Kilgorman Part 26

"We can do that," said I, "and can pay you in advance."

"Enough," said the woman, holding out her hand greedily.

I brought the ladies up, breaking the news about their kinsfolk on the way, and imploring them to keep up appearances. The landlady scrutinised them sharply, and demanded what their occupation was.

"We are seamstresses, my child and I," said my lady; "and my son earns what he can at the stables."

"If you are good workers," said the woman, "I can give you some employ.

Come up and see your rooms."

It was a sad introduction, that of these delicate ladies to the squalid apartments of their arrested kinsfolk. But they kept up bravely; only when the woman departed with her first five francs in her hand, they fell on the little shabby sofa and broke into tears.

But miserable as we were, we were at least safe for a while; and as the weeks followed one another--terrible weeks for Paris--we grew not only more reconciled to our lot, but sometimes almost happy.

We gave ourselves the name of Regnier, and in a little time our sour landlady fulfilled her promise of finding work for the ladies' needles.

As for me, I lit on occupation close by, with a man who let horses for hire, and here once more I found myself engaged in the old familiar occupation of the Knockowen days. The ladies rarely ventured out, and when they did it was usually after dark, and always under my escort.

Somehow or other our common lot, the common garb we wore, and the common dependence we felt on one another, made our make-believe little family into something very like a real one. When the day's work was done, and the candle was lit and the log thrown on the fire, it was hard not to forget that I was after all only a poor serving-man to these two ladies.

They were so grateful and gentle to me, and my little lady's eyes, when sometimes they met mine, were wont to light up so brightly, that, had I been less strict with myself, I should have been--tempted, many a time, to presume on all this kindness, and give myself the airs and privileges of an equal. But Heaven kept me in mind of what was due to her; and though I loved her secretly, she was always my little mistress when we were together.

I was not long in hearing, among other things, the news of what had happened at Knockowen since I left. When my overturned boat had drifted ash.o.r.e, they all set me down as dead, some with regret, some with indifference, some with relief.

Among the latter, I guessed, was his honour, who never took kindly to me, and bestowed more dislike on me, I always thought, than my importance deserved. However, my absence did not make much difference.

"It was dreadful after you had gone," said my little mistress. "We never knew what would happen next. Father could not keep friends with both sides, and yet he durst not break with either. The house was fired into from time to time by the Leaguers; and yet he continued to obey their biddings and wink at all the smuggling of arms and secret drilling that went on, which he, as a magistrate, ought to have stopped. Oh dear, it was hard to know what to wis.h.!.+ And one day he was summoned by some other magistrates to lead a party to capture the crew of a smuggling s.h.i.+p. He sent Martin off secretly to give them warning; but somehow Martin failed to deliver his message in time, and the smugglers were caught. Then he was in dread lest they should betray him, and used all his efforts to let them escape. Then, when one night they broke bonds, he led a hue and cry after them for appearance' sake, but, of course, in a wrong direction, and in consideration of all this he was let alone by the League. Mr Cazin then came over and stayed at Knockowen a week, collecting all the arms he could get, and making himself polite to mother and me. My father, who desired to be rid of us that he might follow his own plots, saw a way, at last, of getting out of his difficulty, and handed the Frenchman over a large number of guns which had been intended for the Donegal men, on condition he would see us safe to Paris."

"And where is his honour, meanwhile?" I asked.

"I can't say, Barry. Not, I think, at Knockowen. He has written us not a line, though we have written several times to him. I sometimes wish we were safe back at home," said she with a sigh.

Well might she wish it, for that winter Paris was a h.e.l.l upon earth!

For a time I succeeded in keeping away the shadow of "the terror" from that little top storey in the Quai Necker. The ladies knew that blood was being shed, that liberty was being extinguished, that holy religion was being spurned, in the world below them. But the tumbrels that made their daily ghastly journey did not pa.s.s their way. They heard nothing of the roll of drums, of the shrieks of the mob, of the dull crash of the knife, of the streams of blood, in the Place. They saw nothing of the horrors of the prison-houses, in which, day by day, and week by week, the doomed citizens made their brief sojourn on the road to death.

They did not even know, as I did, that one evening, in one of the sad batches which rode from the Austin Convent to the Conciergerie, and next morning from the Conciergerie to the guillotine, rode a broken-down couple called Lestrange, and beside them, in the same cart, the _ci- devant_ Citizen Cazin.

As the Citoyennes Regnier sat patiently and knitted red caps for the blood-drunken citizens without, their gentle ears may have caught occasional shouts and rus.h.i.+ngs of feet, and they may have guessed something of the tragedies that were being enacted below. But they kept their own counsel, and looked out seldom from the little window, and talked in whispers of the shadows that flitted across Lough Sw.i.l.l.y, and the happy life that was to follow after all this buffeting and exile.

Alas! that was not to be yet. For all their courage, their cheeks grew daily more pale; and into that little damp, cold attic, from which they never ventured except at night, and where, as poverty gradually entered by the window, the fire went out on the hearth, the stress of "the terror" at last penetrated.

Our hostess, the grim woman of whom I spoke, was the first to lose nerve, and during the day, when I was away, would come and retail some of the horrors she herself had witnessed. I could tell by their blank looks when I returned that some one had been tampering with their peace, and I fear the warmth with which I expostulated with the disturber did us all no good.

Another day, also when I was absent, the police made a visitation; and though my two mistresses pa.s.sed muster, they carried off one shrieking victim from the floor below--a widow, whose only crime was that her husband had once been in the service of his king. Her cries of terror, as they dragged her to her doom, rang in my lady's ears for weeks, and unnerved her altogether.

A still worse fright befell them, one early morning, when we sought the fresh air in the direction of the Champ de Mars, where I hoped we should be safe from crowds of all kinds. At a turning of the road we suddenly encountered, before there was time to avoid it, the most terrible of all crowds--that which escorted a _cond.a.m.ne_ to his execution. It was in vain I tried to draw the ladies aside; the mob was upon us before we could escape. I had seen many a Paris mob before, but none so savage or frantic as this. The poor doomed man, one Bailly (as I heard afterwards, formerly a mayor of Paris), stood bare-headed, cropped, with hands tied behind him, and with only a thin s.h.i.+rt to protect him from the cold. His face, naturally grave and placid, was so marred and stained with mud and blood as to be almost inhuman. At every step of the way the people hurled dirt and execrations upon him, laughing at his sorry appearance, and goading on one another to further insult. By sheer force they were carrying him, guillotine, executioner, and all to a great dirt-heap by the river-bank, where only they would permit the deed of death to be performed.

Just as this ghastly procession pa.s.sed us, a missile, better aimed than most, sent the poor wretch staggering to his knees, and in the rush that followed he was happily hidden from our sight.

But the two poor ladies had seen enough. Miss Kit's beautiful face was white as marble, her lips quivered, and her hands clenched in a spasm of self-control. Her mother, less strong, tottered and fell heavily on my arm in a faint.

It was a terrible position just then, for to be suspected of pity for a _cond.a.m.ne_ was an offence which might easily place the sympathiser on the tumbrel beside the victim. I observed one or two faces--brutal, coa.r.s.e faces--turned our way, and overheard remarks not unmingled with jeers on the lady's plight. Happily for us, a new humour of the crowd, to make their poor prisoner dismount and carry his own guillotine, swept the crowd in a new direction, and in a moment or two left us standing almost alone on the path.

It was some time before my lady could recover enough to leave the place.

Still longer was it before we had her safe in the attic on the Quai Necker; and ere that happened more than one note of warning had fallen on my ears.

"Save yourselves; you are marked," whispered a voice, as we came to the Quai.

I looked sharply round. Only a lame road-mender was in sight, and he was too far away to have been the speaker. The voice was that, I thought, of a person of breeding and sympathy, but its owner, whoever he was, had vanished.

"There they are," said another voice as we entered the doorway.

This time I saw the speaker--a vicious-looking woman, who stood with her friend across the road and pointed our way with her finger.

"So," thought I, as Miss Kit and I carried our fainting burden up the stairs, "we have at least one friend and one enemy in Paris."

Not a word did my little mistress and I exchange as we laid my lady on the bed, and took breath after our toilsome ascent. She tried to smile as I left her to the task of restoration, and retired to my kitchen to prepare our scanty breakfast.

While thus occupied I was startled by a tap at the window, followed by a head which I recognised as that of the road-mender I had lately seen.

He must have crawled along the parapet which connected the houses in our block, or else have been waiting where he was till he could find me alone.

His cap was slouched over his eyes, and his face was as grimy as the roads he mended. His finger was raised eagerly to his lips as he beckoned to me to open the sash.

An instinct of self-preservation impelled me to obey. He clambered in and shut the window behind him. Then, turning to face me, I encountered a double shock. The lameness had gone; the figure was erect; the face, in spite of its grime, was youthful and handsome! That was the first shock. The second was even greater. For I suddenly recognised in the form that stood before me my old acquaintance, Captain Lestrange himself.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE COURTYARD OF THE CONCIERGERIE.

"Hus.h.!.+" said Captain Lestrange, before I could utter a word. "The ladies are not safe here; they are marked down by the spies. They must escape at once."

"My lady is still in a faint," said I.

"Faint or no, she must come. Tell them I am here."

He spoke as a soldier with authority; and a pang of jealousy smote me as I looked at his handsome presence in spite of its disguise.

I went to my lady's room and announced him. She lay half stupified, with her eyes open, her bosom heaving, and a choking sob in her throat.

Miss Kit kneeled at the bedside and held her hand.

Both were too numb and dazed to express much amazement at the news I brought; and when Captain Lestrange followed me in, no breath was wasted on empty greetings.

"I lodge in an attic six houses away. If you could only get on to the roof," said he, "you would reach it easily."

"We are not far from the roof already," said I, pointing to a corner of the ceiling through which, even as we spoke, flakes of snow were drifting into the room.

Captain Lestrange took a log of fuel and poked the hole, till it was large enough to let a person through.

He bade me tear the sheet, make a band of it, and fasten it round my mistress, while he clambered through my window on to the roof. It was a perilous climb, but the captain was lithe and active as a cat. In a minute we saw him looking in through the hole in the ceiling.