 CHAPTER 41 When Hope Was Dead In a small upstairs-room in the Rue de Charon, above the shop of Lucas, the old clothes-dealer, Marguerite sat with Ser Andrew-folks. Armand's letter, with its message and its warning, lay open on the table between them, and she had in her hand the sealed packet which Percy had given her just ten days ago, and which she was only to open if all hope seemed to be dead, if nothing appeared to stand any longer between that one dear life and irretrievable shame. A small lamp placed on the table threw a feeble yellow light on the squalid, ill-furnished room, for it lacked still an hour or so before dawn. Armand's concierge had brought her lodger's letter, and Marguerite had quickly despatched a brief reply to him, a reply that held love and also encouragement. Then she had summoned Ser Andrew. He never had a thought of leaving her during these days of dire trouble, and he had lodged all this while in a tiny room on the topmost floor of this house in the Rue de Charon. At her call he had come down very quickly, and now they sat together at the table, with the oil-lamp illuminating their pale, anxious faces. She the wife, and he the friend, holding a consultation together in this most miserable hour that preceded the cold, wintry dawn. Outside, a thin, persistent rain, mixed with snow, patted against the small window-panes, and an icy wind found out all the crevices in the whir-meat and woodwork that would afford it ingress to the room. But neither Marguerite nor folks was conscious of the cold. They had wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and did not feel the chill currents of air that caused the lamp to flicker and to smoke. I can see now, said Marguerite, in that calm voice which comes so naturally in moments of infinite despair. I can see now exactly what Percy meant when he made me promise not to open this packet, until it seemed to me—to me and to you, Sir Andrew—that he was about to play the part of a coward. A coward? Great God! She checked the sob that had risen to her throat, and continued in the same calm manner and quiet, even voice. You do think with me, do you not, that the time has come and that we must open this packet? Without a doubt, Lady Blakeney, replied folks with equal earnestness. I would stake my life that already, a fortnight ago, Blakeney had that same plan in his mind which he has now matured. Escape from that awful conciergerie prison with all the precautions so carefully taken against it was impossible. I knew that alas, from the first. But in the open all might yet be different. I'll not believe it that a man like Blakeney is distant to perish at the hands of those Curse. She looked on her loyal friend with tear-dimmed eyes, through which shone boundless gratitude and heartbroken sorrow. He had spoken of a fortnight. It was ten days since she had seen Percy. It had then seemed as if death had already marked him with its grim sign. Since then she had tried to shut away from her mind the terrible visions which her anguish constantly conjured up before her of its growing weakness, of the gradual impairing of that brilliant intellect, the gradual exhaustion of that mighty physical strength. God bless you, Sir Andrew, for your enthusiasm and for your trust, she said with a sad little smile. But for you I should long ago have lost all courage, and these last ten days—what a cycle of misery they represent—would have been maddening but for your help and your loyalty. God knows I would have courage for everything in life. For everything save one, but just that, his death. That would be beyond my strength, neither reason nor body could stand it. Therefore I am so afraid, Sir Andrew," she added piteously. Of what, Lady Blakeney? That when he knows that I, too, am to go as hostage, as Armand says in his letter, that my life is to be guaranteed to his, I am afraid that he will draw back, that he will—my God!—she cried with sudden fervour, tell me what to do. Shall we open the packet?" asked folks gently, and then just make up our minds to act exactly as Blakeney has enjoined us to do, neither more nor less, but just word for word, deed for deed, and I believe that that will be right, whatever may be tied in the end. Once more his quiet strength, his earnestness, and his faith comforted her. She dried her eyes and broke open the seal. There were two separate letters in the packet. One unaddressed, obviously intended for her and folks. The other was addressed to M. Le Baron Jean de Batte's—Fifteen, Rue de Saint-Jean de La Trin, a Paris. A letter addressed to that awful barren de Batte's, said Marguerite, looking with puzzled eyes on the paper as she turned it over and over in her hand. To that bombastic wind-bag! I know him and his ways well. What can Percy have to say to him? Sir Andrew, too, looked puzzled. But neither of them had the mind to waste time in useless speculations. M. Le Baron Jean de Batte unfolded the letter which was intended for her, and after a final look on her friend, whose kind face was quivering with excitement, she began slowly to read aloud. I need not ask either of you two to trust me, knowing that you will. But I could not die inside this hole like a rat in a trap. I had to try and free myself, at the worst to die in the open beneath God's sky. You two will understand, and understanding you will trust me to the end. Under the enclosed letter at once to its address, and you, folks, my most sincere and most loyal friend, I beg with all my soul to see to the safety of Marguerite. Our man will stay by me, but you, folks, do not leave her, stand by her. As soon as you read this letter, and you will not read it until both she and you have felt that hope is fled, and I myself am about to throw up that sponge, try and persuade her to make for the coast as quickly as may be. At Calais you can open up communications with the daydream in the usual way, and embark on her at once. Let no member of the league remain on French soil one hour longer after that. Then tell the skipper to make full of portale, the place which he knows, and there to keep a sharp lookout for another three nights. After that make straight for home, for it will be no use waiting any longer. I shall not come. These measures are for Marguerite's safety, and for all of you who are in France at this moment. But I entreat you to look on these measures as on my dying wish. To debates I have given rendezvous with the chapelle of the Holy Sepulchre, just outside the park of the Château d'Orth. He will help me to save the dauphin, and if by good luck he also helps me to save myself, I shall be within seven leagues of le portale, and with the lian frozen as she is, I could reach the coast. But Marguerite's safety I leave in your hands, folks. Would that I could look more clearly into the future, and know that those devils will not drag her into danger? Beg her to start at once for Calais immediately, you have both read this. I only beg. I do not command. I know that you folks will stand by her whatever she may wish to do. God's blessing be for ever on you both. Marguerite's voice died away in the silence that still lay over this deserted part of the great city, and in this squalid house where she and Sir Andrew folks had found shelter these last ten days. The agony of mind which they had here endured, never doubting but scarcely ever hoping, had found its culmination at last in this final message, which almost seemed to come to them from the grave. It had been written ten days ago. A plan had then apparently formed in Percy's mind, which she had set forth during the brief half-hour's respite which those fiends had once given him. Since then they had never given him ten consecutive minutes' peace. Since then ten days had gone by. How much power, how much vitality had gone by, too, on the leaden wings of all those terrible hours spent in solitude and in misery? We can, but hope, Lady Blakeney, said Sir Andrew folks after a while, that you will be allowed out of Paris, but from what Armand says—and Percy does not actually send me away—she rejoined with a pathetic little smile. No, he cannot compel you, Lady Blakeney. You are not a member of the league. Oh, yes I am, she retorted firmly, and I have sworn obedience just as all of you have done. I will go, just as he bids me, and you, Sir Andrew, you will obey him, too? My orders are to stand by you. That is an easy task." "'You know where this place is,' she asked. The Chateau du Horde." "'Oh, yes, we all know it. It is empty, and the park is a wreck. The owner fled from it at the very outbreak of the Revolution. He left some kind of steward nominally in charge—a curious creature, half imbecile. The Chateau and the chapel in the forest, just outside the grounds, have oft served Blakeney and all of us as a place of refuge on our way to the coast." "'But the dauphin is not there,' she said. No. According to the first letter which you brought me from Blakeney ten days ago, and on which I acted, Tony, who has charge of the dauphin, must have crossed into Holland with his little majesty to-day.' "'I understand,' she said simply. But then, this letter to Debats—'Ah, there I am completely at sea. But I'll deliver it—and at once, too—only I don't like to leave you. Will you let me get you out of Paris first? I think just before dawn it could be done. We can get the cart from Lucas, and if we could reach Saint-Germain before noon, I could come straight back then and deliver the letter to Debats. This I feel I ought to do myself, but at Achaar's farm I would know that you were safe for a few hours." "'I will do whatever you feel right, Sir Andrew,' she said simply. My will is bound up with Percy's dying wish. God knows I would rather follow him now, step by step, as hostage, as prisoner, anyway, so long as I can see him, but—' She rose and turned to go, almost impassive now in that great calm born of despair. A stranger seeing her now had thought her indifferent. She was very pale, and deep circles round her eyes told of sleepless nights and days of mental misery. But otherwise, there was not the faintest outward symbol of that terrible anguish which was rending her heartstrings. Her lips did not quiver, and the source of her tears had been dried up ten days ago. "'Ten minutes, and I'll be ready, Sir Andrew,' she said. I have but few belongings. Will you the while see Lucas about the cart?' He did as she desired. Her calm in no way deceived him. He knew that she must be suffering keenly, and would suffer more keenly still while she would be trying to efface her own personal feelings all through that coming dreary journey to Calais. He went to see the landlord about the horse and cart, and a quarter of an hour later Marguerite came downstairs ready to start. She found Sir Andrew in close converse with an officer of the Guard de Paris, whilst two soldiers of the same regiment were standing at the horse's hen. When she appeared in the doorway Sir Andrew came at once up to her. "'It is just as I feared, Lady Blakeney,' he said. "'This man has been sent here to take charge of you. Of course he knows nothing beyond the fact that his orders are to convey you at once to the guard-house of the Rose-Saintain, where he is to hand you over to Citizen Chauvelin of the Committee of Public Safety.' Sir Andrew could not fail to see the look of intense relief which, in the midst of all her sorrow, seemed suddenly to have lighted up the whole of Marguerite's one face. The thought of wending her own way to safety whilst Percy mayhab was fighting an uneven fight with death had been well nigh intolerable. But she had been ready to obey without a murmur. Now fate and the enemy himself had decided otherwise. She felt as if a load had been lifted from her heart. "'I will at once go and find a batts,' Sir Andrew contrived to whisper hurriedly. "'As soon as Percy's letter is safely in his hands, I will make my way northwards and communicate with all the members of the League, on whom the Chief has so strictly enjoined to quit French soil immediately. We will proceed to Calais first, and open up communication with the Daydream in the usual way. The others had best embark on board her, and the skipper shall then make for the known spot of Le Portel, of which Percy speaks in his letter. I myself will go by land to Le Portel, and thence, if I have no news of you or of the expedition, I will slowly work southwards in the direction of the Château d'Or. That is all that I can do. If you can contrive to let Percy, or even Armand, know my movements, do so by all means. I know that I shall be doing right, for, in a way, I shall be watching over you and arranging for your safety, as Blakeney begged me to do. God bless you, Lady Blakeney, and God save the Scarlet Pimpernel." He stooped and kissed her hand, and she intimated to the officer that she was ready. He had a hackney-coach waiting for her lower down the street. To it she walked with a firm step, and as she entered it, she waved a last farewell to Sir Andrew-Folks. CHAPTER 42 The Guard House of the Rue-Saintain The little cortège was turning after the great gates of the House of Justice. It was intensely cold, a bitter north-easterly gale and blowing from across the heights of Montmartre, driving sleet and snow and half-frozen rain into the faces of the men, and finding its way up their sleeves, down their collars, and round the knees of their thread-bare britches. Armand, whose fingers were numb with the cold, could scarcely feel the rains in his hands. Chauvelin was riding close beside him, but the two men had not exchanged one word, since the moment when the small troop of some twenty mounted soldiers had filed up inside the courtyard, and Chauvelin, with a curt word of command, had ordered one of the troopers to take Armand's horse on the lead. A hackney-coach brought up the rear of the cortège, with a man riding at either door, and two more following at a distance of twenty paces. Heron's gaunt, ugly face, crowned with a battered sugar-loaf hat, appeared from time to time at the window of the coach. He was no horseman, and, moreover, preferred to keep the prisoner closely under his own eye. The corporal had told Armand that the prisoner was with Citizen Heron inside the coach, in Irons. Beyond that the soldiers could tell him nothing. They knew nothing of the object of this expedition. Vaguely, they might have wandered in their dull minds why this particular prisoner was thus being escorted out of the Gonsiagerie prison with so much paraphernalia and such an air of mystery, when there were thousands of prisoners in the city and the provinces at the present moment, who, anon, would be bundled up wholesale into carts to be dragged to the guillotine like a flock of sheep to the butchers. But even if they wandered, they made no remarks among themselves. Their faces, blue with the cold, were the perfect mirrors of their own unconquerable solidity. The tower-clock of Notre-Dame struck seven when the small cavalcade finally moved slowly out of the monumental gates. In the east, the one light of a February morning slowly struggled out of the surrounding gloom. Now the towers of many churches loomed ghost-like against the dull grey sky, and down below, on the right, the frozen river, like a smooth sheet of steel, wound its graceful curves round the islands and past the facade of a Louvre palace whose walls looked grim and silent like the mausoleum of dead giants of the past. All around, the great city gave signs of awakening. The business of the day renewed its course every twenty-four hours, despite the tragedies of death and of dishonour that walked with it hand in hand. From the blasts de la Révolution, the intermittent roll of drums came from time to time, with its muffled sound striking the ear of the passer-by. Along the key opposite, an open-air camp was already a stir. Men, women, and children engaged in the great task of clothing and feeding the people of France, armed against tyranny, were bending to their task, even before the wintry dawn had spread its pale grey tints over the narrower streets of the city. Armand shivered under his cloak. This silent ride beneath the laden sky, through the veil of half- frozen rain and snow, seemed like a dream to him. And now, as the outriders of the little cavalcade turned across the Pont-au-Changes, he saw spread out on his left what appeared like the living panorama of these three weeks that had just gone by. He could see the house of the rose Saint-Germain-Locsoix where Percy had lodged before he carried through the rescue of the little dauphin. Armand could even see the window at which the dreamer had stood, weaving noble dreams that his brilliant daring had turned into realities, until the hand of a traitor had brought him down to—to what? Armand would not have dared at this moment to look back at that hideous vulgar hackney-coat wherein that proud, reckless adventurer, who had defied fate and mocked death, sat in chains beside a loathsome creature whose very propinquity was an outrage. Now they were passing under the very house on the Guis-la-Ferêt, above the Sadler's Shop, the house with Marguerite had lodged ten days ago, with Armand had come trying to fool himself into the belief that the love of little mother could be deceived into blindness against his own crime. He had tried to draw a veil before those eyes, which he had scarcely dared to encounter, but he knew that that veil must lift one day, and then a curse would send him forth, outlawed and homeless, a wonder on the face of the earth. Soon as the little cortège wended its way northwards, it filed out beneath the walls of the temple prison. There was the main gate, with its sentries standing at attention. There the archway with the guichet of the cortège, and beyond it the paved courtyard. Armand closed his eyes deliberately. He could not bear to look. No wonder that he shivered and tried to draw his cloak closer around him. Every stone, every street corner was full of memories. The chill that struck to the very marrow of his bones came from no outward cause. It was the very hand of remorse that, as it passed over him, froze the blood in his veins, and made the rattle of those wheels behind him sound like a hellish knell. At last the more closely populated quarters of the city were left behind. On ahead the first section of the guard had turned into the rose-saintain. The houses became more sparse, intersected by narrow pieces of terrain vague, or small weed-covered bits of kitchen garden. Then a halt was called. It was quite light now, as light as it would ever be beneath this leaden sky. Rain and snow still fell in gusts, driven by the blast. Someone ordered our mount to dismount. It was probably Chauvelin. He did as he was told, and a trooper led him to the door of an irregular brick building that stood isolated on the right, extended on either side by a low wall, and surrounded by a patch of uncultivated land, which now looked like a sea of mud. On ahead was the line of fortifications dimly outlined against the grey of the sky, and in between brown, sodden earth, with here and there a detached house, a cabbage patch, a couple of windmills deserted and desolate. The loneliness of an unpopulated, outlying quarter of the great mother-city, a useless limber for active body, an ostracised member of her vast family. Mechanically, our mount had followed the soldier to the door of the building. Here Chauvelin was standing, and bade him follow. A smell of hot coffee hung in the dark, narrow passage in front. Chauvelin led the way to a room on the left. Still that smell of hot coffee. Ever after it was associated in Armand's mind with this awful morning in the guard-house of the Roussaintin, when the rain and snow beat against the windows, and he stood there in the low guard-room, shivering and half-numbed with cold. There was a table in the middle of the room, and on it stood cups of hot coffee. Chauvelin bade him drink, suggesting, not unkindly, that the warm beverage would do him good. Armand advanced further into the room, and saw that there were wooden benches all round against the wall, on one of these sat his sister Marguerite. When she saw him she made a sudden, instinctive movement to go to him, but Chauvelin interposed in his usual bland, quiet manner. Not just now, citizeness, he said. She sat down again, and Armand noted how cold and stony seemed her eyes, as if life within her was at a standstill, and a shadow that was almost like death had atrophied every emotion in her. I trust you have not suffered too much from the cold, Lady Blakene, resumed Chauvelin politely. We ought not to have kept you waiting here for so long, but delay it departure is sometimes inevitable." She made no reply, only acknowledging his reiterated inquiry as to her comfort with an inclination of the head. Armand had forced himself to swallow some coffee, and for the moment he felt less chilled. He held the cup between his two hands, and gradually some warmth crept into his bones. "'Little mother,' he said in English, "'try and drink some of this. It will do you good.' "'Thank you, dear,' she replied. "'I have had some. I am not cold.' Then a door at the end of the room was pushed open, and Heron stalked in. "'Are we going to be all day in this confounded whole?' he queried, roughly. Armand, who was watching his sister very closely, saw that she started at the sight of the wretch, and seemed immediately to shrink still further within herself, whilst her eyes, suddenly luminous and dilated, rested on him like those of a captive bird upon an approaching cobra. But Chauvelin was not to be shaken out of his suave manner. One moment, Citizen Heron, he said, this coffee is very comforting. "'Is the prisoner with you?' he added lightly. Heron nodded in the direction of the other room. "'In there,' he said curtly. "'Then perhaps, if you will be so good, Citizen, to invite him-viver, I could explain to him his future position and our own.' Heron muttered something between his fleshy lips, then turned back towards the open door, solemnly spat twice on the threshold, and nodded his gaunt head once or twice in a manner which apparently was understood from within. "'No, Sergeant, I don't want you,' he said gruffly, only the prisoner.' A second or two later, Sir Percy Blakeney stood in the doorway. His hands were behind his back, obviously handcuffed, but he held himself very erect, though it was clear that this caused him a mighty effort. As soon as he had crossed the threshold, his quick glance had swept right round the room. He saw Armand, and his eyes lit up almost imperceptibly. Then he caught sight of Marguerite, and his pale face took on suddenly a more ashen hue. Chauvelin was watching him with those keen, light-colored eyes of his. Blakeney, conscious of this, made no movement. Only his lips tightened, and the heavy lids fell over the hollow eyes, completely hiding their glance. But what even the most astute, most deadly enemy could not see, was that subtle message of understanding that passed at once between Marguerite and the man she loved. It was a magnetic current, intangible, invisible to all saved to her and to him. She was prepared to see him, prepared to see in him all that she had feared—the weakness, the mental exhaustion, the submission to the inevitable. Therefore she had also schooled her glance to express to him all that she knew she would not be allowed to say. The reassurance that she had read his last letter, that she had obeyed it to the last word, save where fate and her enemy had interfered with regard to herself. With a slight, imperceptible movement, imperceptible to everyone saved to him, she had seemed to handle a piece of paper in her kerchief. Then she had nodded slowly, with her eyes, steadfast, reassuring, fixed upon him, and his glance gave answer that he had understood. But Chauvelin and Heron had seen nothing of this. They were satisfied that there had been no communication between the prisoner and his wife and friend. "'You are no doubt surprised,' said Chauvelin, after a while, to see Lady Blakeney here. "'She, as well as Citizen Saint-Jus, will accompany our expedition to the place where you will lead us. We none of us know where that place is. Citizen Heron and myself are entirely in your hands. You might be leading us to certain death, or again, to a spot where your own escape would be an easy matter to yourself.' "'You will not be surprised, therefore, that we have thought fit to take certain precautions, both against any little ambuscade which you may have prepared for us, or against your making one of those daring attempts at escape, for which the noted Scarlett Pimpinnell is so justly famous.' He paused, and only Heron's low chuckle of satisfaction broke the momentary silence that followed. Blakeney made no reply. Obviously he knew exactly what was coming. He knew Chauvelin and his ways. Knew the kind of torturous conception that would find origin in his brain. The moment that he saw Marguerite sitting there, he must have guessed that Chauvelin once more desired to put her precious life in the balance of his intrigues. "'Citizen Heron is impatient,' said Percy, resumed Chauvelin, after a while, so I must be brief. Lady Blakeney, as well as Citizen Saint-Just, will accompany us on this expedition to, wither soever, you may lead us. They will be the hostages which we will hold against your own good faith. At the slightest suspicion, a mere suspicion, perhaps, that you have played us false, at a hint that you have led us into an ambush, or that the whole of this expedition has been but a trick on your part to affect your own escape, or if merely our hope of finding Capay at the end of our journey is frustrated, the lives of our two hostages belong to us, and your friend and your wife will be summarily shot before your eyes." Outside the rain patted against the window-panes. The gale whistled mournfully among the stunted trees. But within this room not a sound stirred the deadly stillness of the air. And yet at this moment, hatred and love, savage lust and sublime self-abnegation, the most powerful passions the heart of man can know, held three men here in chains, each a slave to his dominant passion, each ready to stake his all for the satisfaction of his master. Heron was the first to speak. "'Well,' he said, with a fierce oaf, what are we waiting for? The prisoner knows how he stands. Now we can go." One moment, citizen, interposed Chauvelin, his quiet manner contrasting strangely with his colleague's savage mood. "'You have quite understood, Sir Percy,' he continued, directly addressing the prisoner, the conditions under which we are all of us about to proceed on this journey.' "'All of us?' said Blakeney slowly. "'Are you taking it for granted, then, that I accept your conditions, and that I am prepared to proceed on the journey?' "'If you do not proceed on the journey,' cried Heron, with savage fury, "'I'll strangle that woman with my own hands now!' Blakeney looked at him for a moment or two through half-closed lids, and it seemed then to those who knew him well, to those who loved him, and to the man who hated them, that the mighty sinews almost cracked with the passionate desire to kill. Then the sunken eyes turned slowly to Marguerite, and she alone caught the look. It was a mere flash, of a humble appeal for pardon. It was all over in a second. Almost immediately the tension on the pale face relaxed, and into the eyes there came that look of acceptance, nearly akin to fatalism, an acceptance of which the strong alone are capable, for with them it only comes in the face of the inevitable. Now he shrugged his broad shoulders, and once more turning to Heron, he said quietly, "'You leave me no option in that case. As you have remarked before, citizen Heron, why should we wait any longer? Surely we can go now.'" CHAPTER 43 The dreary journey Rain, rain, rain, incessant monotonous and dreary. The wind had changed round to the south-west. It blew now in great gusts that sent weird, sighing sounds to the trees, and drove the heavy showers into the faces of the men as they rode on, with heads bent forward against the gale. The rain's sodden bridles slipped through their hands, bringing out sores and blisters on their palms. The horses were fidgety, tossing their heads with wearying persistence as the wet trickled into their ears, or the sharp, intermittent hailstones struck their sensitive noses. Three days of this awful monotony, varied only by the horts at wayside inns, the changing of troops at one of the guard-houses on the way, the reiterated commands given to the fresh squad before starting on the next lap of this strange, momentous way. And all the while, audible above the clatter of horses' hooves, the rumbling of coach-wheels, two closed carriages, each drawn by a pair of sturdy horses, which were changed at every halt. A soldier on each box urged them to a good pace to keep up with the troopers, who were allowed to go at an easy canter or light jog-trot, whatever might prove easiest and least fatiguing. And from time to time, Heron's shaggy, gaunt head would appear at the window of one of the coaches, asking the way, the distance to the next city, or to the nearest wayside in, cursing the troopers, the coachman, his colleague, and every one concerned, blaspheming against the interminable length of the road, against the cold and against the wet. Early in the evening on the second day of the journey, he had met with an accident. The prisoner, who presumably was weak and weary, and not oversteady on his feet, had fallen up against him as they were both about to re-enter the coach after a halt just outside Amiens, and Citizen Heron had lost his footing in the slippery mud of the road. His head came in violent contact with the step, and his right temple was severely cut. Since then he had been forced to wear a bandage across the top of his face, under his sugar-loaf hat, which had added nothing to his beauty, but a great deal to the violence of his temper. He wanted to push the men on, to force the pace, to shorten the halts, but Chauvelin knew better than to allow slackness and discontent to follow in the wake of over-fatigue. The soldiers were always well rested and well fed, and though the delay caused by long and frequent halts must have been just as urgent to him as it was to Heron, yet he bore it imperturbably, for he would have had no use on this momentous journey for a handful of men whose enthusiasm and spirit had been blown away by the roughness of the gale, or drowned in the fury of the constant downpour of rain. Of all this, Marguerite had been conscious in a vague, dreamy kind of way. She seemed to herself like the spectator in a moving panoramic drama, unable to raise a finger, or to do ought to stop that final inevitable ending, the cataclysm of sorrow and misery that awaited her when the dreary curtain would fall on the last act, and she and all the other spectators, Armand, Chauvelin, Heron, the soldiers, would slowly wend their way home, leaving the principal actor behind the fallen curtain, which never would be lifted again. After that first halt in the guardroom of the Rue-Saintin, she had been bidden to enter a second hackney-coach, which followed the other at a distance of fifty metres or so, and was, like that other, closely surrounded by a squad of mounted men. Armand and Chauvelin rode in this carriage with her. All day she sat, looking out on the endless monotony of the road, on the drops of rain that patted against the window-glass, and ran down from it like a perpetual stream of tears. There were two horts called during the day, one for dinner, and one midway through the afternoon, when she and Armand could step out of the coach and be led, always with soldiers close around them, to some wayside inn, where some sort of a meal was served, where the atmosphere was close and stuffy, and smelt of onion soup and of stale cheese. Armand and Marguerite would, in most cases, have a room to themselves, with sentinels posted outside the door, and they would try and eat enough to keep body and soul together, for they would not allow their strength to fall away before the end of the journey was reached. For the night halt, once at Beauvais, and the second night at Abvil, they were escorted to a house in the interior of the city, where they were accommodated with moderately clean lodgings. Sentinels, however, were always at their doors. They were prisoners in all but name, and had little or no privacy. For at night they were both so tired that they were glad to retire immediately, and to lie down on the hard beds that had been provided for them, even if sleep fled from their eyes, and their hearts and souls were flying through the city in search of him who filled their every thought. Of Percy they saw little or nothing. In the daytime food was evidently brought to him in the carriage, for they did not see him get down, and on those two nights at Beauvais and Abvil, when they caught sight of him stepping out of the coach outside the gates of the barracks, he was so surrounded by soldiers, that they only saw the top of his head, and his broad shoulders towering above those of the men. Once Marguerite had put all her pride, all her dignity by, and asked Citizen Chauvelin for news of her husband. She is well and cheerful, Lady Blakeney, he had replied, with his sarcastic smile. Ah! he added pleasantly, those English are remarkable people. We of Gallic breed, will never really understand them. Their fatalism is quite oriental in its quiet resignation to the decree of fate. Did you know, Lady Blakeney, that when Sir Percy was arrested he did not raise a hand? I thought, and so did my colleague, that he would have fought like a lion, and now that he has no doubt realized that quiet submission will serve him best in the end, he is as calm on this journey as I am myself. In fact, he concluded complacently, whenever I have succeeded in peeping into the coach, I have invariably found Sir Percy Blakeney fast asleep. He—she murmured, for it was so difficult to speak to this callous wretch, who was obviously mocking her in her misery. He—you—you are not keeping him in irons? No. Oh, no! replied Chauvelin, with perfect urbanity. You see, now that we have you, Lady Blakeney, and Citizen Saint-Just with us, we have no reason to fear that that elusive pimpanel will spirit himself away. A hot retort had risen to our man's lips. The warm, Latin blood in him rebelled against this intolerable situation, the man's sneers in the face of Marguerite's anguish. But her restraining, gentle hand had already pressed his. What was the use of protesting, of insulting this brute who cared nothing for the misery which he had caused so long as he had gained his own ends? And Armand held his tongue and tried to curb his temper, tried to cultivate a little of that fatalism which Chauvelin had said was characteristic of the English. He sat beside his sister, longing to comfort her, yet feeling that his very presence near her was an outrage, a sacrilege. She spoke so seldom to him, even when they were alone, that at times the awful thought which had more than once found birth in his weary brain became crystallized and more real. Did Marguerite guess? Had she the slightest suspicion that the awful cataclysm to which they were tending with every revolution of the creaking coach-wheels had been brought about by her brother's treacherous hand? And when that thought had lodged itself quite snugly in his mind, he began to wonder whether it would not be far more simple, far more easy, to end his miserable life in some manner that might suggest itself on the way. When the coach crossed one of those dilapidated, parapetless bridges, over abysses fifty meters deep, it might be so easy to throw open the carriage door and to take one final jump into eternity. So easy, but so damnably cowardly. Marguerite's near presence quickly brought him back to himself. His life was no longer his own to do with as he pleased. It belonged to the chief whom he had betrayed, to the sister whom he must endeavor to protect. Of Jean now he thought but little. He had put even the memory of her by tenderly like a sprig of lavender pressed between the faded leaves of his own happiness. His hand was no longer fit to hold that of any pure woman. His hand had on it a deep stain, immutable, like the brand of cane. Yet Marguerite beside him held his hand, and together they looked out on that dreary, dreary road, and listened to the patter of the rain and the rumbling of the wheels of that other coach on ahead. And it was all so dismal and so horrible. The rain, the sowing of the wind, and the stunted trees. This landscape of mud and desolation, this eternally grey sky. Armand woke up from his last dream. They had been moving steadily on since they left Abvil soon after dawn. The rumble of the wheels, the swaying and rocking of the carriage, the interminable patter of the rain had lulled him into a kind of wakeful sleep. Chauvelin had already alighted from the coach. He was helping Marguerite to descend. Armand shook the stiffness from his limbs and followed in the wake of his sister. These those miserable soldiers round them with their dank coats of rough blue cloth and the red caps on their heads. Armand pulled Marguerite's hand through his arm and dragged her with him into the house. The small city laid damp and grey before them. The rough pavement of the narrow street glistened with the wet, reflecting the dull, leaden sky overhead. The rain beat into the puddles. The slate-roofs shone in the cold, wintry light. This was Cressi. The last halt of the journey, so Chauvelin had said. The party had drawn rain in front of a small, one-storied building that had a wooden veranda running the whole length of its front. The usual low, narrow room greeted Armand and Marguerite as they entered. The usual mildewed walls with the color-wash flowing away in streaks from the unsympathetic beam above. The same device, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, scribbled in charcoal above the black iron stove. The usual musty, close atmosphere, the usual smell of onion and stale cheese, and the usual hard, straight benches and central table with its soiled and tattered cloth. Marguerite seemed dazed and giddy. She had been five hours in that stuffy coach, with nothing to distract her thoughts except the rain-subbin landscape on which she had ceaselessly gazed since the early dawn. Armand led her to the bench, and she sank down on it, numb and inert, resting her elbows on the table, and her head in her hands. If it were only all over, she sighed involuntarily. Armand had times now I feel as if I were not really sane, as if my reason had already given way. Tell me, do I seem mad to you at times? He sat down beside her and tried to chafe her little cold hands. There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for permission, chauvelin entered the room. My humble apologies to you, Lady Blakeney, he said in his usual suave manner. But our worthy host informs me that this is the only room in which he can serve a meal. Therefore I am forced to intrude my presence upon you." Though he spoke with outward politeness, his tone had become more peremptory, less bland, and he did not await Marguerite's reply before he sat down opposite to her, and continued to talk airily. An ill-conditioned fellow, our host, he said, quite reminds me of our friend Progar of the chagrie in Calais. You remember him, Lady Blakeney? My sister is giddy and overtired, interposed Armand firmly. I pray you, citizen, to have some regard for her. All regard in the world, citizen Saint-Juste, protested chauvelin jovially, may thought that those pleasant reminiscences would cheer her. Ah! Here comes the soup, he added, as a man in blue blouse and britches, with sabore on his feet, slouched into the room carrying a terrine which he incontinently placed upon the table. I feel sure that in England Lady Blakeney misses our excellent crout au po, the gloria of our bourgeois cookery. Lady Blakeney, a little soup? I thank you, sir, she murmured. Do try and eat something, little mother, Armand whispered in her ear, try and keep up your strength for his sake, if not for mine. She turned a one pale face to him, and tried to smile. I'll try, dear, she said. You have taken bread and meat to the citizens and the coach? Chauvelin called out to the retreating figure of mine host. Hmm! grunted the latter in assent, and see that the citizen soldiers are well fed or there will be trouble. Hmm! grunted the man again, after which he banged the door too behind him. Citizen Heron is loath to let the prisoner out of his sight, explained Chauvelin lightly, now that we have reached the last, most important stage of our journey, so he is sharing Sir Percy's midday meal in the interior of the coach. He ate his soup with a relish, ostentatiously paying many small attentions to margarite all the time. He ordered meat for her, bread, butter, asked if any dainties could be got. He was apparently in the best of tempers. After he had eaten and drunk, he rose and bowed ceremoniously to her. Your pardon, Lady Blakeney, he said, but I must confer with the prisoner now, and take from him full directions for the continuance of our journey. After that I go to the guard-house, which is some distance from here, right at the other end of the city. We pick up a fresh squad here, twenty hardened troopers from a cavalry regiment usually stationed at Abvil. They have had work to do in this town, which is a hotbed of treachery. I must go inspect the men and the sergeant who will be in command. Citizen Heron leaves all these inspections to me. He likes to stay by his prisoner. In the meanwhile you will be escorted back to your coach, where I pray you to await my arrival when we change guard first, then proceed on our way. Margarite was longing to ask him many questions. Once again she would have smothered her pride and begged for news of her husband, but Chauvelin did not wait. He hurried out of the room, and Armand and Margarite could hear him ordering the soldiers to take them forthwith back to the coach. As they came out of the inn, they saw the other coach some fifty metres further up the street. The horses that had done duty since leaving Abvil had been taken out, and two soldiers in ragged shirts and with crimson caps set jointly over their left ear were leading the two fresh horses along. The troopers were still mounting guard round both the coaches. They would be relieved presently. Margarite would have given ten years of her life at this moment for the privilege of speaking to her husband, or even of seeing him, of seeing that he was well. A quick, wild plan sprang up in her mind that she would bribe the sergeant in command to grant her wish while Citizen Chauvelin was absent. The man had not an unkind face, and he must be very poor. People in France were very poor these days, though the rich had been robbed in luxurious homes devastated ostensibly to help the poor. She was about to put this sudden thought into execution when Heron's hideous face, doubly hideous now with that bandage of doubtful cleanliness cutting across his brow, appeared at the carriage window. He cursed violently and at the top of his voice. What are those damned aristos doing out there? he shouted. Just getting into the coach, Citizen replied the sergeant promptly. And Armand and Margarite were immediately ordered back into the coach. Heron remained at the window for a few moments longer. He had a toothpick in his hand which he was using very freely. How much longer are we going to wait in this cursed hole? he called out to the sergeant. Only a few moments longer, Citizen. Citizen Chauvelin will be back soon with the guard. A quarter of an hour later the clatter of cavalry horses on the rough, uneven pavement drew Margarite's attention. She lowered the carriage window and looked out. Chauvelin had just returned with the new escort. He was on horseback. His horse's bridle, since he was but an indifferent horseman, was held by one of the troopers. Outside the inn he dismounted, evidently he had taken full command of the expedition and scarcely referred to Heron, who spent most of his time cursing at the men or the weather when he was not lying half asleep and partially drunk in the inside of the carriage. The changing of the guard was now accomplished quietly and in perfect order. The new escort consisted of twenty mounted men, including a sergeant and a corporal, and of two drivers, one for each coach. The courtage now was filled up in marching order. Ahead a small party of scouts, then the coach with Margarite and Armand, closely surrounded by mounted men, and at a short distance the second coach, with Citizen Heron and the prisoner, equally well guarded. Chauvelin's superintendent did all the arrangements himself. He spoke for some few moments with the sergeant, also with the driver of his own coach. He went to the window of the other carriage, probably in order to consult with Citizen Heron, or to take final directions from the prisoner. Sir Margarite, who was watching him, saw him standing on the step and leaning well forward into the interior, whilst apparently he was taking notes on a small tablet which he had in his hand. A small knot of idlers had congregated in the narrow street. Men in blouses and boys in ragged britches, lounged against the veranda of the inn, and gazed with inexpressive, stolid eyes on the soldiers, the coaches, the citizen who wore the tri-colour scarf. They had seen this sort of thing before now—aristos being conveyed to Paris under arrest, prisoners on their way to or from Amiens. They saw Margarite's pale face at the carriage window. It was not the first woman they had seen under like circumstances, and there was no special interest about this aristo. They were smoking or spitting, or just lounging idly against the balustrade. Margarite wondered if none of them had wife, sister or mother or child. If every sympathy, every kind of feeling in these poor wretches had been atrophied by misery or by fear. At last everything was in order, and the small party ready to start. Does any one here know the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre close by the park of the Château d'Horde? asked Chauvelin, vaguely addressing the knot of gaffers that stood closest to him. The men shook their heads. Some had dimly heard of the Château d'Horde. It was some way in the interior of the forest of Boulogne, but no one knew about a chapel. People did not trouble about chapels nowadays. With the indifference so peculiar to local peasantry, these men knew no more of the surrounding country than the twelve or fifteen league-circle that was within a walk of their sleepy little town. One of the scouts on ahead turned in his saddle and spoke to citizen Chauvelin. I think I know the way pretty well, citizen Chauvelin, he said. At any rate, I know it as far as the forest of Boulogne. Chauvelin referred to his tablets. That's good, he said. Then when you reach the milestone that stands on this road at the confine of the forest, bear sharply to your right, and skirt the wood until you see the hamlet of le—something, le—le—yes, le-cock—that's it, in the valley below. I know le-cock, I think, said the trooper. Very well, then. At that point it seems that a wide road strikes at right angles into the interior of the forest. You follow that until a stone chapel with a colonnaded porch stands before you on your left, and the walls and gates of a park on your right. That is so, is it not so percy? he added, once more turning towards the interior of the coach. Only the answer satisfied him, for he gave the quick word of command, unavant, then turned back toward his own coach, and finally entered it. Do you know the Château d'Or, citizen Saint-Just, he asked abruptly, as soon as the carriage began to move? Armand woke, as was habitual with him these days, from some gloomy reverie. Yes, citizen, he replied. I know it. And the chapel of the Holy Sepulcher? Yes, I know it, too. Indeed he knew the Château well, and the little chapel in the forest, whether the fisherfolk from Portel and Boulogne came on a pilgrimage once a year to lay their nets on the miracle-working relic. The chapel was disused now. Since the owner of the château had fled, no one had tended it, and the fisherfolk were afraid to wander out, lest their superstitious faith be counted against them by the authorities, who had abolished Le Bon Dieu. But Armand had found refuge there eighteen months ago, on his way to Calais, when Percy had risked his life in order to save him, Armand, from death. He could have grown aloud with the anguish of this recollection, but Marguerite's aching nerves had thrilled at the name. Château d'Horde. The chapel of the Holy Sepulcher? That was the place which Percy had mentioned in his letter, the place where he had given rendezvous to debates. Sir Andrew had said that the dauphin could not possibly be there, yet Sir Percy was leading his enemies dither, and had given the rendezvous there to debates. And this, despite that whatever plans, whatever hopes, had been born in his mind when he was still immured in the Conciergerie prison, must have been set at naught by the clever counter-plot of Chauvelin and Heron. At the merest suspicion that you have played us false, at a hint that you have led us into an ambush, or if merely our hopes of finding Capay at the end of the journey are frustrated, the lives of your wife and of your friend are forfeit to us, and they will both be shot before your eyes. With these words, with this precaution, those cunning fiends had effectually not only tied the schemer's hands, but forced him either to deliver the child to them or to sacrifice his wife and his friend. The impasse was so horrible that she could not face it even in her thoughts. A strange, fever-like heat coursed through her veins, yet left her hands icy cold. She longed for, yet dreaded, the end of the journey, that awful grappling with the certainty of coming death. Perhaps after all Percy, too, had given up all hope. Long ago he had consecrated his life to the attainment of his own ideals, and there was a vein of fatalism in him. Perhaps he had resigned himself to the inevitable, and his only desire now was to give up his life, as he had said in the open, beneath God's sky, to draw his last breath with the storm-clouds tossed through infinity above him and the murmur of the wind in the trees to sing him to rest. Percy was gradually fading into the distance, wrapped in a mantle of damp and mist. For a long while, Marguerite could see the sloping slate-roofs glimmering like steel in the grey afternoon light, and the quaint church-tower with its beautiful lantern, through the pierced stonework of which shone patches of the leaden sky. Then a sudden twist of the road hid the city from view. Only the outlying churchyard remained in sight, with its white monuments and granite crosses over which the dark youths, wet with the rain and shaken by the gale, sent showers of diamond-like sprays. CHAPTER 45 The Forest of Boulogne Progress was not easy, and very slow along the muddy road. The two coaches moved along laboriously, with wheels creaking and sinking deeply from time to time in the quagmire. When the small party finally reached the edge of the wood, the grayish light of this dismal day had changed in the west to a dull reddish glow, a glow that had neither brilliance nor incandescence in it, only a weird tint that hung over the horizon and turned the distance into lines of purple. The nearness of the sea made itself already felt. There was a briny taste in the damp atmosphere, and the trees all turned their branches away in the same direction, against the onslaught of the prevailing winds. The road at this point formed a sharp fork, skirting the wood on either side, the forest lying like a black, close mass of spruce and furs on the left, while the open expanse of country stretched out on the right. The southwesterly gale struck with full violence against the barrier of forest trees, bending the tall crests of the pines, and causing their small dead branches to break and fall with a sharp, crisp sound like a cry of pain. The squad had been fresh at starting. Now the men had been four hours in the saddle under persistent rain and gusty wind. They were tired, and the atmosphere of the close, black forest so near the road was weighing upon their spirits. Strange sounds came to them from out of the dense network of trees, the screeching of night-birds, the weird call of the owls, the swift and furtive tread of wild beasts on the prowl. The cold winter and lack of food had lured the wolves from their fastnesses, hunger had emboldened them, and now, as gradually the gray light fled from the sky, dismal howls could be heard in the distance, and now and then a pair of eyes, bright with the reflection of the lurid, western glow, would shine momentarily out of the darkness, like tiny glow-worms and as quickly vanish away. The men shivered, more with vague superstitious fear than with cold. They would have urged their horses on, but the wheels of the coaches stuck persistently in the mud, and now again a halt had to be called, so that the spokes and axles might be cleared. They rode on in silence. No one had a mind to speak, and the mournful sowing of the wind in the pine-trees seemed to check the words on every lip. The dull thud of hoofs in the soft road, the clang of steel bits and buckles, the snorting of the horses alone answered the wind, and also the monotonous creaking of the wheels plowing through the ruts. Then the ruddy glow in the west faded into soft-toned purple, and then into grey. Finally that too vanished. Darkness was drawing in on every side like a wide, black mantle pulled together closer and closer overhead by invisible giant hands. The rain still fell in a thin drizzle that soaked through caps and coats, made the bridle slimy and the saddle slippery and damp. A veil of vapour hung over the horses' croppers, and was rendered fuller and thicker every moment with the breath that came from their nostrils. The wind no longer blew with gusty fury. Its strength seemed to have been spent with the grey light of day. But now and then it would still come sweeping across the open country and dash itself upon the wall of forest trees, lashing against the horses' ears, catching the corner of a mantle here, an ill-adjusted cap there, and reeking its mischievous freak for a while, and then with a sigh of satisfaction die murmuring among the pines. Finally there was a halt, much shouting, a volley of oaths from the drivers, and Citizen Chauvelin thrust his head out of the carriage window. "'What is it?' he asked. The scouts' citizen,' replied the sergeant, who had been riding close to the coach door all this while, they have returned. "'Tell one man to come straight to me and report.' Marguerite sat quite still. Indeed, she had almost ceased to live momentarily, for her spirit was absent from her body, which felt neither fatigued nor cold nor pain. But she heard the snorting of the horse close by as its rider pulled him up sharply beside the carriage door. "'Well,' said Chauvelin, curtly, "'this is a cross-road, Citizen,' replied the man. It strikes straight into the wood, and the hamlet of Lecoque lies down in the valley on the right. "'Did you follow the road in the wood?' "'Yes, Citizen. About two leagues from here there is a clearing with a small stone chapel, more like a large strine, nestling among the trees, opposite to it the angle of a high wall with large wrought-iron gates at the corner, and from these a wide drive leads through a park. "'Did you turn into the drive?' "'Only a little way, Citizen. We thought we had best report first that all is safe. You saw no one. No one.' The chateau, then, lies some distance from the gates. A league or more, Citizen. Close to the gates there are outhouses and stabling, the disused buildings of the home farm, I should say. "'Good, we are on the right road, that is clear. Keep ahead with your men now, but only some two hundred meters or so. OK,' he added, as if on second thoughts, ride down to the other coach and ask the prisoner if we are on the right track. The rider turned his horse sharply round. Marguerite heard the clag of metal and the sound of retreating hooves. A few moments later the man returned. "'Yes, Citizen,' he reported, the prisoner says it is quite right. The Chateau du Horde lies a full league from its gates. This is the nearest road to the chapel in the chateau. He says we should reach the former in half an hour. It will be very dark in there,' he added, with a significant nod in the direction of the wood. Chauvelin made no reply, but quietly stepped out of the coach. Marguerite watched him, leaning out of the window, following his small, trim figure, as he pushed his way past the groups of mounted men, catching at a horse's bit now and then or at a bridle, making a way for himself amongst the restless, champing animals without the slightest hesitation or fear. Soon his retreating figure lost a sharp outline silhouetted against the evening sky. It was enfolded in the veil of vapor which was blown out of the horse's nostrils, all rising from their damp cruppers. It became more vague, almost ghostlike, through the mist and the fast gathering gloom. Presently a group of troopers hid him entirely from her view, but she could hear his thin, smooth voice, quite clearly, as he called to Citizen Heron. "'We are close to the end of our journey now, Citizen,' she heard him say. "'If the prisoner has not played us force, little Capay should be in our charge within the hour.' A growl not unlike those that came from out the mysterious depths of the forest answered him. "'If he is not,' and Marguerite recognized the harsh tones of Citizen Heron, "'if he is not, then two corpses will be rotting in this wood to-morrow for the wolves to feed on, and the prisoner will be on his way back to Paris with me.' Someone laughed. It might have been one of the troopers, more callous than his comrades, but to Marguerite the laugh had a strange, familiar ring to it, the echo of something long since passed and gone. Then Chauvelin's voice once more came clearly to her ear. My suggestion, Citizen, he was saying, is that the prisoner shall now give me an order, couched in whatever terms he may think necessary, but a distinct order to his friends to give up Capay to me without any resistance. I could then take some of the men with me, and ride as quickly as the light will allow up to the chateau, and take possession of it, of Capay, and of those who are with him. We could get along faster thus. One man can give up his horse to me, and continue the journey on the box of your coach. Two carriages could then follow at foot-pace, but I fear that if we stick together complete darkness will overtake us, and we might find ourselves obliged to pass a very uncomfortable night in this wood. I won't spend another night in this suspense. It would kill me, growled Heron to the accompaniment of one of his choicest oaths. You must do as you think right. You plan the whole of this affair. See to it that it works out well in the end. How many men shall I take with me? Our advance guard is here, of course. I couldn't spare you more than four more men. I shall want the others to guard the prisoners. Four men will be quite sufficient, with the four of the advance guard. That will leave you twelve men for guarding your prisoners, and you really only need to guard the woman. Her life will answer for the others." He had raised his voice when he said this, obviously intending that Marguerite and our man should hear. Then I'll head. He continued, apparently, in answer to an ascent from his colleague. Sir Percy, will you be so kindest to scribble the necessary words on these tablets? There was a long pause, during which Marguerite heard plainly the long and dismal cry of a night-bird that May Hap was seeking its mate. Then Chauvelin's voice was raised again. I thank you, he said. This certainly should be quite effectual. And now, citizen Heron, I do not think that under the circumstances we need fear and ambush-gade, or any kind of trickery, you hold the hostages, and if by any chance I and my men are attacked, or if we encounter armed resistance at the chateau, I will dispatch a rider back straight away to you, and, well, you will know what to do. His voice died away, merged in the sowing of the wind, drowned by the clang of metal, of horses snorting, of men living and breathing. Marguerite felt that beside her, Armand had shuddered, and that in the darkness his trembling hand had sought and found hers. She leaned well out of the window, trying to see. The gloom had gathered more closely in, and round her the veil of vapour from the horses steaming croppers hung heavily in the misty air. In front of her the straight lines of a few fir trees stood out dense and black against the greyness beyond, and between these lines purple tints of various tones and shades mingled one with the other, merging the horizon line with the sky. Here and there a more solid black patch indicated the tiny houses of the hamlet of Lecoque, far down in the valley below. From some of these houses small lights began to glimmer like blinking yellow eyes. Marguerite's gaze, however, did not rest on the distant landscape. It tried to pierce the gloom that hid her immediate surroundings. The mounted men were all round the coach, more closely round her than the trees in the forest. But the horses were restless, moving all the time, and as they moved she caught glimpses of that other coach, and of Chauvelin's ghost-like figure walking rapidly through the mist. Just for one brief moment she saw the other coach, and Heron's head and shoulders leaning out of the window. His sugar-loaf hat was on his head, and the bandage across his brow looked like a sharp pale streak below it. "'Do not doubt it, citizen Chauvelin,' he called out loudly in his harsh, rackers' voice. I shall know what to do. The wolves will have their meal to-night, and the guillotine will not be cheated either.' Armand put his arm round his sister's shoulders, and gently drew her back into the carriage. "'Little mother,' he said, "'if you can think of a way whereby my life would redeem Percy's and yours, show me that way now.' But she replied, quietly and firmly, "'There is no way, Armand. If there is, it is in the hands of God.'" End of CHAPTER 45 Chapter 46 of El Dorado by Baron S. O. Z. Read for Librivox.org by Karen Savage in September 2007 CHAUVELIN and his picked escort had in the meanwhile detached themselves from the main body of the squad. Soon the dull fud of their horses' hooves, treading the soft ground, came more softly, then more softly still as they turned into the wood, and the purple shadows seemed to unfold every sound and finally to swallow them completely. Armand and Marguerite from the depth of the carriage heard Heron's voice ordering his own driver now to take the lead. They sat quite still and watched, and presently the other coach passed them slowly on the road, its silhouette standing out ghostly and grim for a moment against the indigo tones of the distant country. Heron's head, with its battered sugar-loaf hat and the soiled bandage round the brow, was as usual out of the carriage window. He leered across at Marguerite when he saw the outliner of her face framed by the window of the carriage. "'Say all the prayers you have ever known, citizeness,' he said with a loud laugh, "'My friend Chauvelin may find capet at the chateau, or else you may take a last look at the open country, for you will not see the sun rise on it to-morrow. It is one or the other, you know.' She tried not to look at him. The very sight of him filled her with horror. That blotched, gaunt face of his, the fleshy lips, that hideous bandage across his face that hid one of his eyes. She tried not to see him, and not to hear him laugh. Obviously, he too laboured under the stress of great excitement. So far everything had gone well. The prisoner had made no attempt at escape, and apparently did not mean to play a double game. But the crucial hour had come, and with it darkness in the mysterious depths of the forest with their weird sounds and sudden flashes of ghostly lights. They naturally wrought on the nerves of men like Heron, whose conscience might have been dormant, but whose ears were nevertheless filled with the cries of innocent victims sacrificed to their own lustful ambitions, and their blind, unreasoning hates. He gave sharp orders to the men to close up round the carriages, and then gave the curt word of command, an avant. Marguerite could but strain her ears to listen. All her senses, all her faculties had merged into that of hearing, rendering it doubly keen. It seemed to her that she could distinguish the faint sound that even as she listened, grew fainter and fainter yet, of Chauvelin and his squad, moving away rapidly into the thickness of the woods some distance already ahead. Close to her there was the snorting of horses, the clanging and noise of moving mounted men. Heron's coach had taken the lead. She could hear the creaking of its wheels, the calls of the driver urging his beasts. The diminished party was moving at foot-pace in the darkness that seemed to grow denser at every step, and through that silence which was so full of mysterious sounds. The carriage rolled and rocked on its springs. Marguerite, giddy and overtired, lay back with closed eyes, her hand resting in that of Armand. Time, space and distance had ceased to be. Only death, the great Lord of all, had remained. He walked on ahead, scythe on Skeleton's shoulder, and beckoned patiently, but with a sure, grim hand. There was another halt. The coach-wheels groaned and creaked on their axles. One or two horses reared with the sudden drawing up of the curb. What is it now, came Heron's horse, voiced through the darkness? It is pitch dark, citizen, was the response from ahead. The drivers cannot see their horses' ears. They wait to know if they may light their lanterns and lead their horses. They can lead their horses, replied Heron, roughly, but I'll have no lanterns lighted. We don't know what fools may be lurking behind trees, hoping to put a bullet through my head, or yours, Sergeant. We don't want to make a lighted target of ourselves what. But let the drivers lead their horses. And one or two of you who are riding greys might dismount too and lead the way. The greys would show up, perhaps, in this cursed blackness. While his orders were being carried out, he called out once more, Are we far now from that confounded chapel? We can't be far, citizen. The whole forest is not more than six leagues wide at any point, and we have gone two since we turned into it. Hush! Heron's voice suddenly broke in, hoarsely. What was that? Silence, I say. Damn you! Can't you hear? There was a hush. Three ears straining to listen. But the horses were not still. They continued to champ their bits, to pour the ground, and to toss their heads impatient to get on. Only now and again would there come a lull, even through these sounds, a second or two may have, of perfect, unbroken silence. And then it seemed as if right through the darkness, a mysterious echo sent back those same sounds—the champing of bits, the pouring of soft ground, the tossing and snorting of animals, human life that breathed far out there among the trees. It is Citizen Chauvelin and his men, said the sergeant after a while, and speaking in a whisper. Silence! I want to hear! came the curt, hoarsely whispered command. Once more everyone listened. The men hardly daring to breathe, clinging to their bridles and pulling on their horses' mouths, trying to keep them still. And again through the night there came like a faint echo, which seemed to throw back those sounds that indicated the presence of men and of horses not very far away. Yes. It must be Citizen Chauvelin, said Heron at last, but the tone of his voice sounded as if he were anxious and only half convinced. But I thought he would be at the chateau by now. He may have had to go at foot-pace. It is very dark, Citizen Heron, remarked the sergeant. Unavant, then, quote the other, the sooner we come up with him the better. And the squad of mounted men, the two coaches, the drivers and the advanced section who were leading their horses slowly, restarted on the way. The horses snorted, the bids and stirrups clanged, and the springs and wheels of the coaches creaked and groaned dismally as the ramshackle vehicles began once more to plow the carpet of pine needles that lay thick upon the road. But inside the carriage, Armand and Marguerite held one another tightly by the hand. It is Debatts with his friends, she whispered, scarce above her breath. Debatts, he asked, vaguely and fearfully, for in the dark he could not see her face, and as he did not understand why she should suddenly be talking of Debatts, he thought with horror that may have her prophecy and entice help had come true, and that her mind, weary and overwrought, had become suddenly unhinged. Yes, Debatts, she replied, Percy sent him a message through me to meet him here. I am not mad, Armand, she added more calmly. Sir Andrew took Percy's letter to Debatts the day that we started from Paris. Great God! exclaimed Armand, and instinctively with a sense of protection he put his arms round his sister. Then if Chauvelin or the squad is attacked, if— Yes, she said calmly, if Debatts makes an attack on Chauvelin, or if he reaches the château first and tries to defend it, they will shoot us, Armand, and Percy. But is the dauphin at the château d'or? No, no, I think not. Then why should Percy have invoked the aid of Debatts, now when— I don't know. He murmured helplessly. Of course, when he wrote the letter, he could not guess that they would hold us as hostages. He may have thought that under cover of darkness, under an unexpected attack, he might have saved himself, had he been alone. But now—now that you and I are here—oh, it is all so horrible, and I cannot understand it all. Huck! broken Armand, suddenly gripping her arm more tightly. Hot! rang the sergeant's voice through the night. This time there was no mistaking the sound. Already it came from no far distance. It was the sound of a man running and panting, and now and again calling out as he ran. For a moment there was stillness in the very air. The wind itself was hushed between two gusts. Even the rain had ceased its incessant pattering. Heron's harsh voice was raised in the stillness. What is it now? he demanded. A runner, citizen, replied the sergeant, coming through the wood from the right. From the right? And the exclamation was accompanied by a volley of oaths. The direction of the château? Chauvelin has been attacked. He is sending a messenger back to me. Sergeant! Sergeant! Close up round that coach. Guard your prisoners as you value your life, and— The rest of his words were drowned in a yell of such violent fury that the horses, already over-nervous and fidgety, reared in mad terror, and the men had the greatest difficulty in holding them in. For a few moments noisy confusion prevailed, until the men could quieten their quivering animals with soft words and dental pattings. Then the troopers obeyed, closing up round the coach, where his brother and sister sat huddled against one another. One of the men said under his breath, but the citizen agent knows how to curse. One day he will break his gullet with the fury of his oaths. In the meanwhile the runner had come nearer, always at the same breathless speed. The next moment he was challenged. Quivala! A friend! he replied, panting and exhausted. Where is citizen Heron? Here! came the reply in a voiced horse with passionate excitement. Come up, damn you! Be quick! One citizen, suggested one of the drivers, no, no, not now! Here! Where the devil are we? We are close to the chapel on our left, citizen, said the sergeant. The runner, whose eyes were no doubt accustomed to the gloom, had drawn nearer to the carriage. The gates of the chateau, he said, still somewhat breathlessly, are just opposite here on the right, citizen. I have just come through them. Speak up, man! And Heron's voice now sounded choked with passion. Citizen Chauvelin sent you? Yes. He bade me tell you that he has gained access to the chateau, and that Capet is not there. A series of citizen Heron's choicest oaths interrupted the man's speech. Then he was curtly ordered to proceed, and he resumed his report. Citizen Chauvelin rang at the door of the chateau. After a while he was admitted by an old servant, who appeared to be in charge. But the place seemed otherwise absolutely deserted. Only—only what! Go on! What is it? As we rode through the park, it seemed to us as if we were being watched and followed. We heard distinctly the sound of horses behind and around us, but we could see nothing. And now, when I ran back, again I heard, there are others in the park tonight besides us, citizen. There was silence after that. It seemed as if the flood of Heron's blasphemous eloquence had spent itself at last. Others in the park! And now his voice was scarcely above a whisper, hoarse and trembling. How many! Could you see? No, citizen, we could not see. But there are horsemen lurking round the chateau now. Citizen Chauvelin took four men into the house with him and left the others on guard outside. He bade me tell you that it might be safer to send him a few more men, if you could spare them. There are a number of disused farm-buildings quite close to the gates, and he suggested that all the horses be put up there for the night, and that the men come up to the chateau on foot. It would be quicker and safer, for the darkness is intense. Even while the man spoke, the forest in the distance seemed to wake from its solemn silence. The wind on its wings brought sounds of life and movement different from the prowling of beasts or the screeching of night-birds. It was the furtive advance of men, the quick whispers of command, of encouragement, of the human animal preparing to attack his kind. But all in the distance still, all muffled, all furtive as yet. Sergeant! It was Heron's voice, but it too was subdued and almost calm now. Can you see the chapel? More clearly, citizen! replied the sergeant, it is on our left, quite a small building, I think. Then dismount, and walk all round it. See that there are no windows or door in the rear. There was a prolonged silence, during which those distant sounds of men moving, of furtive preparations for attack, struck distinctly through the night. Marguerite and Armand, clinging to one another, not knowing what to think, nor yet what to fear, heard the sounds mingling with those immediately around them, and Marguerite murmured under her breath, it is debats and some of his friends, but what can they do, what can Percy hope for now? But if Percy she could hear and see nothing, the darkness and the silence had drawn their imperceptible veil between his unseen presence and her own consciousness. She could see the coach in which he was, but Heron's hideous personality, his head with its battered hat and soiled bandage, had seemed to uptrude itself always before her gaze, blotting out from her mind even the knowledge that Percy was there, not fifty yards away from her. So strong did this feeling grow in her, that presently the awful dread seized upon her, that he was no longer there, that he was dead, worn out with fatigue and illness brought on by terrible privations, or if not dead, that he had swooned, that he was unconscious, his spirit absent from his body. She remembered that frightful yell of rage and hate which Heron had uttered a few minutes ago. Had the brute vented his fury on his helpless, weakened prisoner, and stilled forever those lips that may hap had mocked him to the last? Marguerite could not guess. She hardly knew what to hope. Vaguely, when the thought of Percy lying dead beside his enemy floated through her aching brain, she was almost conscious of a sense of relief at the thought that, at least, he would be spared the pain of the final, inevitable cataclysm. CHAPTER 47 The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre The sergeant's voice broke in upon her misery. The man had apparently done as the citizen agent had ordered, and had closely examined the little building that stood on the left, a vague, black mass more dense than the surrounding gloom. It is all solid stone, citizen, he said, iron gates in front, closed but not locked, rusty key in the lock which turns quite easily, no windows or door in the rear. You are quite sure. Quite certain, citizen, it is plain solid stone at the back, and the only possible access to the interior is through the iron gate in front. Good. Marguerite could only just hear Heron speaking to the sergeant. Darkness enveloped every form and deadened every sound. Even the harsh voice which she had learned to loathe and to dread sounded curiously subdued and unfamiliar. Heron no longer seemed inclined to storm, to rage, or to curse. The momentary danger, the thought of failure, the hope of revenge, had apparently cooled his temper, strengthened his determination, and forced his voice down to a little above a whisper. He gave his orders clearly and firmly, and the words came to Marguerite on the wings of the wind, with strange distinctness, born to her ears by the darkness itself, and the hush that lay over the wood. Take half a dozen men with you, Sergeant," she heard him say, and join Citizen Chauvelin at the chateau. You can stable your horses in the farm-buildings close by, as he suggests, and run to him on foot. You and your men should quickly get the best of a handful of midnight prowlers. You are well armed, and they only civilians. Tell Citizen Chauvelin that I, in the meanwhile, will take care of our prisoners. The Englishman I shall put in irons and lock up inside the chapel, with five men under the command of your corporal to guard him. The other two I will drive myself straight to Cressy with what is left of the escort. You understand? Yes, Citizen. We may not reach Cressy until two hours after midnight, but directly I arrive I will send Citizen Chauvelin further reinforcements, which, however, I hope may not be necessary, but which will reach him in the early morning. Even if he is seriously attacked, he can, with the fourteen men he will have with him, hold out inside the castle throughout the night. Tell him also that at dawn the two prisoners who will be with me will be shot in the courtyard of the guard-house at Cressy. But that whether he has got hold of Capet or not, he at best pick up the Englishman in the chapel in the morning, and bring him straight to Cressy, where I shall be awaiting him ready to return to Paris. You understand? Yes, Citizen. Then repeat what I said. I am to take six men with me to reinforce Citizen Chauvelin now. Yes. And you, Citizen, will drive straight back to Cressy, and will send us further reinforcements from there, which will reach us in the early morning. Yes. We are to hold the chateau against those unknown Marauders, if necessary, until the reinforcements come from Cressy. Having routed them, we return here, pick up the Englishman, whom you will have locked up in the chapel under a strong guard commanded by Corporal Cassar, and join you forthwith at Cressy. This whether Citizen Chauvelin has got hold of Capet or not? Yes, Citizen. I understand, concluded the Sergeant, imperturbably. And I am also to tell Citizen Chauvelin that the two prisoners will be shot at dawn in the courtyard of the guard-house at Cressy. Yes. That is all. Try to find the leader of the attacking party, and bring him along to Cressy with the Englishman. But unless they are in very small numbers, do not trouble about the others. Now, anavan, Citizen Chauvelin might be glad of your help. And stay. Order all the men to dismount, and take the horses out of one of the coaches, then let the men you are taking with you, each leader-horse, or even two, and stable them all in the farm-buildings. I shall not need them, and could not spare any of my men for the work later on. Remember that, above all, silence is the order. When you are ready to start, come back to me here. The Sergeant moved away, and Marguerite heard him transmitting the Citizen Agent's orders to the soldiers. The dismounting was carried on in wonderful silence, for silence had been one of the principal commands. Only one or two words reached her ears. First section and first half of the second section fall in, right wheel. First section each take two horses on the lead. Quietly now there. Don't tug at his bridle, let him go. And after that a simple report. Already, Citizen. Good! was the response. Now detail your corporal and two men to come here to me, so that we may put the Englishman in irons and take him at once to the chapel, and four men to stand guard at the doors of the other coach. The necessary orders were given, and after that there came the Kurt command, unavant. The Sergeant, with his squad and all the horses, was slowly moving away in the night. The horses' hooves hardly made a noise on the soft carpet of pine needles, and of dead fallen leaves. But the champing of the bits was of course audible, and now and then the snorting of some poor, tired horse longing for its stable. Somehow in Margaret's fevered mind this departure of a squad of men seemed like the final flitting of her last hope. The slow agony of the familiar sounds, the retreating horses and soldiers moving away amongst the shadows, took on a weird significance. Heron had given his last orders. Percy, helpless and probably unconscious, would spend the night in that dank chapel, while she and Armand would be taken back to Cressy, driven to death like some insensient animals to the slaughter. When the grey dawn would first begin to peep through the branches of the pines, Percy would be led back to Paris and the guillotine, and she and Armand will have been sacrificed to the hatred and revenge of Brutes. The end had come, and there was nothing more to be done. Struggling, fighting, scheming, could be of no avail now. But she wanted to get to her husband. She wanted to be near him now that death was so imminent both for him and for her. She tried to envisage it all, quite calmly, just as she knew that Percy would wish her to do. The inevitable end was there, and she would not give to these callous wretches here the gratuitous spectacle of a despairing woman fighting blindly against adverse fate. But she wanted to go to her husband. She felt that she could face death more easily on the morrow, if she could but see him once more, if she could but look once more into the eyes that had mirrored so much enthusiasm, such absolute vitality and whole-hearted self-sacrifice, and such an intensity of love and passion, if she could but kiss once more those lips that had smiled through life, and would smile, she knew, even in the face of death. She tried to open the carriage door, but it was held from without, and a harsh voice cursed her, ordering her to sit still. But she could lean out of the window and strain her eyes to see. They were by now accustomed to the gloom, the dilated pupils taking in pictures of vague forms moving like ghouls in the shadows. The other coach was not far, and she could hear Heron's voice still subdued in calm and the curses of the men, but not a sound from Percy. I think the prisoner is unconscious, she heard one of the men say. Lift him out of the carriage, then, was Heron's curt command, and you go and throw open the chapel gates. Marguerite saw it all, the movement, the crowd of men, two vague black forms lifting another one which appeared heavy and inert, out of the coat, and carrying it staggering up towards the chapel. Then the forms disappeared, swallowed up by the more dense mass of the little building, merged in with it, immovable as the stone itself. Only a few words reached her now. He is unconscious. Leave him there, then. He'll not move. Now close the gates. There was a loud clang, and Marguerite gave a piercing scream. She tore at the handle of the carriage door. Haman, Haman, go to him, she cried, and all her self-control, all her enforced calm, vanished in an outburst of wild, agonizing passion. Let me get to him, Haman. This is the end. Get me to him in the name of God. Stop that woman screaming, came Heron's voice clearly through the night. Put her and the other prisoner in Irons, quick! But while Marguerite expended her feeble strength in a mad, pathetic effort to reach her husband, even now at this last hour, when all hope was dead and death was so nigh, Haman had already wrenched the carriage door from the grasp of the soldier who was guarding it. He was of the south, and knew the trick of charging an unsuspecting adversary with head thrust forward like a ball inside a ring. Thus he knocked one of the soldiers down, and made a quick rush for the chapel gates. The men, attacked so suddenly and in such complete darkness, did not wait for orders. They closed in round Armand. One man drew his sabre and hacked away with it an aimless rage. But for the moment he evaded them all, pushing his way through them, not heeding the blows that came on him from out the darkness. At last he reached the chapel. With one bound he was at the gate, his numb fingers thumbling for the lock which he could not see. It was a vigorous blow from Heron's fist that brought him at last to his knees, and even then his hands did not relax their hold. They gripped the ornamental scroll of the gate, shook the gate itself in its rusty hinges, pushed and pulled with the unresinning strength of despair. He had a sabre cut across his brow, and the blood flowed in a warm, trickling stream down his face. But of this he was unconscious. All that he wanted, all that he was striving for with agonizing heartbeats and cracking sinews, was to get to his friend, who was lying in there, unconscious, abandoned, dead, perhaps. Curse you! struck Heron's voice close to his ear. Cannot some of you stop this raving maniac? Then it was that the heavy blow on his head caused him a sensation of sickness, and he fell on his knees, still gripping the ironwork. Stronger hands than his were forcing him to loosen his hold. Blows that hurt terribly reigned on his numbed fingers. He felt himself dragged away, carried like an inert mass further and further from that gate which he would have given his life-blood to force open. And Marguerite heard all this from the inside of the coach, where she was imprisoned as effectually as was Percy's unconscious body inside that dark chapel. She could hear the noise and scramble and Heron's horse commands, the swift sabre-strokes as they cut through the air. Already a trooper had clapped irons on her wrists. Two others held the carriage doors. Now Armand was lifted back into the coach, and she could not even help to make him comfortable. Though as he was lifted in she heard him feebly moaning. Then the carriage doors were banged to again. Do not allow either of the prisoners out again or peril of your lives came with a vigorous curse from Heron. After which there was a moment's silence. Whispered commands came spasmodically in deadened sound to her ear. Well, the key turn? Yes, citizen. All secure? Yes, citizen. The prisoner is groaning. Let him groan. The empty coach, citizen? The horses have been taken out. Leave it standing where it is, then. Citizen Chauvelin will need it in the morning. Armand, whispered Marguerite inside the coach, did you see Percy? It was so dark, murmured Armand feebly, but I saw him just inside the gates where they had laid him down. I heard him groaning. Oh, my God! Hush, dear! She said, we can do nothing more. Only die as he lived, bravely and with a smile on our lips in memory of him. Number thirty-five is wounded, citizen, said one of the men. Cursed the fool who did the mischief, was the placid response. Leave him here with the guard. How many of you are there left, then? Asked the same voice a moment later. Only two, citizen, if one whole section remains with me at the chapel door, and also the wounded man. Two are enough for me, and five are not too many at the chapel door. And Heron's coarse, cruel laugh echoed against the stone walls of the little chapel. Now then, one of you get into the coach, and the other go to the horse's heads. And remember, Corporal Cassar, that you and your men who stay here to guard that chapel door are answerable to the whole nation with your lives for the safety of the Englishman. The carriage door was thrown open, and a soldier stepped in and sat down opposite Marguerite and Armand. Heron, in the meanwhile, was apparently scrambling up the box. Marguerite could hear him muttering curses as he groped for the reins, and finally gathered them into his hand. The springs of the coach creaked and groaned as the vehicle slowly swung round. The wheels ploughed deeply through the soft carpet of dead leaves. Marguerite felt Armand's inert body leaning heavily against her shoulder. Are you in pain, dear? She asked softly. He made no reply, and she thought that he had fainted. It was better so. At least the next dreary hours would flit by for him in the blissful state of unconsciousness. Now at last the heavy carriage began to move more evenly. The soldier at the horse's heads was stepping along at a rapid pace. Marguerite would have given much even now to look back once more at the dense black mass, blacker and denser than any shadow that had ever descended before on God's earth, which held between its cold, cruel walls all that she loved in the world. But her wrists were fettered by the irons which cut into her flesh when she moved. She could no longer lean out of the window, and she could not even hear. The whole forest was hushed. The wind was lulled to rest. Wild beasts and nightbirds were silent and still. And the wheels of the coach creaked in the ruts, bearing Marguerite with every turn further and further away from the man who lay helpless in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. CHAPTER 48 The Waning Moon Amand had wakened from his attack of faintness, and brother and sister sat close to one another, shoulder-tutting shoulder. That sense of nearness was the one tiny spark of comfort to both of them on this dreary, dreary way. The coach had lumbered on unceasingly since all eternity, so it seemed to them both. Once there had been a brief halt when Heron's rough voice had ordered the soldier at the horse's heads to climb on the box beside him, and once—it had been a very little while ago—a terrible cry of pain and terror had rung through the stillness of the night. Immediately after that the horses had been put at a more rapid pace, but it had seemed to Marguerite as if that one cry of pain had been repeated by several others, which sounded more feeble, and soon appeared to be dying away in the distance behind. The soldier who sat opposite to them must have heard the cry too, for he jumped up, as if wakened from sleep, and put his head out of the window. "'Did you hear that cry, citizen?' he asked, but only a curse answered him, and a peremptory command not to lose sight of the prisoners by poking his head out of the window. "'Did you hear the cry?' asked the soldier of Marguerite as he made haste to obey. "'Yes. What could it be?' she murmured. "'It seems dangerous to drive so fast in this darkness,' muttered the soldier. After which remark he, with the stolidity peculiar to his kind, figuratively shrugged his shoulders, detaching himself as it were, of the whole affair. "'We should be out of the forest by now,' he remarked in an undertone a little while later. The way seemed shorter before. Just then the coach gave an unexpected lurch to one side, and after much groaning and creaking of axels and springs, it came to a standstill, and the citizen agent was heard cursing loudly and then scrambling down from the box. The next moment the carriage-door was pulled open from without, and the harsh voice called out peremptorily, "'Citizen soldier, here, quick, quick, curse you, we'll have one of the horses down if you don't hurry.'" The soldier struggled to his feet. It was never good to be slow in obeying the citizen agent's commands. He was half asleep, and no doubt numb with cold and long sitting still. To accelerate his movements he was suddenly gripped by the arm and dragged incontinently out of the coach. Then the door was slammed to again, either by a rough hand or a sudden gust of wind, Margaret could not tell. She heard a cry of rage and one of terror, and Heron's raucous curses. She cowered in the corner of the carriage with Armand's head against her shoulder, and tried to close her ears to all those hideous sounds. Then suddenly all the sounds were hushed, and all around everything became perfectly calm and still, so still, that at first the silence oppressed her with a vague, nameless dread. It was as if nature herself had paused, that she might listen, and the silence became more and more absolute, until Margaret could hear Armand's soft, regular breathing close to her ear. The window nearest to her was open, and as she leaned forward with that paralyzing sense of oppression, a breath of pure air struck full upon her nostrils, and brought with it a briny taste as if from the sea. It was not quite so dark, and there was a sense as of open country stretching out to the limits of the horizon. Overhead a vague grayish light suffused the sky, and the wind swept the clouds in great rolling banks right across that light. Margaret gazed upward with a more calm feeling that was akin to gratitude. That pale light, though so one and feeble, was thrice welcome after that inky blackness wherein shadows were less dark than the lights. She watched eagerly the bank of clouds driven by the dying gale. The light grew brighter and faintly golden. Now the banks of clouds, storm-tossed and fleecy, raced past one another, parted and reunited like veils of unseen giant dancers waved by hands that controlled infinite space, advanced and rushed and slackened speed again, united and finally tore asunder, to reveal the waning moon, honey-coloured and mysterious, rising as if from an invisible ocean far away. The one light spread over the wide stretch of country, throwing over it as it spread, dull tones of indigo and of blue. Here and there sparse, stunted trees with fringed, gaunt arms bending to prevailing winds proclaimed the neighbourhood of the sea. Margaret gazed on the picture which the waning moon had so suddenly revealed, but she gazed with eyes that knew not what they saw. The moon had risen on her right, there lay the east, and the coach must have been travelling due north, whereas Crécy, in the absolute silence that reigned, she could perceive from far, very far away, the sound of a church clock striking in the midnight hour, and now it seemed to her super-sensitive senses that a firm footstep was treading the soft earth, a footstep that drew nearer, and then nearer still. Nature did pause to listen. The wind was hushed. The night birds in the forest had gone to rest. Margaret's heart beat so fast that its throbbing choked her, and her dizziness clouded her consciousness. But through the state of Torpor she heard the opening of the carriage door. She felt the onrush of that pure briny air, and she felt a long, burning kiss upon her hands. She thought then that she was really dead, and that God in his infinite love had opened to her the outer gates of paradise. My love! she moored. She was leaning back in the carriage, and her eyes were closed, but she felt that firm fingers removed the irons from her wrists, and that a pair of warm lips were pressed there in their stead. Their little woman! That's better, so is it not. Now let me get hold of poor Armand. It was heaven, of course, else how could earth hold such heavenly joy? Percy! exclaimed Armand in an awed voice. Hush, dear! murmured Margaret Feebly, we are in heaven, you and I, whereupon a ringing laugh woke the echoes of a silent night. In heaven, dear heart! And the voice had a delicious earthly ring in its whole-hearted merriment. Please, God, you'll both be at portell with me before dawn. Then she was indeed forced to believe. She put out her hands and groped for him, for it was dark inside the carriage. She groped and felt his massive shoulders leaning across the body of the coat, while his fingers busied themselves with the irons on Armand's wrist. Don't touch that brute's filthy coat with your dainty fingers, dear heart! he said gaily. I have wrought! I have worn that wretch's clothes for over two hours! I feel as if the dirt had penetrated to my bones. Then with that gesture so habitual to him, he took her head between his two hands, and drawing her to him until the one light from without lit up the face that he worshipped, he gazed his fill into her eyes. She could only see the outline of his head silhouetted against the wind-tossed sky. She could not see his eyes nor his lips, but she felt his nearness, and the happiness of that almost caused her to swoon. Come out into the open, my lady-fair, he murmured. And though she could not see, she could feel that he smiled. Let God's pure air blow through your hair and round your dear head. Then if you can walk so far, there's a small halfway house close by here. I have knocked up the none too amiable host. You and Armand could have half an hour's rest there before we go further on our way. But you, Percy, are you safe? Yes, my dear. We are all of us safe until morning. Time enough to reach Le Porte, and to be aboard the daydream before my inamiable friend, Monsieur Chambertin, has discovered his worthy colleague lying gagged and bound inside the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. By God! How old Heron will curse the moment he can open his mouth! He half helped, half lifted her out of the carriage. The strong, pure air suddenly rushing right through to her lungs made her feel faint, and she almost fell. But it was good to feel herself falling, when one pair of arms amongst the millions on the earth were there to receive her. Can you walk, dear heart? He asked. Lean well on me. It is not far, and the rest will do you good. But you, Percy! He laughed, and the most complete joy of living seemed to resound through that laugh. Her arm was in his, and for one moment he stood still while his eyes swept the far reaches of the country, the mellow distance still wrapped in its mantle of indigo, still untouched by the mysterious light of the waning moon. He pressed her arm against his heart, but his right hand was stretched out towards the black wall of the forest behind him, towards the dark crests of the pines in which the dying wind sent its last mournful sighs. Dear heart! he said, and his voice quivered with the intensity of his excitement. Beyond the stretch of that wood, from far away over there, there are cries and moans of anguish that come to my ear even now. But for you, dear, I would cross that wood to-night and re-enter Paris to-morrow. But for you, dear! But for you! He re-iterated earnestly as he pressed her closer to him, for a bitter cry had risen to her lips. She went on in silence. Her happiness was great, as great as was her pain. She had found him again, the man whom she worshipped, the husband whom she thought never to see again on earth. She had found him, and not even now, not after those terrible weeks of misery and suffering unspeakable, could she feel that love had triumphed over the wild, adventurous spirit, the reckless enthusiasm, the ardour of self-sacrifice. CHAPTER 49 The Land of El Dorado It seems that in the pocket of Heron's coat there was a letter-case with some few hundred francs. It was amusing to think that the brute's money helped to bribe the ill-tempered keeper of the halfway-house to receive guests at midnight, and to plie them well with food, drink, and the shelter of a stuffy coffee-room. Marguerite sat silently beside her husband, her hand in his. Armand, opposite to them, had both elbows on the table. He looked pale and one, with a bandage across his forehead, and his glowing eyes were resting on his chief. "'Yes, you damned young idiot,' said Blakely merrily, "'you nearly upset my plan in the end, with your yelling and screaming outside the chapel gates. I wanted to get to you, Percy. I thought those brute's had got you there inside that building. Not they,' he exclaimed. It was my friend Heron whom they had trust and gagged, and whom my amiable friend, Mr. Shambhal Thumball, find in there to-morrow morning. By God! I would go back if only for the pleasure of hearing Heron curse when first the gag is taken from his mouth. But how was it all done, Percy? And there was debates. Debats was part of the scheme I had planned for my known escape, for I knew that those brute's meant to take margarite and you as hostages for my good behaviour. What I hoped then was that, under cover of a tussle or a fight, I could somehow or other contrive to slip through their fingers. And you know my belief in bald-headed fortune, with the one solitary hair. Well, I meant to grab that hair, and at the worst I could but die in the open and not caged in that awful hole like some noxious vermin. I knew that debates would rise to the bait. I told him in my letter that the dove farm would be at the Chateau d'Or, this night, but that I feared the revolutionary government had got wind of this fact, and were sending an armed escort to bring the lad away. This letter folks took to him. I knew that he would make a vigorous effort to get the dove farm into his hands, and that during the scuffle that one hair on fortune's head would, for one second only, may have come within my reach. I had so planned the expedition that we were bound to arrive at the forest of Boulogne by nightfall, and night is always a useful ally. But at the guard-house of the Rossentin I realised for the first time that those brute's had pressed me into a tighter corner than I had preconceived. He paused, and once again that look of recklessness swept over his face, and his eyes, still hollow and circled, shone with the excitement of past memories. I was such a weak, miserable wretch, then, he said, in answer to Marguerite's appeal. I had to try and build up some strength when, heaven forgive me for the sacrilege, I had unwittingly risked your precious life, dear heart, in that blind endeavour to save mine own. By God! Easy task in that jolting vehicle with that noisome wretch beside me for soul-company. Yet I ate, and I drank, and I slept for three days and two nights, until the hour when in the darkness I struck Heron from behind. Half strangled him first, then gagged him, and finally slipped into his filthy coat, and put that loathsome bandage across my head, and his battered hat above it all. The yell he gave when first I attacked him made every horse rear. You must remember it. The noise effectually drowned our last scuffle in the coach. Chauvin was the only man who might have suspected what had occurred, but he had gone on ahead, and bored-headed fortune had passed by me, and I had managed to grab its one hair. After that it was all quite easy. The sergeant and the soldiers had seen very little of Heron and nothing of me. It did not take a great effort to deceive them, and the darkness of the night was my most faithful friend. His rocker's voice was not difficult to imitate, and darkness always muffles in changes every tone. Anyway, it was not likely that those loutish soldiers would even remotely suspect the trick that was being played on them. The citizen agents' orders were promptly and implicitly obeyed. The men never even thought to wonder that after insisting on an escort of twenty men, he should drive off with two prisoners and only two men to guard them. If they did wonder, it was not theirs to question. Those two troopers are spending an uncomfortable night somewhere in the forest of Boulogne, each tied to a tree, and some two leaks apart, one from the other. And now, he added gaily, envoi dure, my fair lady, and you too, Armand. Tis seven leaks to Le Portel, and we must be there before dawn. Sir Andrew's intention was to make for Calais first, there to open communication with the Daydream, and then for Le Portel, said Marguerite. After that he meant to strike back for the Chateau d'Or in search of me. Then we'll still find him at Le Portel. I shall know how to lay hands on him, but you too must get aboard the Daydream at once, for folks and I can always look after ourselves. It was one hour after midnight, when, refreshed with food and rest, Marguerite, Armand, and Sir Percy left the halfway house. Marguerite was standing in the doorway, ready to go. Percy and Armand had gone ahead to bring the coat along. Percy, whispered Armand, Marguerite does not know? Of course she does not, you young fool. Retorted Percy lightly. If you try and tell her I think I would smash your head. But you, said the young man with sudden vehemence, can you bear the sight of me? My God! When I think— Don't think, my good Armand. Not of that, anyway. Only think of the woman for whose sake you committed a crime. If she is pure and good, woo her and win her. Not just now, for it were foolish to go back to Paris after her, but anon, when she comes to England, and all these past days are forgotten. Then love her as much as you can, Armand. Learn your lesson of love better than I have learnt mine. Do not cause Jean Lange those tears of anguish which my mad spirit brings to your sister's eyes. You are right, Armand, when you said that I do not know how to love. Not on board the daydream when all danger was past, Marguerite felt that he did. End of Chapter 49. End of El Dorado by Baron S.O.Z.