CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE CONCIERGERIE
Marguerite, accompanied by Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, walked rapidly alongthe quay. It lacked ten minutes to the half hour; the night was dark andbitterly cold. Snow was still falling in sparse, thin flakes, and laylike a crisp and glittering mantle over the parapets of the bridges andthe grim towers of the Chatelet prison.
They walked on silently now. All that they had wanted to say to oneanother had been said inside the squalid room of their lodgings when SirAndrew Ffoulkes had come home and learned that Chauvelin had been.
"They are killing him by inches, Sir Andrew," had been the heartrendingcry which burst from Marguerite's oppressed heart as soon as her handsrested in the kindly ones of her best friend. "Is there aught that wecan do?"
There was, of course, very little that could be done. One or two finesteel files which Sir Andrew gave her to conceal beneath the folds ofher kerchief; also a tiny dagger with sharp, poisoned blade, which for amoment she held in her hand hesitating, her eyes filling with tears, herheart throbbing with unspeakable sorrow.
Then slowly--very slowly--she raised the small, death-dealing instrumentto her lips, and reverently kissed the narrow blade.
"If it must be!" she murmured, "God in His mercy will forgive!"
She sheathed the dagger, and this, too, she hid in the folds of hergown.
"Can you think of anything else, Sir Andrew, that he might want?" sheasked. "I have money in plenty, in case those soldiers--"
Sir Andrew sighed, and turned away from her so as to hide thehopelessness which he felt. Since three days now he had been exhaustingevery conceivable means of getting at the prison guard with briberyand corruption. But Chauvelin and his friends had taken excellentprecautions. The prison of the Conciergerie, situated as it was in thevery heart of the labyrinthine and complicated structure of the Chateletand the house of Justice, and isolated from every other group of cellsin the building, was inaccessible save from one narrow doorway whichgave on the guard-room first, and thence on the inner cell beyond. Justas all attempts to rescue the late unfortunate Queen from that prisonhad failed, so now every attempt to reach the imprisoned ScarletPimpernel was equally doomed to bitter disappointment.
The guard-room was filled with soldiers day and night; the windows ofthe inner cell, heavily barred, were too small to admit of the passageof a human body, and they were raised twenty feet from the corridorbelow. Sir Andrew had stood in the corridor two days ago, he had lookedon the window behind which he knew that his friend must be eating outhis noble heart in a longing for liberty, and he had realised then thatevery effort at help from the outside was foredoomed to failure.
"Courage, Lady Blakeney," he said to Marguerite, when anon they hadcrossed the Pont au Change, and were wending their way slowly along theRue de la Barillerie; "remember our proud dictum: the Scarlet Pimpernelnever fails! and also this, that whatever messages Blakeney gives youfor us, whatever he wishes us to do, we are to a man ready to do it, andto give our lives for our chief. Courage! Something tells me that a manlike Percy is not going to die at the hands of such vermin as Chauvelinand his friends."
They had reached the great iron gates of the house of Justice.Marguerite, trying to smile, extended her trembling hand to thisfaithful, loyal comrade.
"I'll not be far," he said. "When you come out do not look to the rightor left, but make straight for home; I'll not lose sight of you for amoment, and as soon as possible will overtake you. God bless you both."
He pressed his lips on her cold little hand, and watched her tall,elegant figure as she passed through the great gates until the veilof falling snow hid her from his gaze. Then with a deep sigh of bitteranguish and sorrow he turned away and was soon lost in the gloom.
Marguerite found the gate at the bottom of the monumental stairs openwhen she arrived. Chauvelin was standing immediately inside the buildingwaiting for her.
"We are prepared for your visit, Lady Blakeney," he said, "and theprisoner knows that you are coming."
He led the way down one of the numerous and interminable corridors ofthe building, and she followed briskly, pressing her hand against herbosom there where the folds of her kerchief hid the steel files and theprecious dagger.
Even in the gloom of these ill-lighted passages she realised that shewas surrounded by guards. There were soldiers everywhere; two had stoodbehind the door when first she entered, and had immediately closedit with a loud clang behind her; and all the way down the corridors,through the half-light engendered by feebly flickering lamps, she caughtglimpses of the white facings on the uniforms of the town guard, oroccasionally the glint of steel of a bayonet. Presently Chauvelin pausedbeside a door, which he had just reached. His hand was on the latch, forit did not appear to be locked, and he turned toward Marguerite.
"I am very sorry, Lady Blakeney," he said in simple, deferential tones,"that the prison authorities, who at my request are granting you thisinterview at such an unusual hour, have made a slight condition to yourvisit."
"A condition?" she asked. "What is it?"
"You must forgive me," he said, as if purposely evading her question,"for I give you my word that I had nothing to do with a regulation thatyou might justly feel was derogatory to your dignity. If you will kindlystep in here a wardress in charge will explain to you what is required."
He pushed open the door, and stood aside ceremoniously in order to allowher to pass in. She looked on him with deep puzzlement and a look ofdark suspicion in her eyes. But her mind was too much engrossed withthe thought of her meeting with Percy to worry over any trifle thatmight--as her enemy had inferred--offend her womanly dignity.
She walked into the room, past Chauvelin, who whispered as she went by:
"I will wait for you here. And, I pray you, if you have aught tocomplain of summon me at once."
Then he closed the door behind her. The room in which Marguerite nowfound herself was a small unventilated quadrangle, dimly lighted by ahanging lamp. A woman in a soiled cotton gown and lank grey hair brushedaway from a parchment-like forehead rose from the chair in which shehad been sitting when Marguerite entered, and put away some knitting onwhich she had apparently been engaged.
"I was to tell you, citizeness," she said the moment the door had beenclosed and she was alone with Marguerite, "that the prison authoritieshave given orders that I should search you before you visit theprisoner."
She repeated this phrase mechanically like a child who has been taughtto say a lesson by heart. She was a stoutish middle-aged woman, withthat pasty, flabby skin peculiar to those who live in want of freshair; but her small, dark eyes were not unkindly, although they shiftedrestlessly from one object to another as if she were trying to avoidlooking the other woman straight in the face.
"That you should search me!" reiterated Marguerite slowly, trying tounderstand.
"Yes," replied the woman. "I was to tell you to take off your clothes,so that I might look them through and through. I have often had to dothis before when visitors have been allowed inside the prison, so it isno use your trying to deceive me in any way. I am very sharp atfinding out if any one has papers, or files or ropes concealed in anunderpetticoat. Come," she added more roughly, seeing that Margueritehad remained motionless in the middle of the room; "the quicker you areabout it the sooner you will be taken to see the prisoner."
These words had their desired effect. The proud Lady Blakeney, inwardlyrevolting at the outrage, knew that resistance would be worse thanuseless. Chauvelin was the other side of the door. A call from the womanwould bring him to her assistance, and Marguerite was only longing tohasten the moment when she could be with her husband.
She took off her kerchief and her gown and calmly submitted to thewoman's rough hands as they wandered with sureness and accuracy to thevarious pockets and folds that might conceal prohibited articles. Thewoman did her work with peculiar stolidity; she did not utter a wordwhen she found the tiny steel files and placed them on a table besideher. In equal silence she lai
d the little dagger beside them, and thepurse which contained twenty gold pieces. These she counted in frontof Marguerite and then replaced them in the purse. Her face expressedneither surprise, nor greed nor pity. She was obviously beyond the reachof bribery--just a machine paid by the prison authorities to do thisunpleasant work, and no doubt terrorised into doing it conscientiously.
When she had satisfied herself that Marguerite had nothing furtherconcealed about her person, she allowed her to put her dress on oncemore. She even offered to help her on with it. When Marguerite wasfully dressed she opened the door for her. Chauvelin was standing in thepassage waiting patiently. At sight of Marguerite, whose pale, set facebetrayed nothing of the indignation which she felt, he turned quick,inquiring eyes on the woman.
"Two files, a dagger and a purse with twenty louis," said the lattercurtly.
Chauvelin made no comment. He received the information quite placidly,as if it had no special interest for him. Then he said quietly:
"This way, citizeness!"
Marguerite followed him, and two minutes later he stood beside a heavynail-studded door that had a small square grating let into one of thepanels, and said simply:
"This is it."
Two soldiers of the National Guard were on sentry at the door, twomore were pacing up and down outside it, and had halted when citizenChauvelin gave his name and showed his tricolour scarf of office.From behind the small grating in the door a pair of eyes peered at thenewcomers.
"Qui va la?" came the quick challenge from the guard-room within.
"Citizen Chauvelin of the Committee of Public Safety," was the promptreply.
There was the sound of grounding of arms, of the drawing of bolts andthe turning of a key in a complicated lock. The prison was kept lockedfrom within, and very heavy bars had to be moved ere the ponderous doorslowly swung open on its hinges.
Two steps led up into the guard-room. Marguerite mounted them with thesame feeling of awe and almost of reverence as she would have mountedthe steps of a sacrificial altar.
The guard-room itself was more brilliantly lighted than the corridoroutside. The sudden glare of two or three lamps placed about the roomcaused her momentarily to close her eyes that were aching with many shedand unshed tears. The air was rank and heavy with the fumes of tobacco,of wine and stale food. A large barred window gave on the corridorimmediately above the door.
When Marguerite felt strong enough to look around her, she saw thatthe room was filled with soldiers. Some were sitting, others standing,others lay on rugs against the wall, apparently asleep. There was onewho appeared to be in command, for with a word he checked the noise thatwas going on in the room when she entered, and then he said curtly:
"This way, citizeness!"
He turned to an opening in the wall on the left, the stone-lintel ofa door, from which the door itself had been removed; an iron barran across the opening, and this the sergeant now lifted, nodding toMarguerite to go within.
Instinctively she looked round for Chauvelin.
But he was nowhere to be seen.