“Well? How is it now?”
“The last phase, I think.”
“He will yield?”
“He must.”
“Bah! you have said it yourself often enough; those English are tough.”
“It takes time to hack them to pieces, perhaps. In this case even you, citizen Chauvelin, said that it would take time. Well, it has taken just seventeen days, and now the end is in sight.”
It was close on midnight in the guard-room which gave on the innermost cell of the Conciergerie. Heron had just visited the prisoner as was his wont at this hour of the night. He had watched the changing of the guard, inspected the night-watch, questioned the sergeant in charge, and finally he had been on the point of retiring to his own new quarters in the house of Justice, in the near vicinity of the Conciergerie, when citizen Chauvelin entered the guard-room unexpectedly and detained his colleague with the peremptory question:
“How is it now?”
“If you are so near the end, citizen Heron,” he now said, sinking his voice to a whisper, “why not make a final effort and end it to-night?”
“I wish I could; the anxiety is wearing me out more’n him,” he added with a jerky movement of the head in direction of the inner cell.
“Shall I try?” rejoined Chauvelin grimly.
“Yes, an you wish.”
Citizen Heron’s long limbs were sprawling on a guard-room chair. In this low narrow room he looked like some giant whose body had been carelessly and loosely put together by a ‘prentice hand in the art of manufacture. His broad shoulders were bent, probably under the weight of anxiety to which he had referred, and his head, with the lank, shaggy hair overshadowing the brow, was sunk deep down on his chest.
Chauvelin looked on his friend and associate with no small measure of contempt. He would no doubt have preferred to conclude the present difficult transaction entirely in his own way and alone; but equally there was no doubt that the Committee of Public Safety did not trust him quite so fully as it used to do before the fiasco at Calais and the blunders of Boulogne. Heron, on the other hand, enjoyed to its outermost the confidence of his colleagues; his ferocious cruelty and his callousness were well known, whilst physically, owing to his great height and bulky if loosely knit frame, he had a decided advantage over his trim and slender friend.
As far as the bringing of prisoners to trial was concerned, the chief agent of the Committee of General Security had been given a perfectly free hand by the decree of the 27th Nivose. At first, therefore, he had experienced no difficulty when he desired to keep the Englishman in close confinement for a time without hurrying on that summary trial and condemnation which the populace had loudly demanded, and to which they felt that they were entitled to as a public holiday. The death of the Scarlet Pimpernel on the guillotine had been a spectacle promised by every demagogue who desired to purchase a few votes by holding out visions of pleasant doings to come; and during the first few days the mob of Paris was content to enjoy the delights of expectation.
But now seventeen days had gone by and still the Englishman was not being brought to trial. The pleasure-loving public was waxing impatient, and earlier this evening, when citizen Heron had shown himself in the stalls of the national theatre, he was greeted by a crowded audience with decided expressions of disapproval and open mutterings of:
“What of the Scarlet Pimpernel?”
It almost looked as if he would have to bring that accursed Englishman to the guillotine without having wrested from him the secret which he would have given a fortune to possess. Chauvelin, who had also been present at the theatre, had heard the expressions of discontent; hence his visit to his colleague at this late hour of the night.
“Shall I try?” he had queried with some impatience, and a deep sigh of satisfaction escaped his thin lips when the chief agent, wearied and discouraged, had reluctantly agreed.
“Let the men make as much noise as they like,” he added with an enigmatical smile. “The Englishman and I will want an accompaniment to our pleasant conversation.”
Heron growled a surly assent, and without another word Chauvelin turned towards the inner cell. As he stepped in he allowed the iron bar to fall into its socket behind him. Then he went farther into the room until the distant recess was fully revealed to him. His tread had been furtive and almost noiseless. Now he paused, for he had caught sight of the prisoner. For a moment he stood quite still, with hands clasped behind his back in his wonted attitude—still save for a strange, involuntary twitching of his mouth, and the nervous clasping and interlocking of his fingers behind his back. He was savouring to its utmost fulsomeness the supremest joy which animal man can ever know—the joy of looking on a fallen enemy.
Blakeney sat at the table with one arm resting on it, the emaciated hand tightly clutched, the body leaning forward, the eyes looking into nothingness.
For the moment he was unconscious of Chauvelin’s presence, and the latter could gaze on him to the full content of his heart.
Indeed, to all outward appearances there sat a man whom privations of every sort and kind, the want of fresh air, of proper food, above all, of rest, had worn down physically to a shadow. There was not a particle of colour in cheeks or lips, the skin was grey in hue, the eyes looked like deep caverns, wherein the glow of fever was all that was left of life.
Chauvelin looked on in silence, vaguely stirred by something that he could not define, something that right through his triumphant satisfaction, his hatred and final certainty of revenge, had roused in him a sense almost of admiration.
He gazed on the noiseless figure of the man who had endured so much for an ideal, and as he gazed it seemed to him as if the spirit no longer dwelt in the body, but hovered round in the dank, stuffy air of the narrow cell above the head of the lonely prisoner, crowning it with glory that was no longer of this earth.
Of this the looker-on was conscious despite himself, of that and of the fact that stare as he might, and with perception rendered doubly keen by hate, he could not, in spite of all, find the least trace of mental weakness in that far-seeing gaze which seemed to pierce the prison walls, nor could he see that bodily weakness had tended to subdue the ruling passions.
Sir Percy Blakeney—a prisoner since seventeen days in close, solitary confinement, half-starved, deprived of rest, and of that mental and physical activity which had been the very essence of life to him hitherto—might be outwardly but a shadow of his former brilliant self, but nevertheless he was still that same elegant English gentleman, that prince of dandies whom Chauvelin had first met eighteen months ago at the most courtly Court in Europe. His clothes, despite constant wear and the want of attention from a scrupulous valet, still betrayed the perfection of London tailoring; he had put them on with meticulous care, they were free from the slightest particle of dust, and the filmy folds of priceless Mechlin still half-veiled the delicate whiteness of his shapely hands.
And in the pale, haggard face, in the whole pose of body and of arm, there was still the expression of that indomitable strength of will, that reckless daring, that almost insolent challenge to Fate; it was there untamed, uncrushed. Chauvelin himself could not deny to himself its presence or its force. He felt that behind that smooth brow, which looked waxlike now, the mind was still alert, scheming, plotting, striving for freedom, for conquest and for power, and rendered even doubly keen and virile by the ardour of supreme self-sacrifice.
Chauvelin now made a slight movement and suddenly Blakeney became conscious of his presence, and swift as a flash a smile lit up his wan face.
“Why! if it is not my engaging friend Monsieur Chambertin,” he said gaily.
He rose and stepped forward in the most approved fashion prescribed by the elaborate etiquette of the time. But Chauvelin smiled grimly and a look of almost animal lust gleamed in his pale eyes, for he had noted that as he rose Sir Percy had to seek the support of the table, even whilst a dull film appeared to gather over his eyes.
The gesture had been quick and cleverly disguised, but it had been there nevertheless—that and the livid hue that overspread the face as if consciousness was threatening to go. All of which was sufficient still further to assure the looker-on that that mighty physical strength was giving way at last, that strength which he had hated in his enemy almost as much as he had hated the thinly veiled insolence of his manner.
“And what procures me, sir, the honour of your visit?” continued Blakeney, who had—at any rate, outwardly soon recovered himself, and whose voice, though distinctly hoarse and spent, rang quite cheerfully across the dank narrow cell.
“My desire for your welfare, Sir Percy,” replied Chauvelin with equal pleasantry.
“La, sir; but have you not gratified that desire already, to an extent which leaves no room for further solicitude? But I pray you, will you not sit down?” he continued, turning back toward the table. “I was about to partake of the lavish supper which your friends have provided for me. Will you not share it, sir? You are most royally welcome, and it will mayhap remind you of that supper we shared together in Calais, eh? when you, Monsieur Chambertin, were temporarily in holy orders.”
He laughed, offering his enemy a chair, and pointed with inviting gesture to the hunk of brown bread and the mug of water which stood on the table.
“Such as it is, sir,” he said with a pleasant smile, “it is yours to command.”
Chauvelin sat down. He held his lower lip tightly between his teeth, so tightly that a few drops of blood appeared upon its narrow surface. He was making vigorous efforts to keep his temper under control, for he would not give his enemy the satisfaction of seeing him resent his insolence. He could afford to keep calm now that victory was at last in sight, now that he knew that he had but to raise a finger, and those smiling, impudent lips would be closed forever at last.
“Sir Percy,” he resumed quietly, “no doubt it affords you a certain amount of pleasure to aim your sarcastic shafts at me. I will not begrudge you that pleasure; in your present position, sir, your shafts have little or no sting.”
“And I shall have but few chances left to aim them at your charming self,” interposed Blakeney, who had drawn another chair close to the table and was now sitting opposite his enemy, with the light of the lamp falling full on his own face, as if he wished his enemy to know that he had nothing to hide, no thought, no hope, no fear.
“Exactly,” said Chauvelin dryly. “That being the case, Sir Percy, what say you to no longer wasting the few chances which are left to you for safety? The time is getting on. You are not, I imagine, quite as hopeful as you were even a week ago,... you have never been over-comfortable in this cell, why not end this unpleasant state of affairs now—once and for all? You’ll not have cause to regret it. My word on it.”
Sir Percy leaned back in his chair. He yawned loudly and ostentatiously.
“I pray you, sir, forgive me,” he said. “Never have I been so d—d fatigued. I have not slept for more than a fortnight.”
“Exactly, Sir Percy. A night’s rest would do you a world of good.”
“A night, sir?” exclaimed Blakeney with what seemed like an echo of his former inimitable laugh. “La! I should want a week.”
“I am afraid we could not arrange for that, but one night would greatly refresh you.”
“You are right, sir, you are right; but those d—d fellows in the next room make so much noise.”
“I would give strict orders that perfect quietude reigned in the guard-room this night,” said Chauvelin, murmuring softly, and there was a gentle purr in his voice, “and that you were left undisturbed for several hours. I would give orders that a comforting supper be served to you at once, and that everything be done to minister to your wants.”
“That sounds d—d alluring, sir. Why did you not suggest this before?”
“You were so—what shall I say—so obstinate, Sir Percy?”
“Call it pig-headed, my dear Monsieur Chambertin,” retorted Blakeney gaily, “truly you would oblige me.”
“In any case you, sir, were acting in direct opposition to your own interests.”
“Therefore you came,” concluded Blakeney airily, “like the good Samaritan to take compassion on me and my troubles, and to lead me straight away to comfort, a good supper and a downy bed.”
“Admirably put, Sir Percy,” said Chauvelin blandly; “that is exactly my mission.”
“How will you set to work, Monsieur Chambertin?”
“Quite easily, if you, Sir Percy, will yield to the persuasion of my friend citizen Heron.”
“Ah!”
“Why, yes! He is anxious to know where little Capet is. A reasonable whim, you will own, considering that the disappearance of the child is causing him grave anxiety.”
“And you, Monsieur Chambertin?” queried Sir Percy with that suspicion of insolence in his manner which had the power to irritate his enemy even now. “And yourself, sir; what are your wishes in the matter?”
“Mine, Sir Percy?” retorted Chauvelin. “Mine? Why, to tell you the truth, the fate of little Capet interests me but little. Let him rot in Austria or in our prisons, I care not which. He’ll never trouble France overmuch, I imagine. The teachings of old Simon will not tend to make a leader or a king out of the puny brat whom you chose to drag out of our keeping. My wishes, sir, are the annihilation of your accursed League, and the lasting disgrace, if not the death, of its chief.”
He had spoken more hotly than he had intended, but all the pent-up rage of the past eighteen months, the recollections of Calais and of Boulogne, had all surged up again in his mind, because despite the closeness of these prison walls, despite the grim shadow of starvation and of death that beckoned so close at hand, he still encountered a pair of mocking eyes, fixed with relentless insolence upon him.
Whilst he spoke Blakeney had once more leaned forward, resting his elbows upon the table. Now he drew nearer to him the wooden platter on which reposed that very uninviting piece of dry bread. With solemn intentness he proceeded to break the bread into pieces; then he offered the platter to Chauvelin.
“I am sorry,” he said pleasantly, “that I cannot offer you more dainty fare, sir, but this is all that your friends have supplied me with to-day.”
He crumbled some of the dry bread in his slender fingers, then started munching the crumbs with apparent relish. He poured out some water into the mug and drank it. Then he said with a light laugh:
“Even the vinegar which that ruffian Brogard served us at Calais was preferable to this, do you not imagine so, my good Monsieur Chambertin?”
Chauvelin made no reply. Like a feline creature on the prowl, he was watching the prey that had so nearly succumbed to his talons. Blakeney’s face now was positively ghastly. The effort to speak, to laugh, to appear unconcerned, was apparently beyond his strength. His cheeks and lips were livid in hue, the skin clung like a thin layer of wax to the bones of cheek and jaw, and the heavy lids that fell over the eyes had purple patches on them like lead.
To a system in such an advanced state of exhaustion the stale water and dusty bread must have been terribly nauseating, and Chauvelin himself callous and thirsting for vengeance though he was, could hardly bear to look calmly on the martyrdom of this man whom he and his colleagues were torturing in order to gain their own ends.
An ashen hue, which seemed like the shadow of the hand of death, passed over the prisoner’s face. Chauvelin felt compelled to avert his gaze. A feeling that was almost akin to remorse had stirred a hidden chord in his heart. The feeling did not last—the heart had been too long atrophied by the constantly recurring spectacles of cruelties, massacres, and wholesale hecatombs perpetrated in the past eighteen months in the name of liberty and fraternity to be capable of a sustained effort in the direction of gentleness or of pity. Any noble instinct in these revolutionaries had long ago been drowned in a whirlpool of exploits that would forever sully the records of humanity; and this keeping of a fellow-creature on the rack in order to wring from him a Judas-like betrayal was but a complement to a record of infamy that had ceased by its very magnitude to weigh upon their souls.
Chauvelin was in no way different from his colleagues; the crimes in which he had had no hand he had condoned by continuing to serve the Government that had committed them, and his ferocity in the present case was increased a thousandfold by his personal hatred for the man who had so often fooled and baffled him.
When he looked round a second or two later that ephemeral fit of remorse did its final vanishing; he had once more encountered the pleasant smile, the laughing if ashen-pale face of his unconquered foe.
“Only a passing giddiness, my dear sir,” said Sir Percy lightly. “As you were saying—”
At the airily-spoken words, at the smile that accompanied them, Chauvelin had jumped to his feet. There was something almost supernatural, weird, and impish about the present situation, about this dying man who, like an impudent schoolboy, seemed to be mocking Death with his tongue in his cheek, about his laugh that appeared to find its echo in a widely yawning grave.
“In the name of God, Sir Percy,” he said roughly, as he brought his clenched fist crashing down upon the table, “this situation is intolerable. Bring it to an end to-night!”
“Why, sir?” retorted Blakeney, “methought you and your kind did not believe in God.”
“No. But you English do.”
“We do. But we do not care to hear His name on your lips.”
“Then in the name of the wife whom you love—”
But even before the words had died upon his lips, Sir Percy, too, had risen to his feet.
“Have done, man—have done,” he broke in hoarsely, and despite weakness, despite exhaustion and weariness, there was such a dangerous look in his hollow eyes as he leaned across the table that Chauvelin drew back a step or two, and—vaguely fearful—looked furtively towards the opening into the guard-room. “Have done,” he reiterated for the third time; “do not name her, or by the living God whom you dared to invoke I’ll find strength yet to smite you in the face.”
But Chauvelin, after that first moment of almost superstitious fear, had quickly recovered his sang-froid.
“Little Capet, Sir Percy,” he said, meeting the other’s threatening glance with an imperturbable smile, “tell me where to find him, and you may yet live to savour the caresses of the most beautiful woman in England.”
He had meant it as a taunt, the final turn of the thumb-screw applied to a dying man, and he had in that watchful, keen mind of his well weighed the full consequences of the taunt.
The next moment he had paid to the full the anticipated price. Sir Percy had picked up the pewter mug from the table—it was half-filled with brackish water—and with a hand that trembled but slightly he hurled it straight at his opponent’s face.
The heavy mug did not hit citizen Chauvelin; it went crashing against the stone wall opposite. But the water was trickling from the top of his head all down his eyes and cheeks. He shrugged his shoulders with a look of benign indulgence directed at his enemy, who had fallen back into his chair exhausted with the effort.
Then he took out his handkerchief and calmly wiped the water from his face.
“Not quite so straight a shot as you used to be, Sir Percy,” he said mockingly.
“No, sir—apparently—not.”
The words came out in gasps. He was like a man only partly conscious. The lips were parted, the eyes closed, the head leaning against the high back of the chair. For the space of one second Chauvelin feared that his zeal had outrun his prudence, that he had dealt a death-blow to a man in the last stage of exhaustion, where he had only wished to fan the flickering flame of life. Hastily—for the seconds seemed precious—he ran to the opening that led into the guard-room.
“Brandy—quick!” he cried.
Heron looked up, roused from the semi-somnolence in which he had lain for the past half-hour. He disentangled his long limbs from out the guard-room chair.
“Eh?” he queried. “What is it?”
“Brandy,” reiterated Chauvelin impatiently; “the prisoner has fainted.”
“Bah!” retorted the other with a callous shrug of the shoulders, “you are not going to revive him with brandy, I imagine.”
“No. But you will, citizen Heron,” rejoined the other dryly, “for if you do not he’ll be dead in an hour!”
“Devils in hell!” exclaimed Heron, “you have not killed him? You—you d—d fool!”
He was wide awake enough now; wide awake and shaking with fury. Almost foaming at the mouth and uttering volleys of the choicest oaths, he elbowed his way roughly through the groups of soldiers who were crowding round the centre table of the guard-room, smoking and throwing dice or playing cards. They made way for him as hurriedly as they could, for it was not safe to thwart the citizen agent when he was in a rage.
Heron walked across to the opening and lifted the iron bar. With scant ceremony he pushed his colleague aside and strode into the cell, whilst Chauvelin, seemingly not resenting the other’s ruffianly manners and violent language, followed close upon his heel.
In the centre of the room both men paused, and Heron turned with a surly growl to his friend.
“You vowed he would be dead in an hour,” he said reproachfully.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
“It does not look like it now certainly,” he said dryly.
Blakeney was sitting—as was his wont—close to the table, with one arm leaning on it, the other, tightly clenched, resting upon his knee. A ghost of a smile hovered round his lips.
“Not in an hour, citizen Heron,” he said, and his voice flow was scarce above a whisper, “nor yet in two.”
“You are a fool, man,” said Heron roughly. “You have had seventeen days of this. Are you not sick of it?”
“Heartily, my dear friend,” replied Blakeney a little more firmly.
“Seventeen days,” reiterated the other, nodding his shaggy head; “you came here on the 2nd of Pluviose, today is the 19th.”
“The 19th Pluviose?” interposed Sir Percy, and a strange gleam suddenly flashed in his eyes. “Demn it, sir, and in Christian parlance what may that day be?”
“The 7th of February at your service, Sir Percy,” replied Chauvelin quietly.
“I thank you, sir. In this d—d hole I had lost count of time.”
Chauvelin, unlike his rough and blundering colleague, had been watching the prisoner very closely for the last moment or two, conscious of a subtle, undefinable change that had come over the man during those few seconds while he, Chauvelin, had thought him dying. The pose was certainly the old familiar one, the head erect, the hand clenched, the eyes looking through and beyond the stone walls; but there was an air of listlessness in the stoop of the shoulders, and—except for that one brief gleam just now—a look of more complete weariness round the hollow eyes! To the keen watcher it appeared as if that sense of living power, of unconquered will and defiant mind was no longer there, and as if he himself need no longer fear that almost supersensual thrill which had a while ago kindled in him a vague sense of admiration—almost of remorse.
Even as he gazed, Blakeney slowly turned his eyes full upon him. Chauvelin’s heart gave a triumphant bound.
With a mocking smile he met the wearied look, the pitiable appeal. His turn had come at last—his turn to mock and to exult. He knew that what he was watching now was no longer the last phase of a long and noble martyrdom; it was the end—the inevitable end—that for which he had schemed and striven, for which he had schooled his heart to ferocity and callousness that were devilish in their intensity. It was the end indeed, the slow descent of a soul from the giddy heights of attempted self-sacrifice, where it had striven to soar for a time, until the body and the will both succumbed together and dragged it down with them into the abyss of submission and of irreparable shame.
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