After Dark Part 16

"Rose Danville, the court is waiting to hear you," said the president, crossing his legs and leaning back luxuriously in his large armchair.

Amid all the noise and confusion of the last few minutes, Rose had stood ever in the same att.i.tude, with that strangely fixed expression never altering on her face but once. When her husband made his way to the side of the table and stood there prominently alone, her lips trembled a little, and a faint shade of color pa.s.sed swiftly over her cheeks. Even that slight change had vanished now--she was paler, stiller, more widely altered from her former self than ever, as she faced the president and said these words:

"I wish to follow my brother's example and make my confession, as he has made his. I would rather he had spoken for me; but he is too generous to say any words except such as he thinks may save me from sharing his punishment. I refuse to be saved, unless he is saved with me. Where he goes when he leaves this place, I will go; what he suffers, I will suffer; if he is to die, I believe G.o.d will grant me the strength to die resignedly with him!"

She paused for a moment, and half turned toward Trudaine--then checked herself instantly and went on: "This is what I now wish to say, as to my share in the offense charged against my brother. Some time ago, he told me one day that he had seen my husband's mother in Paris, disguised as a poor woman; that he had spoken to her, and forced her to acknowledge herself. Up to this time we had all felt certain that she had left France, because she held old-fas.h.i.+oned opinions which it is dangerous for people to hold now--had left France before we came to Paris. She told my brother that she had indeed gone (with an old, tried servant of the family to help and protect her) as far as Ma.r.s.eilles; and that, finding unforeseen difficulty there in getting further, she had taken it as a warning from Providence not to desert her son, of whom she was very pa.s.sionately fond, and from whom she had been most unwilling to depart.

Instead of waiting in exile for quieter times, she determined to go and hide herself in Paris, knowing her son was going there too. She a.s.sumed the name of her old and faithful servant, who declined to the last to leave her unprotected; and she proposed to live in the strictest secrecy and retirement, watching, unknown, the career of her son, and ready at a moment's notice to disclose herself to him, when the settlement of public affairs might reunite her safely to her beloved child. My brother thought this plan full of danger, both for herself, for her son, and for the honest old man who was risking his head for his mistress's sake. I thought so too; and in an evil hour I said to Louis: 'Will you try in secret to get my husband's mother away, and see that her faithful servant makes her really leave France this time?' I wrongly asked my brother to do this for a selfish reason of my own--a reason connected with my married life, which has not been a happy one. I had not succeeded in gaining my husband's affection, and was not treated kindly by him. My brother--who has always loved me far more dearly, I am afraid, than I have ever deserved--my brother increased his kindness to me, seeing me treated unkindly by my husband. This made ill-blood between them. My thought, when I asked my brother to do for me what I have said, was, that if we two in secret saved my husband's mother, without danger to him, from imperiling herself and her son, we should, when the time came for speaking of what we had done, appear to my husband in a new and better light. I should have shown how well I deserved his love, and Louis would have shown how well he deserved his brother-in-law's grat.i.tude; and so we should have made home happy at last, and all three have lived together affectionately. This was my thought; and when I told it to my brother, and asked him if there would be much risk, out of his kindness and indulgence toward me, he said 'No.' He had so used me to accept sacrifices for my happiness that I let him endanger himself to help me in my little household plan. I repent this bitterly now; I ask his pardon with my whole heart. If he is acquitted, I will try to show myself worthier of his love. If he is found guilty, I, too, will go to the scaffold, and die with my brother, who risked his life for my sake."

She ceased as quietly as she had begun, and turned once more to her brother.

As she looked away from the court and looked at him, a few tears came into her eyes, and something of the old softness of form and gentleness of expression seemed to return to her face. He let her take his hand, but he seemed purposely to avoid meeting the anxious gaze she fixed on him. His head sunk on his breast; he drew his breath heavily, his countenance darkened and grew distorted, as if he were suffering some sharp pang of physical pain. He bent down a little, and, leaning his elbow on the rail before him, covered his face with his hand; and so quelled the rising agony, so forced back the scalding tears to his heart. The audience had heard Rose in silence, and they preserved the same tranquillity when she had done. This was a rare tribute to a prisoner from the people of the Reign of Terror.

The president looked round at his colleagues, and shook his head suspiciously.

"This statement of the female prisoner's complicates the matter very seriously," said he. "Is there anybody in court," he added, looking at the persons behind his chair, "who knows where the mother of Superintendent Danville and the servant are now?"

Lomaque came forward at the appeal, and placed himself by the table.

"Why, citizen agent!" continued the president, looking hard at him, "are you overcome by the heat, too?"

"The fit seemed to take him, citizen president, when the female prisoner had made an end of her statement," exclaimed Magloire, pressing forward officiously.

Lomaque gave his subordinate a look which sent the man back directly to the shelter of the official group; then said, in lower tones than were customary with him:

"I have received information relative to the mother of Superintendent Danville and the servant, and am ready to answer any questions that may be put to me."

"Where are they now?" asked the president.

"She and the servant are known to have crossed the frontier, and are supposed to be on their way to Cologne. But, since they have entered Germany, their whereabouts is necessarily a matter of uncertainty to the republican authorities."

"Have you any information relative to the conduct of the old servant while he was in Paris?"

"I have information enough to prove that he was not an object for political suspicion. He seems to have been simply animated by servile zeal for the woman's interests; to have performed for her all the menial offices of a servant in private; and to have misled the neighbors by affected equality with her in public."

"Have you any reason to believe that Superintendent Danville was privy to his mother's first attempt at escaping from France?"

"I infer it from what the female prisoner has said, and for other reasons which it would be irregular to detail before the tribunal. The proofs can no doubt be obtained if I am allowed time to communicate with the authorities at Lyons and Ma.r.s.eilles."

At this moment Danville re-entered the court; and, advancing to the table, placed himself close by the chief agent's side. They looked each other steadily in the face for an instant.

"He has recovered from the shock of Trudaine's answer," thought Lomaque, retiring. "His hand trembles, his face is pale, but I can see regained self-possession in his eye, and I dread the consequences already."

"Citizen president," began Danville, "I demand to know if anything has transpired affecting my honor and patriotism in my absence?"

He spoke apparently with the most perfect calmness, but he looked n.o.body in the face. His eyes were fixed steadily on the green baize of the table beneath him.

"The female prisoner has made a statement, referring princ.i.p.ally to herself and her brother," answered the president, "but incidentally mentioning a previous attempt on your mother's part to break existing laws by emigrating from France. This portion of the confession contains in it some elements of suspicion which seriously affect you--"

"They shall be suspicions no longer--at my own peril I will change them to certainties!" exclaimed Danville, extending his arm theatrically, and looking up for the first time. "Citizen president, I avow it with the fearless frankness of a good patriot; I was privy to my mother's first attempt at escaping from France."

Hisses and cries of execration followed this confession. He winced under them at first; but recovered his self-possession before silence was restored.

"Citizens, you have heard the confession of my fault," he resumed, turning with desperate a.s.surance toward the audience; "now hear the atonement I have made for it at the altar of my country."

He waited at the end of that sentence, until the secretary to the tribunal had done writing it down in the report book of the court.

"Transcribe faithfully to the letter!" cried Danville, pointing solemnly to the open page of the volume. "Life and death hang on my words."

The secretary took a fresh dip of ink, and nodded to show that he was ready. Danville went on:

"In these times of glory and trial for France," he proceeded, pitching his voice to a tone of deep emotion, "what are all good citizens most sacredly bound to do? To immolate their dearest private affections and interests before their public duties! On the first attempt of my mother to violate the laws against emigration, by escaping from France, I failed in making the heroic sacrifice which inexorable patriotism demanded of me. My situation was more terrible than the situation of Brutus sitting in judgment on his own sons. I had not the Roman fort.i.tude to rise equal to it. I erred, citizens--erred as Coriola.n.u.s did, when his august mother pleaded with him for the safety of Rome! For that error I deserved to be purged out of the republican community; but I escaped my merited punishment--nay, I even rose to the honor of holding an office under the Government. Time pa.s.sed; and again my mother attempted an escape from France. Again, inevitable fate brought my civic virtue to the test. How did I meet this second supremest trial? By an atonement for past weakness, terrible as the trial itself. Citizens, you will shudder; but you will applaud while you tremble. Citizens, look!

and while you look, remember well the evidence given at the opening of this case. Yonder stands the enemy of his country, who intrigued to help my mother to escape; here stands the patriot son, whose voice was the first, the only voice, to denounce him for the crime!" As he spoke, he pointed to Trudaine, then struck himself on the breast, then folded his arms, and looked sternly at the benches occupied by the spectators.

"Do you a.s.sert," exclaimed the president, "that at the time when you denounced Trudaine, you knew him to be intriguing to aid your mother's escape?"

"I a.s.sert it," answered Danville.

The pen which the president held dropped from his hand at that reply; his colleagues started, and looked at each other in blank silence.

A murmur of "Monster! monster!" began with the prisoners on the platform, and spread instantly to the audience, who echoed and echoed it again; the fiercest woman-republican on the benches joined cause at last with the haughtiest woman-aristocrat on the platform. Even in that sphere of direst discords, in that age of sharpest enmities, the one touch of Nature preserved its old eternal virtue, and roused the mother-instinct which makes the whole world kin.

Of the few persons in the court who at once foresaw the effect of Danville's answer on the proceedings of the tribunal, Lomaque was one.

His sallow face whitened as he looked toward the prisoners' platform.

"They are lost," he murmured to himself, moving out of the group in which he had hitherto stood. "Lost! The lie which has saved that villain's head leaves them without the shadow of a hope. No need to stop for the sentence--Danville's infamous presence of mind has given them up to the guillotine!" p.r.o.nouncing these words, he went out hurriedly by a door near the platform, which led to the prisoners' waiting-room.

Rose's head sank again on her brother's shoulder. She shuddered, and leaned back faintly on the arm which he extended to support her. One of the female prisoners tried to help Trudaine in speaking consolingly to her; but the consummation of her husband's perfidy seemed to have paralyzed her at heart. She murmured once in her brother's ear, "Louis!

I am resigned to die--nothing but death is left for me after the degradation of having loved that man." She said those words and closed her eyes wearily, and spoke no more.

"One other question, and you may retire," resumed the president, addressing Danville. "Were you cognizant of your wife's connection with her brother's conspiracy?"

Danville reflected for a moment, remembered that there were witnesses in court who could speak to his language and behavior on the evening of his wife's arrest, and resolved this time to tell the truth.

"I was not aware of it," he answered. "Testimony in my favor can be called which will prove that when my wife's complicity was discovered I was absent from Paris."

Heartlessly self-possessed as he was, the public reception of his last reply had shaken his nerve. He now spoke in low tones, turning his back on the spectators, and fixing his eyes again on the green baize of the table at which he stood.

"Prisoners, have you any objection to make, any evidence to call, invalidating the statement by which Citizen Danville has cleared himself of suspicion?" inquired the president.

"He has cleared himself by the most execrable of all falsehoods,"

answered Trudaine. "If his mother could be traced and brought here, her testimony would prove it."

"Can you produce any other evidence in support of your allegation?"

asked the president.

"I cannot."

"Citizen Superintendent Danville, you are at liberty to retire. Your statement will be laid before the authority to whom you are officially responsible. Either you merit a civic crown for more than Roman virtue, or--" Having got thus far, the president stopped abruptly, as if unwilling to commit himself too soon to an opinion, and merely repeated, "You may retire."