After Dark

  CHAPTER V.

  The day wore on. By ones and twos and threes at a time, the condemnedprisoners came from the tribunal, and collected in the waiting-room. Attwo o'clock all was ready for the calling over of the death-list. It wasread and verified by an officer of the court; and then the jailer tookhis prisoners back to St. Lazare.

  Evening came. The prisoners' meal had been served; the duplicate of thedeath-list had been read in public at the grate; the cell doors wereall locked. From the day of their arrest, Rose and her brother, partlythrough the influence of a bribe, partly through Lomaque's intercession,had been confined together in one cell; and together they now awaitedthe dread event of the morrow.

  To Rose that event was death--death, to the thought of which, at least,she was now resigned. To Trudaine the fast-nearing future was darkeninghour by hour, with the uncertainty which is worse than death; with thefaint, fearful, unpartaken suspense, which keeps the mind ever on therack, and wears away the heart slowly. Through the long unsolaced agonyof that dreadful night, but one relief came to him. The tension of everynerve, the crushing weight of the one fatal oppression that clung toevery thought, relaxed a little when Rose's bodily powers began to sinkunder her mental exhaustion--when her sad, dying talk of the happy timesthat were passed ceased softly, and she laid her head on his shoulder,and let the angel of slumber take her yet for a little while, eventhough she lay already under the shadow of the angel of death.

  The morning came, and the hot summer sunrise. What life was left in theterror-struck city awoke for the day faintly; and still the suspense ofthe long night remained unlightened. It was drawing near the hour whenthe tumbrils were to come for the victims doomed on the day before.Trudaine's ear could detect even the faintest sound in the echoingprison region outside his cell. Soon, listening near the door, he heardvoices disputing on the other side of it. Suddenly, the bolts were drawnback, the key turned in the lock, and he found himself standing faceto face with the hunchback and one of the subordinate attendants on theprisoners.

  "Look!" muttered this last man sulkily, "there they are, safe in theircell, just as I said; but I tell you again they are not down in thelist. What do you mean by bullying me about not chalking their door,last night, along with the rest? Catch me doing your work for you again,when you're too drunk to do it yourself!"

  "Hold your tongue, and let me have another look at the list!" returnedthe hunchback, turning away from the cell door, and snatching a slip ofpaper from the other's hand. "The devil take me if I can make heador tail of it!" he exclaimed, scratching his head, after a carefulexamination of the list. "I could swear that I read over their names atthe grate yesterday afternoon with my own lips; and yet, look as long asI may, I certainly can't find them written down here. Give us a pinch,friend. Am I awake, or dreaming? drunk or sober this morning?"

  "Sober, I hope," said a quiet voice at his elbow. "I have just looked into see how you are after yesterday."

  "How I am, Citizen Lomaque? Petrified with astonishment. You yourselftook charge of that man and woman for me, in the waiting-room, yesterdaymorning; and as for myself, I could swear to having read their names atthe grate yesterday afternoon. Yet this morning here are no such thingsas these said names to be found in the list! What do you think of that?"

  "And what do you think," interrupted the aggrieved subordinate, "ofhis having the impudence to bully me for being careless in chalking thedoors, when he was too drunk to do it himself? too drunk to know hisright hand from his left! If I wasn't the best-natured man in the world,I should report him to the head jailer."

  "Quite right of you to excuse him, and quite wrong of him to bullyyou," said Lomaque, persuasively. "Take my advice," he continued,confidentially, to the hunchback, "and don't trust too implicitly tothat slippery memory of yours, after our little drinking bout yesterday.You could not really have read their names at the grate, you know, orof course they would be down on the list. As for the waiting-room atthe tribunal, a word in your ear: chief agents of police know strangesecrets. The president of the court condemns and pardons in public; butthere is somebody else, with the power of ten thousand presidents, whonow and then condemns and pardons in private. You can guess who. Isay no more, except that I recommend you to keep your head on yourshoulders, by troubling it about nothing but the list there in yourhand. Stick to that literally, and nobody can blame you. Make a fussabout mysteries that don't concern you, and--"

  Lomaque stopped, and holding his hand edgewise, let it dropsignificantly over the hunchback's head. That action and the hints whichpreceded it seemed to bewilder the little man more than ever. He staredperplexedly at Lomaque; uttered a word or two of rough apology to hissubordinate, and rolling his misshapen head portentously, walked awaywith the death-list crumpled up nervously in his hand.

  "I should like to have a sight of them, and see if they really arethe same man and woman whom I looked after yesterday morning in thewaiting-room," said Lomaque, putting his hand on the cell door, just asthe deputy-jailer was about to close it again.

  "Look in, by all means," said the man. "No doubt you will find thatdrunken booby as wrong in what he told you about them as he is abouteverything else."

  Lomaque made use of the privilege granted to him immediately. He sawTrudaine sitting with his sister in the corner of the cell furthest fromthe door, evidently for the purpose of preventing her from overhearingthe conversation outside. There was an unsettled look, however, in hereyes, a slowly-heightening color in her cheeks, which showed her to beat least vaguely aware that something unusual had been taking place inthe corridor.

  Lomaque beckoned to Trudaine to leave her, and whispered to him: "Theprescription has worked well. You are safe for to-day. Break the newsto your sister as gently as you can. Danville--" He stopped andlistened till he satisfied himself, by the sound of the deputy-jailer'sfootsteps, that the man was lounging toward the further end of thecorridor. "Danville," he resumed, "after having mixed with the peopleoutside the grate yesterday, and having heard your names read, wasarrested in the evening by secret order from Robespierre, and sent tothe Temple. What charge will be laid to him, or when he will be broughtto trial, it is impossible to say. I only know that he is arrested.Hush! don't talk now; my friend outside is coming back. Keep quiet--hopeeverything from the chances and changes of public affairs; and comfortyourself with the thought that you are both safe for to-day."

  "And to-morrow?" whispered Trudaine.

  "Don't think of to-morrow," returned Lomaque, turning away hurriedly tothe door "Let to-morrow take care of itself."

  PART THIRD.