'But the old days are dead, Mademoiselle.'
'The days, yes,' she answered, taking courage from his tone. 'But love Monsieur, is everlasting—it never dies, they say.'
And now it was La Boulaye who drew closer, and this man who had so rigidly schooled himself out of all emotions, felt his breath quickening, and his pulses throbbing faster and faster. To him it seemed that she was right, and that love never died—for the love for her, which he believed he had throttled out of existence long ago, seemed of a sudden to take life as vigorously as ever. And then it was as if some breeze out of the past bore to his nostrils the smell of the violets and of the moist earth of that April morning when she had repulsed him in the woods of Bellecour. His emotion died down. He drew back, and stood rigid before her.
'And if it were to live, Citoyenne,' he said—the resumption of the Republican form of address showed that he had stepped back into the spirit as well as in the flesh 'what manner of fool were I to again submit it to the lash of scorn it earned when first it was discovered?'
'But that belonged to the old days,' she cried, 'and it is dead with the old days.'
'It is vain to go back, Citoyenne,' he cut in, and his voice rang harsh with determination.
She bit her lip under cover of her bent head. If she had hated him before how much more did she not hate him now? And but a moment back it had seemed to her that she had loved him. She had held out her hands to him and he had scorned them; in her eagerness she had been unmaidenly, and all that she had earned had been humiliation. She quivered with shame and anger, and sinking into the nearest chair she burst into a passion of tears.
Thus by accident did she stumble upon the very weapon wherewith to make an utter rout of all Caron's resolutions. For knowing nothing of the fountain from which those tears were springing, and deeming them the expression of a grief pure and unalloyed—saving, perhaps, by a worthy penitence—he stepped swiftly to her side.
'Mademoiselle,' he murmured, and his tone was as gentle and beseeching as it had lately been imperious. 'Nay, Mademoiselle, I implore you!'
But her tears continued, and her sobs shook the slender frame as if to shatter it. He dropped upon his knees. Scarcely knowing what he did, he set his arm about her waist in a caress of protection.
A long curl of her black, unpowdered hair lay against his cheek.
'Mademoiselle,' he murmured, and she took comfort at the soothing tone.
From it she judged him malleable now, that had been so stern and unyielding before. She raised her eyes, and through her tears she turned their heavenly blue full upon the grey depths of his.
'You will not believe me, Monsieur,' she complained softly. 'You will not believe that I can have changed with the times; that I see things differently now. If you were to come to me again as in the woods at Bellecour—' She paused abruptly, her cheeks flamed scarlet, and she covered them with her hands.
'Suzanne!' he cried, seeking to draw those hands away. 'Is it true, this? You care, beloved!'
She uncovered her face at last. Again their eyes met.
'I was right,' she whispered. 'Love never dies, you see.'
'And you will marry me, Suzanne?' he asked incredulously.
She inclined her head, smiling through her tears, and he would have caught her to him but that she rose of a sudden.
'Hist!' she cried, raising her finger: 'someone is coming.'
He listened, holding his breath, but no sound stirred. He went to the door and peered out. All was still. But the interruption served to impress him with the fact that time was speeding, and that all unsuspicious though Guyot might be as yet, it was more than possible that his suspicions would be aroused if she remained there much longer.
He mentioned this, and he was beginning to refer to his plan for their escape when she thrust it aside, insisting that they must depart in their coach, so that their treasure might also be saved.
'Be reasonable, Suzanne,' he cried. 'It is impossible.'
A cloud of vexation swept across her averted face.
'Nay, surely not impossible,' she answered. 'Listen, Caron, there are two treasures in that coach. One is in money and in gold and silver plate; the other is in gems, and amounts to thrice the value of the rest. This latter is my dowry. It is a fortune with which we can quit France and betake ourselves wherever our fancy leads us. Would you ask me to abandon that and come to you penniless, compelled thereby to live in perpetual terror in a country where at any moment an enemy might cast at me the word aristocrate, and thereby ruin me?'
There was no cupidity in La Boulaye's nature, and even the prospect of an independent fortune would have weighed little with him had it not been backed by the other argument she employed touching the terror that would be ever with her did they dwell in France.
He stood deep in thought, his hand to his brow, thrusting back the long black hair from his white forehead, what time she recapitulated her argument.
'But how?' he exclaimed, in exasperation 'Tell me how?'
'That is for you to discover, Caron.'
He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and set himself to pace the chamber. And now his fingers came in contact with something foreign. Idly he drew it forth, and it proved to be the phial Mother Capoulade had given him, and from which he had poured the ten drops for the Captain's sleeping potion. His eyes brightened with inspiration. Here was a tool whose possibilities were vast. Then his brows were knit again.
'Wait,' he said slowly. 'Let me think.'
CHAPTER XI. THE ESCAPE
Resting his elbow on the table, and with his hand to his brow, Caron sat deep in thought, his forefinger and thumb pressed against his closed eyelids. From beyond the board Mademoiselle watched him anxiously and waited. At last he looked up.
'I think I have it,' he announced, rising. 'You say that the men are drinking heavily. That should materially assist us.'
She asked him what plan he had conceived, but he urged that time pressed; she should know presently; meanwhile, she had best return immediately to her carriage. He went to the door to call Guyot, but she stayed him.
'No, no, Monsieur,' she exclaimed. 'I will not pass through the common-room again in that fellow's company. They are all in there, carousing, and—and I dare not.'
As if to confirm her words, now that he held the door open, he caught some sounds of mirth and the drone of voices from below.
'Come with me, then,' said he, taking up one of the candles. 'I will escort you.'
Together they descended the narrow staircase, La Boulaye going first, to guide her, since two might not go abreast. At the foot there was a door, which he opened, and then, at the end of a short passage—in which the drone of voices sounded very loud and in particular one, cracked voice that was raised in song—they gained the door of the common-room. As La Boulaye pushed it open they came upon a scene of Bacchanalian revelry. On a chair that had been set upon the table they beheld Mother Capoulade enthroned like a Goddess of Liberty, and wearing a Phrygian cap on her dishevelled locks. Her yellow cheeks were flushed and her eyes watery, whilst hers was the crazy voice that sang.
Around the table, in every conceivable attitude of abandonment, sat Captain Charlot's guard—every man of the ten—and with them the six men and the corporal of La Boulaye's escort, all more or less in a condition of drunkenness.
'Le jour de gloire est arrive?' sang the croaking voice of Dame Capoulade, and there it stopped abruptly upon catching sight of La Boulaye and his companion in the doorway. Mademoiselle shivered out of loathing; but La Boulaye felt his pulses quickened with hope, for surely all this was calculated to assist him in his purpose.
At the abrupt interruption of the landlady's version of the 'Marseillaise' the men swung round, and upon seeing the Deputy they sought in ludicrous haste to repair the disorder of their appearance.
