VIII
THE TRAITOR
Not one of them had really trusted him for some time now. Heaven and hisconscience alone knew what had changed my Lord Kulmsted from a loyalfriend and keen sportsman into a surly and dissatisfiedadherent--adherent only in name.
Some say that lack of money had embittered him. He was a confirmedgambler, and had been losing over-heavily of late; and the League of theScarlet Pimpernel demanded sacrifices of money at times from itsmembers, as well as of life if the need arose. Others averred thatjealousy against the chief had outweighed Kulmsted's honesty. Certain itis that his oath of fealty to the League had long ago been broken in thespirit. Treachery hovered in the air.
But the Scarlet Pimpernel himself, with that indomitable optimism ofhis, and almost maddening insouciance, either did not believe inKulmsted's disloyalty or chose not to heed it.
He even asked him to join the present expedition--one of the mostdangerous undertaken by the League for some time, and which had for itsobject the rescue of some women of the late unfortunate MarieAntoinette's household: maids and faithful servants, ruthlesslycondemned to die for their tender adherence to a martyred queen. And yeteighteen pairs of faithful lips had murmured words of warning.
It was towards the end of November, 1793. The rain was beating down in amonotonous drip, drip, drip on to the roof of a derelict house in theRue Berthier. The wan light of a cold winter's morning peeped in throughthe curtainless window and touched with its weird grey brush the pallidface of a young girl--a mere child--who sat in a dejected attitude on arickety chair, with elbows leaning on the rough deal table before her,and thin, grimy fingers wandering with pathetic futility to her tearfuleyes.
In the farther angle of the room a tall figure in dark clothes was madeone, by the still lingering gloom, with the dense shadows beyond.
"We have starved," said the girl, with rebellious tears. "Father and Iand the boys are miserable enough, God knows; but we have always beenhonest."
From out the shadows in that dark corner of the room there came thesound of an oath quickly suppressed.
"Honest!" exclaimed the man, with a harsh, mocking laugh, which made thegirl wince as if with physical pain. "Is it honest to harbour theenemies of your country? Is it honest---"
But quickly he checked himself, biting his lips with vexation, feelingthat his present tactics were not like to gain the day.
He came out of the gloom and approached the girl with every outward signof eagerness. He knelt on the dusty floor beside her, his arms stoleround her meagre shoulders, and his harsh voice was subdued to tones ofgentleness.
"I was only thinking of your happiness, Yvonne," he said tenderly; "ofpoor blind papa and the two boys to whom you have been such a devotedlittle mother. My only desire is that you should earn the gratitude ofyour country by denouncing her most bitter enemy--an act of patriotismwhich will place you and those for whom you care for ever beyond thereach of sorrow or of want."
The voice, the appeal, the look of love, was more than the poor, simplegirl could resist. Milor was so handsome, so kind, so good.
It had all been so strange: these English aristocrats coming here, sheknew not whence, and who seemed fugitives even though they had plenty ofmoney to spend. Two days ago they had sought shelter like malefactorsescaped from justice--in this same tumbledown, derelict house where she,Yvonne, with her blind father and two little brothers, crept in ofnights, or when the weather was too rough for them all to stand and begin the streets of Paris.
There were five of them altogether, and one seemed to be the chief. Hewas very tall, and had deep blue eyes, and a merry voice that wentechoing along the worm-eaten old rafters. But milor--the one whose armswere encircling her even now--was the handsomest among them all. He hadsought Yvonne out on the very first night when she had crawled shiveringto that corner of the room where she usually slept.
The English aristocrats had frightened her at first, and she was forflying from the derelict house with her family and seeking shelterelsewhere; but he who appeared to be the chief had quickly reassuredher. He seemed so kind and good, and talked so gently to blind papa, andmade such merry jests with Francois and Clovis that she herself couldscarce refrain from laughing through her tears.
But later on in the night, milor--her milor, as she soon got to callhim--came and talked so beautifully that she, poor girl, felt as if nomusic could ever sound quite so sweetly in her ear.
That was two days ago, and since then milor had often talked to her inthe lonely, abandoned house, and Yvonne had felt as if she dwelt inHeaven. She still took blind papa and the boys out to beg in thestreets, but in the morning she prepared some hot coffee for the Englisharistocrats, and in the evening she cooked them some broth. Oh! theygave her money lavishly; but she quite understood that they were inhiding, though what they had to fear, being English, she could notunderstand.
And now milor--her milor--was telling her that these Englishmen, herfriends, were spies and traitors, and that it was her duty to tellcitizen Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety all about themand their mysterious doings. And poor Yvonne was greatly puzzled anddeeply distressed, because, of course, whatever milor said, that was thetruth; and yet her conscience cried out within her poor little bosom,and the thought of betraying those kind Englishmen was horrible to her.
"Yvonne," whispered milor in that endearing voice of his, which was likethe loveliest music in her ear, "my little Yvonne, you do trust me, doyou not?"
"With all my heart, milor," she murmured fervently.
"Then, would you believe it of me that I would betray a real friend?"
"I believe, milor, that whatever you do is right and good."
A sigh of infinite relief escaped his lips.
"Come, that's better!" he said, patting her cheek kindly with his hand."Now, listen to me, little one. He who is the chief among us here is themost unscrupulous and daring rascal whom the world has ever known. He itis who is called the 'Scarlet Pimpernel!'"
"The Scarlet Pimpernel!" murmured Yvonne, her eyes dilated withsuperstitious awe, for she too had heard of the mysterious Englishmanand of his followers, who rescued aristocrats and traitors from thedeath to which the tribunal of the people had justly condemned them, andon whom the mighty hand of the Committee of Public Safety had never yetbeen able to fall.
"This Scarlet Pimpernel," said milor earnestly after a while, "is alsomine own most relentless enemy. With lies and promises he induced me tojoin him in his work of spying and of treachery, forcing me to do thiswork against which my whole soul rebels. You can save me from this hatedbondage, little one. You can make me free to live again, make me free tolove and place my love at your feet."
His voice had become exquisitely tender, and his lips, as he whisperedthe heavenly words, were quite close to her ear. He, a great gentleman,loved the miserable little waif whose kindred consisted of a blindfather and two half-starved little brothers, and whose only home wasthis miserable hovel, whence milor's graciousness and bounty would soontake her.
Do you think that Yvonne's sense of right and wrong, of honesty andtreachery, should have been keener than that primeval instinct of asimple-hearted woman to throw herself trustingly into the arms of theman who has succeeded in winning her love?
Yvonne, subdued, enchanted, murmured still through her tears:
"What would milor have me do?"
Lord Kulmsted rose from his knees satisfied.
"Listen to me, Yvonne," he said. "You are acquainted with theEnglishman's plans, are you not?"
"Of course," she replied simply. "He has had to trust me."
"Then you know that at sundown this afternoon I and the three others areto leave for Courbevoie on foot, where we are to obtain what horses wecan whilst awaiting the chief."
"I did not know whither you and the other three gentlemen were going,milor," she replied; "but I did know that some of you were to make astart at four o'clock, whilst I was to wait here for your leader andprepare some supper a
gainst his coming."
"At what time did he tell you that he would come?"
"He did not say; but he did tell me that when he returns he will havefriends with him--a lady and two little children. They will be hungryand cold. I believe that they are in great danger now, and that thebrave English gentleman means to take them away from this awful Paris toa place of safety."
"The brave English gentleman, my dear," retorted milor, with a sneer,"is bent on some horrible work of spying. The lady and the two childrenare, no doubt, innocent tools in his hands, just as I am, and when he nolonger needs them he will deliver them over to the Committee of PublicSafety, who will, of a surety, condemn them to death. That will also bemy fate, Yvonne, unless you help me now."
"Oh, no, no!" she exclaimed fervently. "Tell me what to do, milor, and Iwill do it."
"At sundown," he said, sinking his voice so low that even she couldscarcely hear, "when I and the three others have started on our way, gostraight to the house I spoke to you about in the Rue Dauphine--you knowwhere it is?"
"Oh, yes, milor."
"You will know the house by its tumbledown portico and the tattered redflag that surmounts it. Once there, push the door open and walk inboldly. Then ask to speak with citizen Robespierre."
"Robespierre?" exclaimed the child in terror.
"You must not be afraid, Yvonne," he said earnestly; "you must think ofme and of what you are doing for me. My word on it--Robespierre willlisten to you most kindly."
"What shall I tell him?" she murmured.
"That a mysterious party of Englishmen are in hiding in this house--thattheir chief is known among them as the Scarlet Pimpernel. The rest leaveto Robespierre's discretion. You see how simple it is?"
It was indeed very simple! Nor did the child recoil any longer from theugly task which milor, with suave speech and tender voice, was soardently seeking to impose on her.
A few more words of love, which cost him nothing, a few kisses whichcost him still less, since the wench loved him, and since she was youngand pretty, and Yvonne was as wax in the hands of the traitor.
II
Silence reigned in the low-raftered room on the ground floor of thehouse in the Rue Dauphine.
Citizen Robespierre, chairman of the Cordeliers Club, the mostbloodthirsty, most Evolutionary club of France, had just re-entered theroom.
He walked up to the centre table, and through the close atmosphere,thick with tobacco smoke, he looked round on his assembled friends.
"We have got him," he said at last curtly.
"Got him! Whom?" came in hoarse cries from every corner of the room.
"That Englishman," replied the demagogue, "the Scarlet Pimpernel!"
A prolonged shout rose in response--a shout not unlike that of a cagedherd of hungry wild beasts to whom a succulent morsel of flesh hasunexpectedly been thrown.
"Where is he?" "Where did you get him?" "Alive or dead?" And many morequestions such as these were hurled at the speaker from every side.
Robespierre, calm, impassive, immaculately neat in his tightly fittingcoat, his smart breeches, and his lace cravat, waited awhile until thedin had somewhat subsided. Then he said calmly:
"The Scarlet Pimpernel is in hiding in one of the derelict houses in theRue Berthier."
Snarls of derision as vigorous as the former shouts of triumph drownedthe rest of his speech.
"Bah! How often has that cursed Scarlet Pimpernel been said to be alonein a lonely house? Citizen Chauvelin has had him at his mercy severaltimes in lonely houses."
And the speaker, a short, thick-set man with sparse black hair plasteredover a greasy forehead, his shirt open at the neck, revealing a powerfulchest and rough, hairy skin, spat in ostentatious contempt upon thefloor.
"Therefore will we not boast of his capture yet, citizen Roger," resumedRobespierre imperturbably. "I tell you where the Englishman is. Do youlook to it that he does not escape."
The heat in the room had become intolerable. From the grimy ceiling anoil-lamp, flickering low, threw lurid, ruddy lights on tricolourcockades, on hands that seemed red with the blood of innocent victims oflust and hate, and on faces glowing with desire and with anticipatedsavage triumph.
"Who is the informer?" asked Roger at last.
"A girl," replied Robespierre curtly. "Yvonne Lebeau, by name; she andher family live by begging. There are a blind father and two boys; theyherd together at night in the derelict house in the Rue Berthier. FiveEnglishmen have been in hiding there these past few days. One of them istheir leader. The girl believes him to be the Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Why has she not spoken of this before?" muttered one of the crowd, withsome scepticism.
"Frightened, I suppose. Or the Englishman paid her to hold her tongue."
"Where is the girl now?"
"I am sending her straight home, a little ahead of us. Her presenceshould reassure the Englishman whilst we make ready to surround thehouse. In the meanwhile, I have sent special messengers to every gate ofParis with strict orders to the guard not to allow anyone out of thecity until further orders from the Committee of Public Safety. And now,"he added, throwing back his head with a gesture of proud challenge,"citizens, which of you will go man-hunting to-night?"
This time the strident roar of savage exultation was loud and deepenough to shake the flickering lamp upon its chain.
A brief discussion of plans followed, and Roger--he with the broad,hairy chest and that gleam of hatred for ever lurking in his deep-set,shifty eyes--was chosen the leader of the party.
Thirty determined and well-armed patriots set out against one man, whomayhap had supernatural powers. There would, no doubt, be somearistocrats, too, in hiding in the derelict house--the girl Lebeau, itseems, had spoken of a woman and two children. Bah! These would notcount. It would be thirty to one, so let the Scarlet Pimpernel look tohimself.
From the towers of Notre Dame the big bell struck the hour of six, asthirty men in ragged shirts and torn breeches, shivering beneath a coldNovember drizzle, began slowly to wend their way towards the RueBerthier.
They walked on in silence, not heeding the cold or the rain, but witheyes fixed in the direction of their goal, and nostrils quivering in theevening air with the distant scent of blood.
III
At the top of the Rue Berthier the party halted. On ahead--some twohundred metres farther--Yvonne Lebeau's little figure, with her raggedskirt pulled over her head and her bare feet pattering in the mud, wasseen crossing one of those intermittent patches of light formed byoccasional flickering street lamps, and then was swallowed up once moreby the inky blackness beyond.
The Rue Berthier is a long, narrow, ill-paved and ill-lighted street,composed of low and irregular houses, which abut on the line offortifications at the back, and are therefore absolutely inaccessiblesave from the front.
Midway down the street a derelict house rears ghostly debris of roofsand chimney-stacks upward to the sky. A tiny square of yellow light,blinking like a giant eye through a curtainless window, pierced the wallof the house. Roger pointed to that light.
"That," he said, "is the quarry where our fox has run to earth."
No one said anything; but the dank night air seemed suddenly alive withall the passions of hate let loose by thirty beating hearts.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, who had tricked them, mocked them, fooled them sooften, was there, not two hundred metres away; and they were thirty toone, and all determined and desperate.
The darkness was intense.
Silently now the party approached the house, then again they halted,within sixty metres of it.
"Hist!"
The whisper could scarce be heard, so low was it, like the sighing ofthe wind through a misty veil.
"Who is it?" came in quick challenge from Roger.
"I--Yvonne Lebeau!"
"Is he there?" was the eager whispered query.
"Not yet. But he may come at any moment. If he saw a crowd round thehouse, mayhap he would not come."
>
"He cannot see a crowd. The night is as dark as pitch."
"He can see in the darkest night," and the girl's voice sank to an awedwhisper, "and he can hear through a stone wall."
Instinctively, Roger shuddered. The superstitious fear which themysterious personality of the Scarlet Pimpernel evoked in the heart ofevery Terrorist had suddenly seized this man in its grip.
Try as he would, he did not feel as valiant as he had done when first heemerged at the head of his party from under the portico of theCordeliers Club, and it was with none too steady a voice that he orderedthe girl roughly back to the house. Then he turned once more to his men.
The plan of action had been decided on in the Club, under the presidencyof Robespierre; it only remained to carry the plans through withsuccess.
From the side of the fortifications there was, of course, nothing tofear. In accordance with military regulations, the walls of the housesthere rose sheer from the ground without doors or windows, whilst thebroken-down parapets and dilapidated roofs towered forty feet above theground.
The derelict itself was one of a row of houses, some inhabited, othersquite abandoned. It was the front of that row of houses, therefore, thathad to be kept in view. Marshalled by Roger, the men flattened theirmeagre bodies against the walls of the houses opposite, and after thatthere was nothing to do but wait.
To wait in the darkness of the night, with a thin, icy rain soakingthrough ragged shirts and tattered breeches, with bare feet frozen bythe mud of the road--to wait in silence while turbulent hearts beatwell-nigh to bursting--to wait for food whilst hunger gnaws thebowels--to wait for drink whilst the parched tongue cleaves to the roofof the mouth--to wait for revenge whilst the hours roll slowly by andthe cries of the darkened city are stilled one by one!
Once--when a distant bell tolled the hour of ten--a loud prolongedlaugh, almost impudent in its suggestion of merry insouciance, echoedthrough the weird silence of the night.
Roger felt that the man nearest to him shivered at that sound, and heheard a volley or two of muttered oaths.
"The fox seems somewhere near," he whispered. "Come within. We'll waitfor him inside his hole."
He led the way across the street, some of the men following him.
The door of the derelict house had been left on the latch. Roger pushedit open.
Silence and gloom here reigned supreme; utter darkness, too, save for anarrow streak of light which edged the framework of a door on the right.Not a sound stirred the quietude of this miserable hovel, only thecreaking of boards beneath the men's feet as they entered.
Roger crossed the passage and opened the door on the right. His friendspressed closely round to him and peeped over his shoulder into the roombeyond.
A guttering piece of tallow candle, fixed to an old tin pot, stood inthe middle of the floor, and its feeble, flickering light only served toaccentuate the darkness that lay beyond its range. One or two ricketychairs and a rough deal table showed vaguely in the gloom, and in thefar corner of the room there lay a bundle of what looked like heaped-uprags, but from which there now emerged the sound of heavy breathing andalso a little cry of fear.
"Yvonne," came in feeble, querulous accents from that same bundle ofwretchedness, "are these the English milors come back at last?"
"No, no, father," was the quick whispered reply.
Roger swore a loud oath, and two puny voices began to whimper piteously.
"It strikes me the wench has been fooling us," muttered one of the mensavagely.
The girl had struggled to her feet. She crouched in the darkness, andtwo little boys, half-naked and shivering, were clinging to her skirts.The rest of the human bundle seemed to consist of an oldish man, withlong, gaunt legs and arms blue with the cold. He turned vague, wide-openeyes in the direction whence had come the harsh voices.
"Are they friends, Yvonne?" he asked anxiously.
The girl did her best to reassure him.
"Yes, yes, father," she whispered close to his ear, her voice scarceabove her breath; "they are good citizens who hoped to find the Englishmilor here. They are disappointed that he has not yet come."
"Ah! but he will come, of a surety," said the old man in that querulousvoice of his. "He left his beautiful clothes here this morning, andsurely he will come to fetch them." And his long, thin hand pointedtowards a distant corner of the room.
Roger and his friends, looking to where he was pointing, saw a parcel ofclothes, neatly folded, lying on one of the chairs. Like so many wildcats snarling at sight of prey, they threw themselves upon thoseclothes, tearing them out from one another's hands, turning them overand over as if to force the cloth and satin to yield up the secret thatlay within their folds.
In the skirmish a scrap of paper fluttered to the ground. Roger seizedit with avidity, and, crouching on the floor, smoothed the paper outagainst his knee.
It contained a few hastily scrawled words, and by the feeble light ofthe fast-dying candle Roger spelt them out laboriously:
"If the finder of these clothes will take them to the cross-roadsopposite the foot-bridge which leads straight to Courbevoie, and will doso before the clock of Courbevoie Church has struck the hour ofmidnight, he will be rewarded with the sum of five hundred francs."
"There is something more, citizen Roger," said a raucous voice close tohis ear.
"Look! Look, citizen--in the bottom corner of the paper!"
"The signature."
"A scrawl done in red," said Roger, trying to decipher it.
"It looks like a small flower."
"That accursed Scarlet Pimpernel!"
And even as he spoke the guttering tallow candle, swaying in its socket,suddenly went out with a loud splutter and a sizzle that echoed throughthe desolate room like the mocking laugh of ghouls.
IV
Once more the tramp through the dark and deserted streets, with thedrizzle--turned now to sleet--beating on thinly clad shoulders. Fifteenmen only on this tramp. The others remained behind to watch the house.Fifteen men, led by Roger, and with a blind old man, a young girlcarrying a bundle of clothes, and two half-naked children dragged ascamp-followers in the rear.
Their destination now was the sign-post which stands at the cross-roads,past the footbridge that leads to Courbevoie.
The guard at the Maillot Gate would have stopped the party, but Roger,member of the Committee of Public Safety, armed with his papers and histricolour scarf, overruled Robespierre's former orders, and the partymached out of the gate.
They pressed on in silence, instinctively walking shoulder to shoulder,vaguely longing for the touch of another human hand, the sound of avoice that would not ring weirdly in the mysterious night.
There was something terrifying in this absolute silence, in such intensedarkness, in this constant wandering towards a goal that seemed for everdistant, and in all this weary, weary fruitless waiting; and these men,who lived their life through, drunken with blood, deafened by the criesof their victims, satiated with the moans of the helpless and theinnocent, hardly dared to look around them, lest they should seeghoulish forms flitting through the gloom.
Soon they reached the cross-roads, and in the dense blackness of thenight the gaunt arms of the sign-post pointed ghostlike towards thenorth.
The men hung back, wrapped in the darkness as in a pall, while Rogeradvanced alone.
"Hola! Is anyone there?" he called softly.
Then, as no reply came, he added more loudly:
"Hola! A friend--with some clothes found in the Rue Berthier. Is anyonehere? Hola! A friend!"
But only from the gently murmuring river far away the melancholy call ofa waterfowl seemed to echo mockingly:
"A friend!"
Just then the clock of Courbevoie Church struck the midnight hour.
"It is too late," whispered the men.
They did not swear, nor did they curse their leader. Somehow it seemedas if they had expected all along that the Englishman would evade theirvengeance yet again,
that he would lure them out into the cold and intothe darkness, and then that he would mock them, fool them, and finallydisappear into the night.
It seemed futile to wait any longer. They were so sure that they hadfailed again.
"Who goes there?"
The sound of naked feet and of wooden sabots pattering on the distantfootbridge had caused Roger to utter the quick challenge.
"Hola! Hola! Are you there?" was the loud, breathless response.
The next moment the darkness became alive with men moving quicklyforward, and raucous shouts of "Where are they?" "Have you got them?""Don't let them go!" filled the air.
"Got whom?" "Who are they?" "What is it?" were the wild counter-cries.
"The man! The girl! The children! Where are they?"
"What? Which? The Lebeau family? They are here with us."
"Where?"
Where, indeed? To a call to them from Roger there came no answer, nordid a hasty search result in finding them--the old man, the two boys,and the girl carrying the bundle of clothes had vanished into the night.
"In the name of---, what does this mean?" cried hoarse voices in thecrowd.
The new-comers, breathless, terrified, shaking with superstitious fear,tried to explain.
"The Lebeau family--the old man, the girl, the two boys--we discoveredafter your departure, locked up in the cellar of the house--prisoners."
"But, then--the others?" they gasped.
"The girl and the children whom you saw must have been some aristocratsin disguise. The old man who spoke to you was that cursedEnglishman--the Scarlet Pimpernel!"
And as if in mocking confirmation of these words there suddenly rang,echoing from afar, a long and merry laugh.
"The Scarlet Pimpernel!" cried Roger. "In rags and barefooted! At him,citizens; he cannot have got far!"
"Hush! Listen!" whispered one of the men, suddenly gripping him by thearm.
And from the distance--though Heaven only knew from what direction--camethe sound of horses' hoofs pawing the soft ground; the next moment theywere heard galloping away at breakneck speed.
The men turned to run in every direction, blindly, aimlessly, in thedark, like bloodhounds that have lost the trail.
One man, as he ran, stumbled against a dark mass prone upon the ground.With a curse on his lips, he recovered his balance.
"Hold! What is this?" he cried.
Some of his comrades gathered round him. No one could see anything, butthe dark mass appeared to have human shape, and it was bound round andround with cords. And now feeble moans escaped from obviously humanlips.
"What is it? Who is it?" asked the men.
"An Englishman," came in weak accents from the ground.
"Your name?"
"I am called Kulmsted."
"Bah! An aristocrat!"
"No! An enemy of the Scarlet Pimpernel, like yourselves. I would havedelivered him into your hands. But you let him escape you. As for me, hewould have been wiser if he had killed me."
They picked him up and undid the cords from round his body, and later ontook him with them back into Paris.
But there, in the darkness of the night, in the mud of the road, andbeneath the icy rain, knees were shaking that had long ago forgotten howto bend, and hasty prayers were muttered by lips that were far moreaccustomed to blaspheme.