enhanced his good looks and high-born air.

"You seem to utterly forget, Monsieur, the nature of the charge upon which he has been arraigned," she said, in a tired voice.

"Why, no," he answered, and he smiled airily; "he was sufficiently a fool to be lured by the brightest eyes in France into a service for their mistress. My faith! He's not the first by many a thousand whom a woman's soft glances have undone--"

"The degree in which you profit by the service he is doing those bright eyes, appears singularly beneath the dignity of your notice."

"What a jester you are becoming, ma mie," he laughed and at the sound she shuddered again and drew mechanically nearer to the fire as though her shuddering was the result of cold.

"It is yet possible that he may not die," she said almost as if speaking to herself. "They have offered him his liberty, and his reinstatement even--upon conditions."

"How interesting!" he murmured nonchalantly. "They have an odd way of dispensing justice."

"The conditions imposed are that he shall amend the wrong he has done, and deliver up to the Convention the person of one ci-devant Vicomte d'Ombreval."

"My G.o.d!"

It was a gasp of sudden dismay that broke from the young n.o.bleman. The colour swept out of his face, and his eyes dilated with horror. Watching him Suzanne observed the sudden change, and took a fierce joy in having produced it.

"It interests you more closely now, Monsieur?" she asked.

"Suzanne," he cried, coming a step nearer, and speaking eagerly; "he knows my whereabouts. He brought me here himself. Are you mad, girl, that you can sit there so composedly and tell me this?"

"What else would you have me do?" she inquired.

"Do? Why, leave Choisy at once. Come; be stirring. In G.o.d's name, girl, bethink you that we have not a moment to lose. I know these Republicans, and how far they are to be trusted. This fellow would betray me to save his skin with as little compunction as--"

"You fool!" she broke in, an undercurrent of fierce indignation vibrating through her scorn. "What are you saying? He would betray you?

He?" She tossed her arms to Heaven, and burst into a laugh of infinite derision. "Have no fear of that, M. le Vicomte, for you are dealing with a nature of a n.o.bility that you cannot so much as surmise. If he were minded to betray you, why did he not do so to-day, when they offered him his liberty in exchange for information that would lead to your recapture?"

"But although he may have refused to-day," returned the Vicomte frenziedly, "he may think better of it to-morrow-perhaps even tonight.

Ciel! Think of the risk we run; already it may be too late. Oh, why," he demanded reproachfully, "why didn't you listen to me when, days ago, I counselled flight?"

"Because it neither was, nor is, my intention to fly."

"What?" he cried, and, his jaw fallen and his eyes wide, he regarded her. Then suddenly he caught her by the arm and shook her roughly. "Are you mad?" he cried, in a frenzy of anger and fear. "Am I to die like a dog that a sc.u.m of a Republican may save his miserable neck? Is this canaille of a revolutionist to betray me to his rabble Tribunal?"

"Already have I told you that you need fear no betrayal."

"Need I not?" he sneered. "Ma foi! but I know these ruffians. There is not an ounce of honour in the whole National Convention."

"Fool!" she blazed, rising and confronting him with an anger before which he recoiled, appalled. "Do you dare to stand there and prate of honour--you? Do you forget why he stood his trial? Do you forget why he is dying, and can you not see the vile thing that you are doing in arguing flight, that you talk of honour thus, and deny his claim to it?

Mon Dieu! Your effrontery stifles me! La Boulaye was right when he said that with us honour is but a word--just so much wind, and nothing more."

He stared at her in uncomprehending wonder. He drew away another step.

He accounted her mad, and, that he might humour her, he put by his own fears for the moment--a wonderful unselfishness this in the most n.o.bly-born Vicomte d'Ombreval.

"My poor Suzanne," he murmured. "Our trouble has demoralised your understanding. You take a false view of things. You do not apprehend the situation."

"In G.o.d's name, be silent!" she gasped.

"But the time is not one for silence," he returned.

"So I had thought," quoth she. "Yet since you can be silent and furtive in other matters, I beg that you will be silent in this also. You talk in vain, Monsieur, in any case. For I am not minded to leave Choisy. If you urge me further I shall burn our pa.s.sport."

And with that she left him, to seek the solitude of her own room. In a pa.s.sion of tears she flung herself upon the little bed, and there she lay, a prey to such an anguish as had never touched her life before.

And now, in that hour of her grief, it came to her--as the sun pierces the mist--that she loved La Boulaye; that she had loved him, indeed, since that night at Boisvert, although she had stifled the very thought, and hidden it even from herself, as being unworthy in one of her station to love a man so lowly-born as Caron. But now, on the eve of his death, the truth would no longer be denied. It cried, perchance, the louder by virtue of the pusillanimity of the craven below stairs in whose place Caron was to die; but anyhow, it cried so loudly that it overbore the stern voice of the blood that had hitherto urged her to exclude the sentiment from her heart. No account now did she take of any difference in station. Be she n.o.bler a thousand times, be he simpler a thousand times, the fact remained that she was a woman, he a man, and beyond that she did not seek to go.

Low indeed were the Lilies of France when a daughter of the race of their upholders heeded them so little and the caste they symbolised.

Henriette came to her that afternoon, and, all ignorant of the sources of her grief, she essayed to soothe and comfort her, in which, at last, she succeeded.

In the evening Ombreval sent word that he wished to speak to her--and that his need was urgent. But she returned him the answer that she would see him in the morning. She was indisposed that evening, she added, in apology.

And in the morning they met, as she had promised him. Both pale, although from different causes, and both showing signs of having slept but little. They broke their fast together and in silence, which at last he ended by asking her whether the night had brought her reflection, and whether such reflection had made her appreciate their position and the need to set out at once.

"It needed no reflection to make me realise our position better than I did yesterday," she answered. "I had hoped that it would have brought you to a different frame of mind. But I am afraid that it has not done so."

"I fail to see what change my frame of mind admits of," he answered testily.

"Have you thought," she asked at last, and her voice was cold and concentrated, "that this man is giving his life for you?"

"I have feared," he answered, with incredible callousness, "that to save his craven skin he might elect to do differently at the last moment."

She looked at him in a mighty wonder, her dark eyes open to their widest, and looking black by the extreme dilation of the pupils. So vast was her amazement at this unbounded egotism that it almost overruled her disgust.

"You cast epithets about you and bestow t.i.tles with a magnificent unconsciousness of how well they might fit you."

"Ah? For example?"

"In calling this man a craven, you take no thought for the cowardice that actuates you into hiding while he dies for you?"

"Cowardice?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Then a flush spread on his face. "Ma foi, Mademoiselle," said he, in a quivering voice, "your words betray thoughts that would be scarcely becoming in the Vicomtesse d'Ombreval."

"That, Monsieur, is a point that need give you little thought. I am not likely to become the Vicomtesse."

He bestowed her a look of mingling wonder and anger. Had he, indeed, heard her aright? Did her words imply that she disdained the honour?

"Surely," he gasped, voicing those doubts of his, "you do not mean that you would violate your betrothal contract? You do not--"

"I mean, Monsieur," she cut in, "that I will give myself to no man I do not love."