After Dark Part 21

"A nice question! How should I know? Wait till I have seen him, miss, and then I'll tell you!" With these words the general turned on his heel, and went into the drawing-room.

His daughter would have followed him, but Danville caught her by the hand.

"Can you be hard-hearted enough to leave me here alone?" he asked.

"What is to become of all my bosom friends in the next room, you selfish man, if I stop here with you?" retorted mademoiselle, struggling to free herself.

"Call them in here," said Danville gayly, making himself master of her other hand.

She laughed, and drew him away toward the drawing-room.

"Come," she cried, "and let all the ladies see what a tyrant I am going to marry. Come, and show them what an obstinate, unreasonable, wearisome--"

Her voice suddenly failed her; she shuddered, and turned faint.

Danville's hand had in one instant grown cold as death in hers; the momentary touch of his fingers, as she felt their grasp loosen, struck some mysterious chill through her from head to foot. She glanced round at him affrightedly, and saw his eyes looking straight into the drawing-room. They were fixed in a strange, unwavering, awful stare, while, from the rest of his face, all expression, all character, all recognizable play and movement of feature, had utterly gone. It was a breathless, lifeless mask--a white blank. With a cry of terror, she looked where he seemed to be looking; and could see nothing but the stranger standing in the middle of the drawing-room. Before she could ask a question--before she could speak even a single word--her father came to her, caught Danville by the arm, and pushed her roughly back into the library.

"Go there, and take the women with you," he said, in a quick, fierce whisper. "Into the library!" he continued, turning to the ladies, and raising his voice. "Into the library, all of you, along with my daughter."

The women, terrified by his manner, obeyed him in the greatest confusion. As they hurried past him into the library, he signed to the notary to follow; and then closed the door of communication between the two rooms.

"Stop where you are!" he cried, addressing the old officers, who had risen from their chairs. "Stay, I insist on it! Whatever happens, Jacques Berthelin has done nothing to be ashamed of in the presence of his old friends and companions. You have seen the beginning, now stay and see the end."

While he spoke, he walked into the middle of the room. He had never quitted his hold of Danville's arm; step by step they advanced together to the place where Trudaine was standing.

"You have come into my house, and asked me for my daughter in marriage--and I have given her to you," said the general, addressing Danville, quietly. "You told me that your first wife and her brother were guillotined three years ago in the time of the Terror--and I believed you. Now look at that man--look him straight in the face. He has announced himself to me as the brother of your wife, and he a.s.serts that his sister is alive at this moment. One of you two has deceived me.

Which is it?"

Danville tried to speak, but no sound pa.s.sed his lips; tried to wrench his arm from the grasp that was on it, but could not stir the old soldier's steady hand.

"Are you afraid? are you a coward? Can't you look him in the face?"

asked the general, tightening his hold sternly.

"Stop! stop!" interposed one of the old officers, coming forward. "Give him time. This may be a case of strange accidental resemblance, which would be enough, under the circ.u.mstances, to discompose any man. You will excuse me, citizen," he continued, turning to Trudaine; "but you are a stranger. You have given us no proof of your ident.i.ty."

"There is the proof," said Trudaine, pointing to Danville's face.

"Yes, yes," pursued the other; "he looks pale and startled enough, certainly. But I say again, let us not be too hasty; there are strange cases on record of accidental resemblances, and this may be one of them!"

As he repeated those words, Danville looked at him with a faint, cringing grat.i.tude, stealing slowly over the blank terror of his face.

He bowed his head, murmured something, and gesticulated confusedly with the hand that he was free to use.

"Look!" cried the old officer; "look, Berthelin; he denies the man's ident.i.ty."

"Do you hear that?" said the general, appealing to Trudaine. "Have you proofs to confute him? If you have, produce them instantly."

Before the answer could be given the door leading into the drawing-room from the staircase was violently flung open, and Madame Danville--her hair in disorder, her face in its colorless terror looking like the very counterpart of her son's--appeared on the threshold, with the old man Dubois and a group of amazed and startled servants behind her.

"For G.o.d's sake, don't sign! for G.o.d's sake, come away!" she cried.

"I have seen your wife--in the spirit, or in the flesh, I know not which--but I have seen her. Charles! Charles! as true as Heaven is above us, I have seen your wife!"

"You have seen her in the flesh, living and breathing as you see her brother yonder," said a firm, quiet voice, from among the servants on the landing outside.

"Let that man enter, whoever he is!" cried the general.

Lomaque pa.s.sed Madame Danville on the threshold. She trembled as he brushed by her; then, supporting herself by the wall, followed him a few paces into the room. She looked first at her son--after that, at Trudaine--after that back again at her son. Something in her presence silenced every one. There fell a sudden stillness over all the a.s.sembly--a stillness so deep that the eager, frightened whispering, and sharp rustling of dresses among the women in the library, became audible from the other side of the closed door.

"Charles," she said, slowly advancing; "why do you look--" She stopped, and fixed her eyes again on her son more earnestly than before; then turned them suddenly on Trudaine. "You are looking at my son, sir," she said, "and I see contempt in your face. By what right do you insult a man whose grateful sense of his mother's obligations to you made him risk his life for the saving of yours and your sister's? By what right have you kept the escape of my son's wife from death by the guillotine--an escape which, for all I know to the contrary, his generous exertions were instrumental in effecting--a secret from my son?

By what right, I demand to know, has your treacherous secrecy placed us in such a position as we now stand in before the master of this house?"

An expression of sorrow and pity pa.s.sed over Trudaine's face while she spoke. He retired a few steps, and gave her no answer. The general looked at him with eager curiosity, and, dropping his hold of Danville's arm, seemed about to speak; but Lomaque stepped forward at the same time, and held up his hand to claim attention.

"I think I shall express the wishes of Citizen Trudaine," he said, addressing Madame Danville, "if I recommend this lady not to press for too public an answer to her questions."

"Pray who are you, sir, who take it on yourself to advise me?" she retorted, haughtily. "I have nothing to say to you, except that I repeat those questions, and that I insist on their being answered."

"Who is this man?" asked the general, addressing Trudaine, and pointing to Lomaque.

"A man unworthy of credit," cried Danville, speaking audibly for the first time, and darting a look of deadly hatred at Lomaque. "An agent of police under Robespierre."

"And in that capacity capable of answering questions which refer to the transactions of Robespierre's tribunals," remarked the ex-chief agent, with his old official self-possession.

"True!" exclaimed the general; "the man is right--let him be heard."

"There is no help for it," said Lomaque, looking at Trudaine; "leave it to me--it is fittest that I should speak. I was present," he continued, in a louder voice, "at the trial of Citizen Trudaine and his sister.

They were brought to the bar through the denunciation of Citizen Danville. Till the confession of the male prisoner exposed the fact, I can answer for Danville's not being aware of the real nature of the offenses charged against Trudaine and his sister. When it became known that they had been secretly helping this lady to escape from France, and when Danville's own head was consequently in danger, I myself heard him save it by a false a.s.sertion that he had been aware of Trudaine's conspiracy from the first--"

"Do you mean to say," interrupted the general, "that he proclaimed himself in open court as having knowingly denounced the man who was on trial for saving his mother?"

"I do," answered Lomaque. (A murmur of horror and indignation rose from all the strangers present at that reply.) "The reports of the Tribunal are existing to prove the truth of what I say," he went on. "As to the escape of Citizen Trudaine and the wife of Danville from the guillotine, it was the work of political circ.u.mstances, which there are persons living to speak to if necessary; and of a little stratagem of mine, which need not be referred to now. And, last, with reference to the concealment which followed the escape, I beg to inform you that it was abandoned the moment we knew of what was going on here; and that it was only persevered in up to this time, as a natural measure of precaution on the part of Citizen Trudaine. From a similar motive we now abstain from exposing his sister to the shock and the peril of being present here. What man with an atom of feeling would risk letting her even look again on such a husband as that?"

He glanced round him, and pointed to Danville, as he put the question.

Before a word could be spoken by any one else in the room, a low wailing cry of "My mistress! my dear, dear mistress!" directed all eyes first on the old man Dubois, then on Madame Danville.

She had been leaning against the wall, before Lomaque began to speak; but she stood perfectly upright now. She neither spoke nor moved. Not one of the light gaudy ribbons flaunting on her disordered head-dress so much as trembled. The old servant Dubois was crouched on his knees at her side, kissing her cold right hand, chafing it in his, reiterating his faint, mournful cry, "Oh! my mistress! my dear, dear mistress!" but she did not appear to know that he was near her. It was only when her son advanced a step or two toward her that she seemed to awaken suddenly from that death-trance of mental pain. Then she slowly raised the hand that was free, and waved him back from her. He stopped in obedience to the gesture, and endeavored to speak. She waved her hand again, and the deathly stillness of her face began to grow troubled. Her lips moved a little--she spoke.

"Oblige me, sir, for the last time, by keeping silence. You and I have henceforth nothing to say to each other. I am the daughter of a race of n.o.bles, and the widow of a man of honor. You are a traitor and a false witness--a thing from which all true men and true women turn with contempt. I renounce you! Publicly, in the presence of these gentlemen, I say it--I have no son."

She turned her back on him; and, bowing to the other persons in the room with the old formal courtesy of by-gone times, walked slowly and steadily to the door. Stopping there, she looked back; and then the artificial courage of the moment failed her. With a faint, suppressed cry she clutched at the hand of the old servant, who still kept faithfully at her side; he caught her in his arms, and her head sank on his shoulder.

"Help him!" cried the general to the servants near the door. "Help him to take her into the next room!"

The old man looked up suspiciously from his mistress to the persons who were a.s.sisting him to support her. With a strange, sudden jealousy he shook his hand at them. "Home," he cried; "she shall go home, and I will take care of her. Away! you there--n.o.body holds her head but Dubois.

Downstairs! downstairs to her carriage! She has n.o.body but me now, and I say that she shall be taken home."

As the door closed, General Berthelin approached Trudaine, who had stood silent and apart, from the time when Lomaque first appeared in the drawing-room.

"I wish to ask your pardon," said the old soldier, "because I have wronged you by a moment of unjust suspicion. For my daughter's sake, I bitterly regret that we did not see each other long ago; but I thank you, nevertheless, for coming here, even at the eleventh hour."

While he was speaking, one of his friends came up, and touching him on the shoulder, said: "Berthelin, is that scoundrel to be allowed to go?"