Orphans of the Storm Page 7

  "Yes, yes," cries Henriette, "go on!"

  "--she _was_ with us, but alas!--poor thing--with the hard life wehave to lead--she--she died!"

  The searcher for Louise reels as if about to faint.

  She collects herself with difficulty, and stares at La Frochard. Adistraught look is on the girl's face.

  It is a look of utter misery, compounded with mistrustfulness of thedeceiving hag.

  She leaves the cellar, fully resolved to invoke the Law--if Law--inthis wild time--there can be found...

  A bundle of rags, on which Henrietta has almost stepped in passing,moves very slightly.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  "THERE IS NO LAW--"

  The wild and drunken madness of the triumphant people expended itselfin many strange forms, of which none was stranger, more awesome, moreludicrous and yet more tragic than the Carmagnole.

  This was a dance that seized whole multitudes in its rhythmic, swayingclutch. The tune was "Ca Ira!" that mad measure of the sansculottes,meaning roughly--

  "Here it goes--

  "And there it goes!"

  --and go forever it did till all the world of Paris seemed a heaving,throbbing vortex of werewolves and witches, things lower than animalsin their topsyturvydom, drunken frenzy and frequent obscenity.

  The throng through which Henriette now directed her steps was vergingon this madness, though not yet at the pitch of it.

  Henriette managed to find her way to two sansculotte troopersstationed in the centre of the Place, to whom she told her story.Reasonable fellows they seemed, offering to conduct her presently tothe new authorities and get a search warrant for the Frochard clan.But the madder swirl of the Carmagnole came along, and presto!swallowed them up. It happened on this wise:

  As the locust swarms of the dancers enveloped them in shorteningcircles, two young and attractive maenads broke from the throng andliterally entwined themselves with the troopers. Military dignity,assaulted in burlesque, tried to keep its post. But the bold nymphswere clinging, not to be "shaken"; as the mad whirl of the dancerstouched the centre, the troopers and their female captors were borneaway in the ricocheting, plunging motions, disappearing thenceforwardfrom our story. Little Henriette dived to a place of safety, the sidewall of the nearest building. Straightening herself after theunexpected knocks and bruises, she looked aghast at the scene beforeher.

  Whole streets of them, plazas of them, these endlessly gyrating maleand female loons; swirls of gayety, twisting, upsetting passers-bylike a cyclone;--arms, bodies and legs frantically waving, as at thevery brink of Dante's Inferno!

  Strange little dramas of lust and conquest punctuated the cyclonicpanorama. Here, a girl's snapping black eyes, winking devilishly, andpursed-up Cupid mouth invited a new swain to master her. There, ashort-skirted beauty, whose sways and kicks revealed bare thighs, wasdancing wildly a solo intended to infatuate further two rivaladmirers. Again, a half-crazed sansculotte had won a girl and in tokenof triumph was spinning her body horizontally around like a top,upheld by the open palm of his huge right arm.

  But what might be this comic figure, quite unpartnered--knocked andshoved from human pillar to human post--winning the deep curses of thedancers, and their hearty wallops when not o'er-busied withTerpsichore?

  Picard, the ex-valet of aristocracy, finally let out from theSalpetriere mock-court, had stumbled into this bedlam of sansculottecraziness, the rhythm and procedure of which were as foreign to him asa proposition in Euclid.

  But the Jolly Baker, from the Ile de Paris, was his match. Thebare-armed, lean-legged pleasurer had equipped himself (by way ofdisguise) with a large false moustache, and evading the close watch ofhis hatchet-faced, middle-aged spouse, had come forth to celebrate.Neither dancer nor vocalist, the Jolly Baker had other littleentertaining ways all his own.

  As the foolscap-crowned, white-and-red-trousered Picard bumped thepave, he saw squatting opposite him a figure whose gleaming eyes,ferocious whiskerage and lean-wiry frame suggested the canine ratherthan the human species. The Jolly Baker was a bum werewolf, but a "hotdog."

  The gleaming eyes never left Picard's face, the dog-like body jumpedwhichever way he did, Picard half expected the dog-man to bite or snapthe next instant and take a chunk out of him. Both had got to theirfeet now; the stranger still silent and nosey, Picard looking out ofthe corner of his eye for a way of escape. But just then the Bakerspied a maenad with a drum.

  One could beat drum in celebration, if naught else. Lo and behold, theposterior of the foolscapped one would serve for a drum very nicely!The Jolly Baker twisted Picard around, bending him half double as hedid so.

  With a rear thrust and firm shoulder grip, the Jolly Baker leaped uponPicard's back. Emulating the young woman's beating of the drum, herained a shower of blows on the valet's hind quarters.

  The new "drum"-beater was now quite the cynosure of admiringattention. He had captured the centre of the stage. He gloriedin it. With a more elaborate, fanciful and complexive"rat-tat-tat-rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat--"

  He suddenly lost his grip of the "human drum," Picard wriggled outfrom under, and the drummer bumped his own posterior on the pave.

  Calmly, quite undisturbed, the foolish Baker continued to "rat-tat-tat"with a stick on the curb, then as the "Ca Ira" beats resounded abovehim, his own squatting body began to sway with the music in aheightened absurdity. Picard had run off. He was convinced these peoplewere crazier than any of those in the mad cells of Salpetriere....

  JACQUES FORGET-NOT, SWEARS VENGEANCE ON THE FAMILY OF THEDE VAUDREYS. THE COUNT DE LINIERES AND THE CHEVALIER DE VAUDREY HEAR HISTHREATS.]

  Long since Henriette had evaded the worse sights and sounds bycreeping as best she could along the side walls of the buildings,watching her chance to get away from the revelers. Again, at thestreet corner, another swirl passed over her, knocking her down.Ruefully she picked herself up again.

  The throng had passed by completely, leaving but a drunken foolprancing here and there, or a scant winrow of half-prostrate figures.Henriette ran with all her might to the only refuge she knew--her oldfaubourg lodgings.

  The middle-aged landlady who in days agone had fetched the guardto subdue Danton's would-be assassins, and who likewise hadresented Robespierre's prying as to the identity of Henriette'svisitor, studied the girl at first a bit quizzically. Releasedfrom Salpetriere, eh? Was she the same sweet, pure Henriette sheknew? Yes, the little Girard--la petite Girard--looked to be thesame hard-working, respectable seamstress person of yore, only thatshe seemed very weak and about to collapse!

  The landlady folded Henriette within one stout arm.

  She pointed with her free hand to the bedchamber immediately above.

  "Your old room up there awaits you," she remarked kindly. "As soon asyou have recovered strength a bit, I have no doubt the old sewing jobwill be yours too!"

  * * * * *

  ... Jacques-Forget-Not and his men arrived too late at the Prefect'spalace for complete vengeance on the de Vaudreys.

  Around the historic Fourteenth of July, there was a pell-mell exodusof aristocrats from the city. A panic-stricken servant brought theCount de Linieres tidings of the people's victory.

  "Fly, monsieur! Fly, madame!" he cried. "The troops are overthrown,the Bastille surrounded, before nightfall the mob will surely attackhere and try to kill your excellencies. Fly, I implore you!"

  Other messengers confirmed the news, and thus it happened that theerstwhile proud and arrogant Minister of Police who but yesterday hadruled France was reduced to making the most hurried preparations forflight, aided by the distracted Countess.

  The latter realized with a pang that the hegira meant farewell,perhaps forever, to the chance of recovering her lost daughter Louisefrom this welter of Paris. How mysterious the ways of the HigherPower! Her beloved nephew the Chevalier, at least, was safe in thedistant fortress to which the Count her husband had condemned him
.Pray God Louise might be saved--, yes! and her foster-sisterHenrietta, beloved of the Chevalier--Henriette whom her husband hadbranded by unjust accusation....

  The de Linieres party succeeded in evading the fate of numbers of therunaway aristocrats, who were bodily pulled out of their coaches andtrampled upon or strung up by the infuriated mobs. They managed tomake their way to the northeastern borders of France. There thousandsof emigres were received under the protection of foreign powers,awaiting the ripe moment for the impact of foreign armies on Frenchsoil and the hoped-for reconquest of the monarchists....

  That night the beautiful Hotel de Vaudrey--home of the Vaudrey andLinieres family and fortune--was given up to sack and pillage. Enragedthat the objects of his vengeance had fled, the leader Forget-Notordered a general demolition.

  Priceless works of art were hurled about and destroyed. The cellars ofold wines were quickly emptied by drunken revelers. The kitchen andpantries catered to the mob's gluttony. Wenches arrayed themselves inthe Countess's costly silks and linens; perfumed, powdered and paintedwith the cosmetics; preened and perked in the cheval mirrors.

  Among the motley crew of destroyers, drunkards, gluttons, satyrs andsirens, our friend the Jolly Baker was on the job--unfortunately forhim, accompanied this time by his hatchet-faced spouse.

  He started a flirtation with a new-made vamp, all tricked out instolen finery. The Jolly Baker had found a new use for his eyes andeyebrows, i.e., to convey love messages. He was making the mostalarming motions and succeeding most prodigiously in evoking the newvamp's answering smiles when--

  "Ker-plunk!"

  --Dame Baker fetched him a tremendous slap directly on the face thatcaused him to see innumerable little stars.

  Gradually coming back to this mundane world, the Jolly Baker resolvedto devote his strict attention to the bottle....

  CHAPTER XIX

  KNIFE DUEL AND ESCAPE

  The bundle on the cellar floor of the Frochards den stirred again,this time more actively.

  The crippled knife-grinder Pierre had entered. His mother was againbusied with her potations. Under the half-lifted rags showed thetear-stained face of Louise. The heavy fatigue of street mendicancyhad wrapped her in deep sleep, from which she woke with a start to herwretched surroundings. The misery of it all overwhelmed her. Shesobbed, and the big tears descended from her blind eyes.

  "Don't cry, Louise!" begged the almost equally wretched Pierre. "Theremay yet be escape and the finding of your sister. Oh!" he said tohimself. "If I had but the courage to lay down my life that I mightmake her happy!"

  * * * * *

  The ruffian Jacques Frochard was exhibiting a sinister interest in theblind girl. He had forbidden Pierre to speak to her or come near her,and now as he entered, the crippled brother shrank away. "Get up andgo to work!" said Mother Frochard to the girl roughly, yanking her toher feet.

  "I'll find a way to make her work!" laughed Jacques with fiendishcoarseness. "You'll slave for me, eh, my pretty? Yes, for you, no onebut Jacques!"

  He leered at her as he appropriated the coins of her singing.

  Huddled in the corner, the silent cripple bit his finger knucklesuntil they bled....

  * * * * *

  Inflamed with liquor and lust, Jacques soon decided to carry out hispurpose.

  "Come with me, my little beauty!"

  Mother Frochard chuckled at the sight of him mastering her. Strugglewildly as the poor blind creature would to avoid his grip, he wasdragging her slowly to the stair while her screams were stifled by onerough hand over her mouth.

  But as he was doing this, the huddled figure rose. "I have been acoward long enough," said Pierre. "Don't touch her!" laying arestraining hand on Jacques' arm.

  Astonished, Jacques turned. "Who'll stop me?" He flung his brotherprostrate half way across the room.

  The cripple had risen again. A dirk gleamed in his extended hand. Hiseyes blazed like coals. Fury distorted his features which were cranedforward in hideous ugliness parallel with the knife.

  "I will!"

  "You misbegotten hunchback!" roared Jacques, letting loose of the girland drawing his own knife. "She is mine. I tell you I will kill anyonewho interferes with me!"

  La Frochard tried to throw herself between the brothers. Louise gropedaway, and as by instinct found refuge behind Pierre. Jacques pushedthe hag aside, saying savagely: "Let me look after this!"

  Each brother stripped off his coat, holding it as a buckler whilst theright hand gripped a knife.

  "You are right, Jacques," said the frenzied cripple. "We Frochardscome of a race that kills!"

  The adversaries feinted around each other in circles, in the Latinmode of fighting that was their heritage. Coats or sidesteps parriedor evaded blows. The knives gleamed, but did not go quickly home.

  If Jacques had the superior strength, Pierre was the more cat-like.His frail body was a slight target, so that the other's great lungesmissed. Then, leaping like a puma, he was behind and under Jacques'guard, and stabbed him in the back.

  The great hulk of a man fell back into La Frochard's arms, the bloodoozing from a cut that was not mortal though fearsome. The hag-motherwailed and crooned as if he were in death agony.

  "Quick!" cried the hunchback to Louise, "the road to liberty is open."Taking Louise by the hand, he ran with her up the steps out of thecellar....

  But Henriette did not meet--not until one fateful hour--the itinerantgrinder and her loved sister whom he protected. They were in many ofthe scenes of the later Revolution. Louise ate off the de Vaudreyplate, and Pierre perforce sharpened the knives of the SeptemberMassacre. Tramps of the boiling, tempestuous City, spectators but notparticipants of the great events, they looked ceaselessly for her.

  Nor did the wicked Frochards abide in the den of Louise's imprisonmentand sufferings. They too were swallowed up in the vast maelstrom--toreappear at one ludicrous moment of tragic times.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE NEW TYRANNY

  Before telling you how the Chevalier de Vaudrey got out of Caen andhow he fared forth to his love, it is meet that the reader shouldunderstand the rapidly changing conditions that converted the NewFrance into a veritable Hell on earth.

  After the Fall of the Bastille, and even after the mob's sortie onVersailles which enforced the royal family's return to Paris wherethey lived in the Tuileries, it was the hope of the moderate patriotsthat constitutional monarchy might prevail.

  These hopes were dashed, first, by royalty's intrigues and double-dealing,and, secondly, through the pressure of the revolting emigres and thethreat of foreign invasion that welded all the defenders of France,willy-nilly, into a traitor-crushing and invader-defying Republic.

  Of all the personages of that unhappy time, the locksmithing KingLouis XVI least understood what was going on about him.

  A true Bourbon with an ancestry of nearly a thousand years' possessionof the French throne, he never learned anything and never forgotanything. He played at being a limited monarch but his sympathies werenaturally with the riffled aristocrats--the nobility whose privilegeshad been taken away, their estates commandeered, their chateaux firedor sacked, and themselves obliged to flee for their lives to theprotection of the foreigner.

  Not comprehending the nature of the Storm that wiped out old tyranny,Louis dangerously rode the Storm, he could not guide it. His lack ofunderstanding is sadly shown in the closing scene at Versailles whenthey brought him news of the people's coming.

  "Mais, c'est une revolte. Why, that is a revolt!" exclaimed thebewildered monarch.

  "No, Sire," replied the Minister gravely, "'tis not a revolt. It is arevolution!"

  Within a few hours the yelling maenads and bold satyrs of thesansculottes possessed the gorgeous Salon de la Paix, whilst the Kingand his family were on their way to Paris....

  Then followed many weary months of royalist intrigue, plot and counterplot, secret dickers with foreign
Powers, attempts at escape, freshindignities by the mob, until at last Royalty is suspended from itsfunction, becomes the prisoner instead of the ruler. Turned out of theTuileries, Louis and Marie Antoinette are no longer King andQueen--henceforth Citizen and Citizeness Capet. At the end of dreadfulimprisonments, looms for the hapless pair the dread Scaffold....

  A real Republic teeters for a short period on the crest of theRevolutionary wave. Men are mad with the joy over the new thought ofuniversal brotherhood. Little do Danton and the other Utopians realizethat the Pageant of Brotherhood is but the prelude of a newDespotism.

  For a dark ring of foes--spurred to invasion by the King'smisfortunes--surrounds France on every side. Within, the cryre-echoes: "The traitors to the prisons!" and all the aristocrats asyet at large are hunted down and put in durance.

  As Minister of Justice, Danton, the idol of the people, acts quicklyto subdue aristocracy, and ceaselessly organizes--organizes--organizesthe raw republican levies into troops fit to resist the advancingPrussians, Austrians and Savoyards.

  Lashed to uncontrollable rage by the preliminary successes of theinvading Prussians, the Paris proletariat break into the prisons andmassacre the unfortunate members of the nobility there immured. Feware spared. Young equally with the old--girls and women no less thanthe sterner sex--the noble, the wise, the cultivated, the beautiful,are murdered in cold blood. The September Massacres shock moderateseverywhere with the feeling that France is at last running amuck--themad dog of the Nations.