Mademoiselle nor Armand had stirred. They remained like graven images, he on one knee, she with large eyes fixed upon his face. They had neither of them looked on the old woman; they seemed even now unconscious of her presence. But their ears had caught the sound of that measured tramp of feet up the stairs of the old house, and the halt upon the landing; they had heard the brief words of command:
“Open, in the name of the people!”
They knew quite well what it all meant; they had not wandered so far in the realms of romance that reality — the grim, horrible reality of the moment — had not the power to bring them back to earth.
That peremptory call to open in the name of the people was the prologue these days to a drama which had but two concluding acts: arrest, which was a certainty; the guillotine, which was more than probable. Jeanne and Armand, these two young people who but a moment ago had tentatively lifted the veil of life, looked straight into each other’s eyes and saw the hand of death interposed between them: they looked straight into each other’s eyes and knew that nothing but the hand of death would part them now. Love had come with its attendant, Sorrow; but he had come with no uncertain footsteps. Jeanne looked on the man before her, and he bent his head to imprint a glowing kiss upon her hand.
“Aunt Marie!”
It was Jeanne Lange who spoke, but her voice was no longer that of an irresponsible child; it was firm, steady and hard. Though she spoke to the old woman, she did not look at her; her luminous brown eyes rested on the bowed head of Armand St. Just.
“Aunt Marie!” she repeated more peremptorily, for the old woman, with her apron over her head, was still moaning, and unconscious of all save an overmastering fear.
“Open, in the name of the people!” came in a loud harsh voice once more from the other side of the front door.
“Aunt Marie, as you value your life and mine, pull yourself together,” said Jeanne firmly.
“What shall we do? Oh! what shall we do?” moaned Madame Belhomme. But she had dragged the apron away from her face, and was looking with some puzzlement at meek, gentle little Jeanne, who had suddenly become so strange, so dictatorial, all unlike her habitual somewhat diffident self.
“You need not have the slightest fear, Aunt Marie, if you will only do as I tell you,” resumed Jeanne quietly; “if you give way to fear, we are all of us undone. As you value your life and mine,” she now repeated authoritatively, “pull yourself together, and do as I tell you.”
The girl’s firmness, her perfect quietude had the desired effect. Madame Belhomme, though still shaken up with sobs of terror, made a great effort to master herself; she stood up, smoothed down her apron, passed her hand over her ruffled hair, and said in a quaking voice:
“What do you think we had better do?”
“Go quietly to the door and open it.”
“But — the soldiers — ”
“If you do not open quietly they will force the door open within the next two minutes,” interposed Jeanne calmly. “Go quietly and open the door. Try and hide your fears, grumble in an audible voice at being interrupted in your cooking, and tell the soldiers at once that they will find mademoiselle in the boudoir. Go, for God’s sake!” she added, whilst suppressed emotion suddenly made her young voice vibrate; “go, before they break open that door!”
Madame Belhomme, impressed and cowed, obeyed like an automaton. She turned and marched fairly straight out of the room. It was not a minute too soon. From outside had already come the third and final summons:
“Open, in the name of the people!”
After that a crowbar would break open the door.
Madame Belhomme’s heavy footsteps were heard crossing the ante-chamber. Armand still knelt at Jeanne’s feet, holding her trembling little hand in his.
“A love-scene,” she whispered rapidly, “a love-scene — quick — do you know one?”
And even as he had tried to rise she held him back, down on his knees.
He thought that fear was making her distracted.
“Mademoiselle — ” he murmured, trying to soothe her.
“Try and understand,” she said with wonderful calm, “and do as I tell you. Aunt Marie has obeyed. Will you do likewise?”
“To the death!” he whispered eagerly.
“Then a love-scene,” she entreated. “Surely you know one. Rodrigue and Chimene! Surely — surely,” she urged, even as tears of anguish rose into her eyes, “you must — you must, or, if not that, something else. Quick! The very seconds are precious!”
They were indeed! Madame Belhomme, obedient as a frightened dog, had gone to the door and opened it; even her well-feigned grumblings could now be heard and the rough interrogations from the soldiery.
“Citizeness Lange!” said a gruff voice.
“In her boudoir, quoi!”
Madame Belhomme, braced up apparently by fear, was playing her part remarkably well.
“Bothering good citizens! On baking day, too!” she went on grumbling and muttering.
“Oh, think — think!” murmured Jeanne now in an agonised whisper, her hot little hand grasping his so tightly that her nails were driven into his flesh. “You must know something that will do — anything — for dear life’s sake.... Armand!”
His name — in the tense excitement of this terrible moment — had escaped her lips.
All in a flash of sudden intuition he understood what she wanted, and even as the door of the boudoir was thrown violently open Armand — still on his knees, but with one hand pressed to his heart, the other stretched upwards to the ceiling in the most approved dramatic style, was loudly declaiming:
“Pour venger son honneur il perdit son amour,
Pour venger sa maitresse il a quitte le jour!”
Whereupon Mademoiselle Lange feigned the most perfect impatience.
“No, no, my good cousin,” she said with a pretty moue of disdain, “that will never do! You must not thus emphasise the end of every line; the verses should flow more evenly, as thus....”
Heron had paused at the door. It was he who had thrown it open — he who, followed by a couple of his sleuth-hounds, had thought to find here the man denounced by de Batz as being one of the followers of that irrepressible Scarlet Pimpernel. The obviously Parisian intonation of the man kneeling in front of citizeness Lange in an attitude no ways suggestive of personal admiration, and coolly reciting verses out of a play, had somewhat taken him aback.
“What does this mean?” he asked gruffly, striding forward into the room and glaring first at mademoiselle, then at Armand.
Mademoiselle gave a little cry of surprise.
“Why, if it isn’t citizen Heron!” she cried, jumping up with a dainty movement of coquetry and embarrassment. “Why did not Aunt Marie announce you?... It is
