Orphans of the Storm Part 14

... Jacques-Forget-Not and his men arrived too late at the Prefect's palace for complete vengeance on the de Vaudreys.

Around the historic Fourteenth of July, there was a pell-mell exodus of aristocrats from the city. A panic-stricken servant brought the Count de Linieres tidings of the people's victory.

"Fly, monsieur! Fly, madame!" he cried. "The troops are overthrown, the Bastille surrounded, before nightfall the mob will surely attack here and try to kill your excellencies. Fly, I implore you!"

Other messengers confirmed the news, and thus it happened that the erstwhile proud and arrogant Minister of Police who but yesterday had ruled France was reduced to making the most hurried preparations for flight, aided by the distracted Countess.

The latter realized with a pang that the hegira meant farewell, perhaps forever, to the chance of recovering her lost daughter Louise from this welter of Paris. How mysterious the ways of the Higher Power! Her beloved nephew the Chevalier, at least, was safe in the distant fortress to which the Count her husband had condemned him.

Pray G.o.d Louise might be saved--, yes! and her foster-sister Henrietta, beloved of the Chevalier--Henriette whom her husband had branded by unjust accusation....

The de Linieres party succeeded in evading the fate of numbers of the runaway aristocrats, who were bodily pulled out of their coaches and trampled upon or strung up by the infuriated mobs. They managed to make their way to the northeastern borders of France. There thousands of emigres were received under the protection of foreign powers, awaiting the ripe moment for the impact of foreign armies on French soil and the hoped-for reconquest of the monarchists....

That night the beautiful Hotel de Vaudrey--home of the Vaudrey and Linieres family and fortune--was given up to sack and pillage. Enraged that the objects of his vengeance had fled, the leader Forget-Not ordered a general demolition.

Priceless works of art were hurled about and destroyed. The cellars of old wines were quickly emptied by drunken revelers. The kitchen and pantries catered to the mob's gluttony. Wenches arrayed themselves in the Countess's costly silks and linens; perfumed, powdered and painted with the cosmetics; preened and perked in the cheval mirrors.

Among the motley crew of destroyers, drunkards, gluttons, satyrs and sirens, our friend the Jolly Baker was on the job--unfortunately for him, accompanied this time by his hatchet-faced spouse.

He started a flirtation with a new-made vamp, all tricked out in stolen finery. The Jolly Baker had found a new use for his eyes and eyebrows, i.e., to convey love messages. He was making the most alarming motions and succeeding most prodigiously in evoking the new vamp's answering smiles when--

"Ker-plunk!"

--Dame Baker fetched him a tremendous slap directly on the face that caused him to see innumerable little stars.

Gradually coming back to this mundane world, the Jolly Baker resolved to devote his strict attention to the bottle....

CHAPTER XIX

KNIFE DUEL AND ESCAPE

The bundle on the cellar floor of the Frochards den stirred again, this time more actively.

The crippled knife-grinder Pierre had entered. His mother was again busied with her potations. Under the half-lifted rags showed the tear-stained face of Louise. The heavy fatigue of street mendicancy had wrapped her in deep sleep, from which she woke with a start to her wretched surroundings. The misery of it all overwhelmed her. She sobbed, and the big tears descended from her blind eyes.

"Don't cry, Louise!" begged the almost equally wretched Pierre. "There may yet be escape and the finding of your sister. Oh!" he said to himself. "If I had but the courage to lay down my life that I might make her happy!"

The ruffian Jacques Frochard was exhibiting a sinister interest in the blind girl. He had forbidden Pierre to speak to her or come near her, and now as he entered, the crippled brother shrank away. "Get up and go to work!" said Mother Frochard to the girl roughly, yanking her to her feet.

"I'll find a way to make her work!" laughed Jacques with fiendish coa.r.s.eness. "You'll slave for me, eh, my pretty? Yes, for you, no one but Jacques!"

He leered at her as he appropriated the coins of her singing.

Huddled in the corner, the silent cripple bit his finger knuckles until they bled....

Inflamed with liquor and l.u.s.t, Jacques soon decided to carry out his purpose.

"Come with me, my little beauty!"

Mother Frochard chuckled at the sight of him mastering her. Struggle wildly as the poor blind creature would to avoid his grip, he was dragging her slowly to the stair while her screams were stifled by one rough hand over her mouth.

But as he was doing this, the huddled figure rose. "I have been a coward long enough," said Pierre. "Don't touch her!" laying a restraining hand on Jacques' arm.

Astonished, Jacques turned. "Who'll stop me?" He flung his brother prostrate half way across the room.

The cripple had risen again. A dirk gleamed in his extended hand. His eyes blazed like coals. Fury distorted his features which were craned forward in hideous ugliness parallel with the knife.

"I will!"

"You misbegotten hunchback!" roared Jacques, letting loose of the girl and drawing his own knife. "She is mine. I tell you I will kill anyone who interferes with me!"

La Frochard tried to throw herself between the brothers. Louise groped away, and as by instinct found refuge behind Pierre. Jacques pushed the hag aside, saying savagely: "Let me look after this!"

Each brother stripped off his coat, holding it as a buckler whilst the right hand gripped a knife.

"You are right, Jacques," said the frenzied cripple. "We Frochards come of a race that kills!"

The adversaries feinted around each other in circles, in the Latin mode of fighting that was their heritage. Coats or sidesteps parried or evaded blows. The knives gleamed, but did not go quickly home.

If Jacques had the superior strength, Pierre was the more cat-like.

His frail body was a slight target, so that the other's great lunges missed. Then, leaping like a puma, he was behind and under Jacques'

guard, and stabbed him in the back.

The great hulk of a man fell back into La Frochard's arms, the blood oozing from a cut that was not mortal though fearsome. The hag-mother wailed and crooned as if he were in death agony.

"Quick!" cried the hunchback to Louise, "the road to liberty is open."

Taking Louise by the hand, he ran with her up the steps out of the cellar....

But Henriette did not meet--not until one fateful hour--the itinerant grinder and her loved sister whom he protected. They were in many of the scenes of the later Revolution. Louise ate off the de Vaudrey plate, and Pierre perforce sharpened the knives of the September Ma.s.sacre. Tramps of the boiling, tempestuous City, spectators but not partic.i.p.ants of the great events, they looked ceaselessly for her.

Nor did the wicked Frochards abide in the den of Louise's imprisonment and sufferings. They too were swallowed up in the vast maelstrom--to reappear at one ludicrous moment of tragic times.

CHAPTER XX

THE NEW TYRANNY