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I Will Repay

<h3>CHAPTER XIII Tangled meshes.</h3> Juliette waited a moment or two, until the footsteps of the six men died away up the massive oak stairs. For the first time, since the sword of Damocles had fallen, she was alone with her thoughts. She had but a few moments at her command in which to devise an issue out of these tangled meshes, which she had woven round the man she loved. Merlin and his men would return anon. The comedy could not be kept up through another visit from them, and while the compromising letter-case remained in D�roul�de's private study he was in imminent danger at the hands of his enemy. She thought for a moment of concealing the case about her person, but a second's reflection showed her the futility of such a move. She had not seen the papers themselves; any one of them might be an absolute proof of D�roul�de's guilt; the correspondence might be in his handwriting. If Merlin, furious, baffled, vicious, were to order her to be searched! The horror of the indignity made her shudder, but she would have submitted to that, if thereby she could have saved D�roul�de. But of this she could not be sure until after she had looked through the papers, and this she had not the time to do. Her first and greatest idea was to get out of this room, his private study, with the compromising papers. Not a trace of them must be found here, if he were to remain beyond suspicion. She rose from the sofa, and peeped through the door. The hall was now deserted; from the left wing of the house, on the floor above, the heavy footsteps of the soldiers and Merlin's occasional brutish laugh could be distinctly heard. Juliette listened for a moment, trying to understand what was happening. Yes; they had all gone to D�roul�de's bedroom, which was on the extreme left, at the end of the first-floor landing. There might be just time to accomplish what she had now resolved to do. As best she could, she hid the bulky leather case in the folds of her skirt. It was literally neck or nothing now. If she were caught on the stairs by one of the men nothing could save her or—possibly— D�roul�de. At any rate, by remaining where she was, by leaving the events to shape themselves, discovery was absolutely certain. She chose to take the risk. She slipped noiselessly out of the room and up the great oak stairs. Merlin and his men, busy with their search in D�roul�de's bedroom, took no heed of what was going on behind them; Juliette arrived on the landing, and turned sharply to her right, running noiselessly along the thick Aubusson carpet, and thence quickly to her own room. All this had taken less than a minute to accomplish. The very next moment she heard Merlin's voice ordering one of his men to stand at attention on the landing, but by that time she was safe inside her room. She closed the door noiselessly. P�tronelle, who had been busy all the afternoon packing up her young mistress' things, had fallen asleep in an arm-chair. Unconscious of the terrible events which were rapidly succeeding each other in the house, the worthy old soul was snoring peaceably, with her hands complacently folded on her ample bosom. Juliette, for the moment, took no notice of her. As quickly and as dexterously as she could, she was tearing open the heavy leather case with a sharp pair of scissors, and very soon its contents were scattered before her on the table. One glance at them was sufficient to convince her that most of the papers would undoubtedly, if found, send D�roul�de to the guillotine. Most of the correspondence was in the Citizen-Deputy's handwriting. She had, of course, no time to examine it more closely, but instinct naturally told her that it was of a highly compromising character. She gathered the papers up into a heap, tearing some of them up into strips; then she spread them out upon the ash-pan in front of the large earthenware stove, which stood in a corner of the room. Unfortunately, this was a hot day in August. Her task would have been far easier if she had wished to destroy a bundle of papers in the depth of winter, when there was a good fire burning in the stove. But her purpose was firm and her incentive, the greatest that has ever spurred mankind to heroism. Regardless of any consequences to herself, she had but the one object in view, to save D�roul�de at all costs. On the wall facing her bed, and immediately above a velvet-covered prie-dieu, there was a small figure of the Virgin and Child—one of those quaintly pretty devices for holding holy water, which the reverent superstition of the past century rendered a necessary adjunct of every girl's room. In front of the figure a small lamp was kept perpetually burning. This Juliette now took between her fingers, carefully, lest the tiny flame should die out. First she poured the oil over the fragments of paper in the ash-pan, then with the wick she set fire to the whole compromising correspondence. The oil helped the paper to burn quickly; the smell, or perhaps the presence of Juliette in the room caused worthy old P�tronelle to wake. "It's nothing, P�tronelle," said Juliette quietly; "only a few old letters I am burning. But I want to be alone for a few moments—will you go down to the kitchen until I call you?" Accustomed to do as her young mistress commanded, P�tronelle rose without a word. "I have finished putting away your few things, my jewel. There, there! why didn't you tell me to burn your papers for you? You have soiled your dear hands, and ..." "Sh! Sh! P�tronelle!" said Juliette impatiently, and gently pushing the garrulous old woman towards the door. "Run to the kitchen now quickly, and don't come out of it until I call you. And, P�tronelle," she added, "you will see soldiers about the house perhaps." "Soldiers! The good God have mercy!" "Don't be frightened, P�tronelle. But they may ask you questions." "Questions?" "Yes; about me." "My treasure, my jewel," exclaimed P�tronelle in alarm, "have those devils ...?" "No, no; nothing has happened as yet, but, you know, in these times there is always danger." "Good God! Holy Mary! Mother of God!" "Nothing 'll happen if you try to keep quite calm and do exactly as I tell you. Go to the kitchen, and wait there until I call you. If the soldiers come in and question you, if they try to frighten you, remember that we have nothing to fear from men, and that our lives are in God's keeping." All the while that Juliette spoke, she was watching the heap of paper being gradually reduced to ashes. She tried to fan the flames as best she could, but some of the correspondence was on tough paper, and was slow in being consumed. P�tronelle, tearful but obedient, prepared to leave the room. She was overawed by her mistress' air of aloofness, the pale face rendered ethereally beautiful by the sufferings she had gone through. The eyes glowed large and magnetic, as if in presence of spiritual visions beyond mortal ken; the golden hair looked like a saintly halo above the white, immaculate young brow. P�tronelle made the sign of the cross, as if she were in the presence of a saint. As she opened the door there was a sudden draught, and the last flickering flame died out in the ash-pan. Juliette, seeing that P�tronelle had gone, hastily turned over the few half burnt fragments of paper that were left. In none of them had the writing remained legible. All that was compromising to D�roul�de was effectually reduced to dust. The small wick in the lamp at the foot of the Virgin and Child had burned itself out for want of oil; there was no means for Juliette to strike another light and to destroy what remained. The leather case was, of course, still there, with its sides ripped open, an indestructible thing. There was nothing to be done about that. Juliette after a second's hesitation threw it among her dresses in the valise. Then she too went out of the room. <h3>CHAPTER XIV A happy moment.</h3> The search in the Citizen-Deputy's bedroom had proved as fruitless as that in his study. Merlin was beginning to have vague doubts as to whether he had been effectively fooled. His manner towards D�roul�de had undergone a change. He had become suave and unctuous, a kind of elephantine irony pervading his laborious attempts at conciliation. He and the Public Prosecutor would be severely blamed for this day's work, if the popular Deputy, relying upon the support of the people of Paris, chose to take his revenge. In France, in this glorious year of the Revolution, there was but one step between censure and indictment. And Merlin knew it. Therefore, although he had not given up all hope of finding proofs of D�roul�de's treason, although by the latter's attitude he remained quite convinced that such proof did exist, he was already reckoning upon the cat's paw, the sop he would offer to that Cerberus, the Committee of Public Safety, in exchange for his own exculpation in the matter. This sop would be Juliette, the denunciator instead of D�roul�de the denounced. But he was still seeking for the proofs. Somewhat changing his tactics, he had allowed D�roul�de to join his mother in the living-room, and had betaken himself to the kitchen in search of Anne Mie, whom he had previously caught sight of in the hall. There he also found old P�tronelle, whom he could scare out of her wits to his heart's content, but from whom he was quite unable to extract any useful information. P�tronelle was too stupid to be dangerous, and Anne Mie was too much on the alert. But, with a vague idea that a cunning man might choose the most unlikely places for the concealment of compromising property, he was ransacking the kitchen from floor to ceiling. In the living-room D�roul�de was doing his best to reassure his mother, who, in her turn, was forcing herself to be brave, and not to show by her tears how deeply she feared for the safety of her son. As soon as D�roul�de had been freed from the presence of the soldiers, he had hastened back to his study, only to find that Juliette had gone, and that the letter-case had also disappeared. Not knowing what to think, trembling for the safety of the woman he adored, he was just debating whether he would seek for her in her own room, when she came towards him across the landing. There seemed a halo around her now. D�roul�de felt that she had never been so beautiful and to him so unattainable. Something told him then, that at this moment she was as far away from him, as if she were an inhabitant of another, more ethereal planet. When she saw him coming towards her, she put a finger to her lips, and whispered: "Sh! sh! the papers are destroyed, burned." "And I owe my safety to you!" He had said it with his whole soul, an infinity of gratitude filled his heart, a joy and pride in that she had cared for his safety. But at his words she had grown paler than she was before. Her eyes, large, dilated, and dark, were fixed upon him with an intensity of gaze which almost startled him. He thought that she was about to faint, that the emotions of the past half hour had been too much for her overstrung nerves. He took her hand, and gently dragged her into the living-room. She sank into a chair, as if utterly weary and exhausted, and he, forgetting his danger, forgetting the world and all else besides, knelt at her feet, and held her hands in his. She sat bolt upright, her great eyes still fixed upon him. At first it seemed as if he could not be satiated with looking at her; he felt as if he had never, never really seen her. She had been a dream of beauty to him ever since that awful afternoon when he had held her, half fainting, in his arms, and had dragged her under the shelter of his roof. From that hour he had worshipped her: she had cast over him the magic spell of her refinement, her beauty, that aroma of youth and innocence which makes such a strong appeal to the man of sentiment. He had worshipped her and not tried to understand. He would have deemed it almost sacrilege to pry into the mysteries of her inner self, of that second nature in her which at times made her silent, and almost morose, and cast a lurid gloom over her young beauty. And though his love for her had grown in intensity, it had remained as heaven born as he deemed her to be—the love of a mortal for a saint, the ecstatic adoration of a St Francis for his Madonna. Sir Percy Blakeney had called D�roul�de an idealist. He was that, in the strictest sense, and Juliette had embodied all that was best in his idealism. It was for the first time to-day, that he had held her hand just for a moment longer than mere conventionality allowed. The first kiss on her finger-tips had sent the blood rushing wildly to his heart; but he still worshipped her, and gazed upon her as upon a divinity. She sat bolt upright in the chair, abandoning her small, cold hands to his burning grasp. His very senses ached with the longing to clasp her in his arms, to draw her to him, and to feel her pulses beat closer against his. It was almost torture now to gaze upon her beauty—that small, oval face, almost like a child's, the large eyes which at times had seemed to be blue but which now appeared to be a deep, unfathomable colour, like the tempestuous sea. "Juliette!" he murmured at last, as his soul went out to her in a passionate appeal for the first kiss. A shudder seemed to go through her entire frame, her very lips turned white and cold, and he, not understanding, timorous, chivalrous and humble, thought that she was repelled by his ardour and frightened by a passion to which she was too pure to respond. Nothing but that one word had been spoken—just her name, an appeal from a strong man, overmastered at last by his boundless love—and she, poor, stricken soul, who had so much loved, so deeply wronged him, shuddered at the thought of what she might have done, had Fate not helped her to save him. Half ashamed of his passion, he bowed his dark head over her hands, and, once more forcing himself to be calm now, he kissed her finger-tips reverently. When he looked up again the hard lines in her face had softened, and two tears were slowly trickling down her pale cheeks. "Will you forgive me, madonna?" he said gently. "I am only a man and you are very beautiful. No—don't take your little hands away. I am quite calm now, and know how one should speak to angels." Reason, justice, rectitude—everything was urging Juliette to close her ears to the words of love, spoken by the man whom she had betrayed. But who shall blame her for listening to the sweetest sound the ears of a woman can ever hear—the sound of the voice of the loved one in his first declaration of love? She sat and listened, whilst he whispered to her those soft, endearing words, of which a strong man alone possesses the enchanting secret. She sat and listened, whilst all around her was still. Madame D�roul�de, at the farther end of the room, was softly muttering a few prayers. They were all alone these two in the mad and beautiful world, which man has created for himself—the world of romance—that world more wonderful than any heaven, where only those may enter who have learned the sweet lesson of love. D�roul�de roamed in it at will. He had created his own romance, wherein he was as a humble worshipper, spending his life in the service of his madonna. And she too forgot the earth, forgot the reality, her oath, her crime and its punishment, and began to think that it was good to live, good to love, and good to have at her feet the one man in all the world whom she could fondly worship. Who shall tell what he whispered? Enough that she listened and that she smiled; and he, seeing her smile, felt happy. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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