CHAPTER XIII

DISTURBING INSINUATIONS

February came in dreary, and bleak, and went out in torrents of rain. For Aline de Rochambeau a time of dull loneliness, and reaction, of hard grinding work, and insufficient food. She had to rise early, and stand in a line with other women, before she could receive the meagre dole of bread, which was all that the Republic One and Indivisible would guarantee its starving citizens. Then home again, faint and weary, to sit long hours, bent to catch the last, ultimate ray of dreary light, working fingers sore, and tired eyes red, over the fine embroidery for which she was so thankful still to find a sale.

All these wasted morning hours had to be made up for in the dusk and dark of the still wintry evenings. With hands stiff and blue, she must thread the fine needle, and hold the delicate fabric, working on, and on, and on. She did not sing at her work now, and the silence lay mournfully upon her heart.

"No tread on the stair, no passing step across the way. What slow, long days--what empty, halting evenings."

Rosalie eyed her with a half-contemptuous pity in those days, but times were too hard for the pity to be more than a passing indulgence, and she turned to her own comfortable meals without a pang. Times were hard, and many suffered--what could one do?

"For me, I do not see that things are changed so wonderfully," sighed brown little Madeleine Rousse, Rosalie's neighbour.

Mlle de Rochambeau and she were standing elbow to elbow, waiting for the baker to open his doors, and begin the daily distribution.

"We were hungry before, and we are hungry now. Bread is as scarce, and the only difference is that there are more mouths to feed."

Her small face was pinched and drawn, and she sighed heavily, thinking of five clamouring children at home.

"Eh, Madeleine," cried Louison Michel, wife of that redoubtable Septembrist, Jean, the butcher. "Eh, be thankful that your last was not twins, as mine was. There was a misfortune, if you like, and I with six already! And what does that great stupid oaf of mine say but, 'He, Louison, what a pity it was not three!' 'Pity,' said I, and if I had been up and about, I warrant you I 'd have clouted him well; 'pity, indeed, and why?' Well, and what do you think--you 'd never guess. 'Oh,' says he, with a great sheep's grin on his face, 'we might have called them Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.' And there he stood as if he had said something clever. My word! If I was angry! 'The charming idea, my friend,' I said. 'I who have to work for them, whilst you make speeches at your section, what of me? Take that, and that,' said I, and I threw what was handy at him--Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, indeed!"

Madeleine sighed again, but an impudent-faced girl behind Aline whispered in her ear, "Jean Michel has one tyrant from whom the Republic cannot free him!"

Louison's sharp ears caught the words, or a part of them, and she turned with a swing that brought her hand in a resounding slap upon the girl's plump cheek, which promptly flamed with the marks of five bony fingers.

"Eh--Ma'mselle Impudence, so a wife mayn't keep her own husband in order? Perhaps you 'd like to come interfering? Best put your fingers in some one else's pies, and leave mine alone."

The girl sobbed angrily, and Louison emitted a vicious little snort, pushing on a pace as the distribution began, and the queue moved slowly forward.

A month before Mlle de Rochambeau would have shrunk and caught her breath, but now she only looked, and looked away.

At first these hours in the open street were a torture to the sensitive, gently-bred girl. Every eye that lighted upon her seemed to be stripping off her disguise, and she expected the tongue of every passer-by to proclaim and denounce her.

After the shock of the September massacres, it was impossible for her to realise that the greater part of those she encountered were plain, hungry, fellow-creatures, who cared little about politics, and much about their daily bread, but after a while she found she was one of a crowd--a speck, a dust mote, and that courage of the crowd, that sloughing of the individual, began to reassure her. She lost the sensation of being alone, the centre of observing eyes, and took her place as one of the great city's humble workers, waiting for her share of its fostering; and she began to find interest in the scenes of tragedy and comedy which those hours of waiting brought before her. The long standing was fatiguing, but without the fresh air and enforced companionship of these morning hours, she would have fared worse than she did. Brains of coarser fibre than hers gave way in those days, and the cells of the Salpetriere could tell a sadder tale than even the prisons of Paris.

One day of drenching rain, as she stood shivering, her thin dress soaked, her hair wet and dripping, a heavy-looking, harpy-eyed creature stared long and curiously at her. The wind had caught Aline's hair, and she put up her slim hand smoothing it again. As she did so, the woman's eyes took a dull glare and she muttered:

"Aristocrat."

Terror teaches the least experienced to dissemble, and Mademoiselle had learned its lesson by now. Her heart bounded, but she managed a tolerably natural shrug of the shoulders, and answered in accents modelled on those of Rosalie:

"My good mother, I? The idea! I--but that amuses me," and she laughed; but the woman gave a sort of growl, shook her dripping head, and repeated hoarsely:

"Aristocrat, aristocrat," in a sort of chant, whilst the rain, following the furrows of the grimy, wrinkled cheeks, gave her an expression at once bleared and malignant.

"It is Mere Rabotin," said the woman at Mademoiselle's side. "She is a little mad. They shot her son last tenth of August, and since then she sees aristocrats and tyrants everywhere."

The old woman threw her a wicked glance.

"In you, I see nothing but a fat cow, whose husband beats her," she remarked venomously, and a laugh ran down the line, for the woman crimsoned, and held her tongue, being a rather stupid, garrulous creature destined to be put out of action at once by a sharp retort.

"But this"--pursued Mere Rabotin, fingering Mademoiselle's shrinking hand--"this is an aristocrat's hand. Fine and white, white and fine, and why, because it has never worked, never worked as honest hands do, and every night it has bathed in blood--ah, that is a famous whiteness, mes amis!"

Mademoiselle drew her hand away with a shudder, but recovering her self-possession, she held it up, still with that careful laugh.

"Why, Mere Rabotin," she cried, "see how it is pricked and worn. I work it to the bone, I can tell you, and get little enough even then."

"Aristocrat, aristocrat," repeated the hag, watching her all the time. "Fine white hands, and a black heart--blue blood, and a light name--no mercy or pity. Aristocrat!"

All the way it kept up, that half-mad drone. The women in front and behind shrugged impatient shoulders, staring a little, but not caring greatly.

Mademoiselle kept up her pose, played the poor seamstress, and played it well, with a sigh here, and a laugh there, and all the time in her ears the one refrain:

"Aristocrat, aristocrat!"

She came home panting, and lay on her bed listening for she knew not what, for quite an hour, before she could force her trembling fingers to their work again. Next day she stayed indoors, and starved, but the following morning hunger drove her out, and she went shaking to her place in the line of waiting citizens. The woman was not there, and she never saw her again. After awhile she ceased to feel alarmed. The feeling of being watched and stared at, wore off, and life settled down into a dull monotony of work, and waiting.

It was in these days that Rosalie made up her quarrel with Therese Marcel; and upon the reconciliation began a gradual alteration in the elder woman's habits. There were long absences from the shop, after which she would return flushed, and queer-eyed, to sit muttering over her knitting, and these absences became more and more frequent.

Mlle de Rochambeau, returning with her daily dole of bread, met her one day about to sally forth.

Therese was with her, and saluted Mademoiselle with a contemptuous laugh.

"Are you coming with us, Mlle White-face?" she called.

Aline shook her head with a civil smile.

"There are two women in to-day's batch--I have been telling Rosalie. She did n't mean to come, but that fetched her. She has n't seen a woman kiss Madame Guillotine yet, but the men find her very attractive, eh, Rosalie?"

Rosalie's broad face took on a dull flush, and her eyes became suddenly restless.

"Eh, Marie," she said, in a queer, thick voice. "Come along then--you sit and work all day, and in the end you will be ill. Every one must take a holiday some time, and it is exciting, this spectacle; I can tell you it is exciting. The first time I was like you, I said no, I can't, I can't; but see you, I could think of nothing else, and at last, Therese persuaded me. Then I sat, and shivered--yes, like a jelly--and saw ten knives, and ten heads, and half a dozen Citizen Sansons--but after that it went better, and better. Come, then, and see for yourself, Marie," and she put a heavy hand on the girl's shrinking shoulder.

White-faced, Aline recoiled.

"Oh, Citoyenne," she breathed, and shrank away.

Therese laughed loud.

"Oh, Citoyenne, Citoyenne," she mimicked. "Tender flower, pretty lamb, but the lamb's throat comes to the butcher's knife all the same," and her eyes were wicked behind their mockery.

"Have you heard any news of that fine lover of yours, since he rode away," she went on.

"I have no lover," answered Mademoiselle, the blood flaming into her thin cheeks.

"You are too modest, perhaps?" sneered Therese.

"I have not thought of such things."

"Such things--just hear her! What? you have not thought of Citizen Dangeau, handsome Citizen Dangeau, and he living in the same house, and closeted with you evening after evening, as our good Rosalie tells me? Does one do such things without thinking?"

Mademoiselle's flush had faded almost as it had risen, leaving her white and proud.

"Citoyenne, you are in error," she said quietly. "I am a poor girl with my bread to earn. The Citizen employed me to copy a book he had written. He paid well, and I was glad of the money."

"I dare say you were"--and Therese's coarse laugh rang out--"so he paid you well, and for copying, for copying--that was it, my pious Ste. Nitouche. Copying? Haha--I never heard it called that before!"

Mademoiselle turned haughtily away, only a deepening of her pallor showed that the insult had reached her, but Rosalie caught her cousin's arm with an impatient--"Tiens, Therese, we shall be late, we shall not get good places," and they went out, Therese still laughing noisily.

"Vile, vile, shameless woman," thought Aline, as she stood drawing long breaths before her open window.

The strong March wind blew in and seemed to fan her hot anger and shame into a blaze. "How dare she--how dare she!"

Woman-like, she laid the insult to Dangeau's account. It was another stone added to the wall which she set herself night and day to build between them. It rose apace, and this was the coping-stone. Now, surely, she was safe. Behind such a wall, so strong, so high, how could he reach her? And yet she was afraid, for something moved in the citadel, behind the bastion of defence--something that fluttered at his name, that ached in loneliness, and cried in the night--a traitor, but her very heart, inalienable flesh and blood of her. She covered her face, and wrestled, as many a time before, and after awhile she told herself--"It is conquered," and with a smile of self-scorn sat down again to her task too long delayed.

Outside, Paris went its way. Thousands were born, and died, and married, and betrothed, in spite of scarce bread, war on the frontiers, and prisons full to bursting.

The Mountain and the Gironde were only held from one another's throats by Danton's strong hand; but though their bickerings fill the historian's page, under the surface agitation of politics, the vast majority of the population went its own way, a way that varies very little under successive forms of government, since the real life of a people consists chiefly of those things about which historians do not write.

Tragedy had come down and stalked the streets of Paris, but there were thousands of eyes which did not see her. Those who did, talked loudly of it, and so it comes that we see the times through their eyes, and not through those of the silent and the blind.

In the south Dangeau made speech after speech. He wrote to Danton from Lyons:

"This place smoulders. Words are apt to prove oil on the embers. There are 900 prisoners, and constant talk of massacre. Chalier is a firebrand, the Mayor one of those moderate persons who provoke immoderate irritation in others. We are doing our best."

Danton frowned heavily over the curt sentences, drawing those black brows of his into a wrathful line. He turned to other letters from other Deputies, all telling the same weary tale of jangle and discord, strife and clamour of parties unappeased and unappeasable. Soon he would be at death-grips with the Gironde--force opposed to philosophy, action to eloquence, and philosophic eloquence would go to the guillotine shouting the Marseillaise.

His feet were set upon a bloody path, and one from which there was no returning. All Fate's force was in him and behind him, and he drove before it to his doom.