CHAPTER XXVI.

KATE LEARNS SHE IS FREE.

A great masked ball was over at the opera house; the candles were burning down into their sockets in the girandoles and lustres; the May morning, which under ordinary circumstances should have broken so soft and bright, had dawned foul, rainy, and snowy; and carriages, hackney coaches, and sedan chairs were pushing their way up to the doors of the theatre and carrying off their employers to their houses and beds.

But all were not yet departed; some still sat drinking or chatting at the supper tables; some danced in groups without any music to accompany them except the airs which they hummed or whistled themselves, for the orchestra had put up its instruments and gone also to its bed; and some, principally men, struggled and pushed in the _vestiaires_ to obtain cloaks, roquelaures, hats and riding hoods, and swords--which latter could not by law be worn in the ball-room. Mock harlequins jostled imitation Henrys of Navarre; mock monks swore at supposed Crusaders; minotaurs and cavaliers and priests all contended against one another for their and their female companions' wraps, and at the same time laughed and jested and proposed breakfasts at neighbouring taverns, or a visit to the gambling hells, which on such nights as these kept their doors perpetually open.

Amidst all this confusion there ran through the whole place a rumour--a whisper, which reached first those in the _vestiaires_, and next the people at the supper tables--that those who so chose might yet finish their night's enjoyment with another spectacle--a grim and dismal but still enjoyable one--which was far better than any tavern breakfast or punting at the gaming table.

"_Figurez-vous!_" screamed one reveller, a deformed creature by nature, who had, with true Parisian appreciation of ludicrousness, arrayed himself consequently as Venus--"_figurez-vous, mes enfants_, there are two for execution, although, _malheureusement_, but only one is to be broken. The other, they say--because, _peste!_ he is a _sal Anglais_ and also of high rank--escapes the wheel and is only to be decapitated. A curse upon the law, say I, that treats an Englishman better than us!"

"_Ma petite Vénus de poche_," remarked another to him, clad as an arquebusier, "have a care how you curse the law; otherwise you may get broken yourself. There are plenty of police here in disguise, and if they hear you, that goodly hump of yours will stand a fine chance of being smashed by the executioner's bar. _Ma foi!_ the _coup de grâce_ is generally administered to the chest bone; with you, I presume, it will be administered on the _bosse_."

"I spoke only in jest," exclaimed the deformed one, glancing round apprehensively; "I meant no harm. A good subject, I, of the King of France and all his ministers. But come, let us away. Who's for the Grève? _Mon Dieu!_ we must not miss the show!"

"I am for it, for one!" screamed a girl not over twenty, whose golden hair hung down over her back, and whose tones and glances proclaimed her to be already far sunken in dissipation. "I have never yet seen a man done to death; and as for the wheel, why, I have prayed often for a chance of seeing it. They say the _coup de grâce_ is magnificent if the--the patient--is still sensible. Now, in our old village, before the young lord brought me to town, we never saw anything but a beggar in the stocks. And, _dame! les ceps_ cease to be interesting after one has pelted the occupiers for half an hour."

"Pretty things," said the arquebusier, looking down sardonically on her, "have a care, _ma chère_, that you never come to worse than _les ceps_ yourself. I have known many country girls brought to town by their young lords, and--hem!--who got worse shift than the stocks when they were discarded."

"_Ah! voyons!_" exclaimed the girl, "_avec ça!_ Look you, my figure of fun, you are insolent. Get you home to your wife and family, and earn bread for them. We of the fashion desire none of your _banalités_."

Yet, as she spoke, she was being inducted into her long cloak by some of her would-be admirers, and also many others were getting ready. For Paris had not had an execution for some two months now, and the "half-tiger, half-monkey nature" which Voltaire attributed to his countrymen was thirsty for its favourite form of entertainment.

In the ball-room itself there sat, however, a group very different from those in the vestibule, who, since the masquerades were open to all who could pay for admission, had attended the ball. This group consisted of Sir Charles and Lady Ames--once Lady Belrose--and Kate, who, in spite of her melancholy and her ill-health, had been persuaded to accompany them. Heaven knows such diversions were little enough in her way now! yet Lady Ames had been kind to her when she needed kindness, and, at the express desire of Sir Charles and his wife, she had consented to go with them.

In one way she was not unhappy: she knew, she felt certain, that this second disappearance of Bertie Elphinston from the knowledge of the world was not of his own accord. That something terrible had happened she could not doubt; yet she knew also that, whatever that something might be, it was not due to any desire to hide himself from her--that was, if he was still alive. But was he?

Douglas's awful death by an unknown hand might also have been Elphinston's lot: who could tell? And then her own husband's disappearance! Did not that point to some catastrophe? Over and over again she had meditated on all these things, lying awake for nights together, pondering over them, wondering, wondering always. For even now she was in total ignorance of who the murderer of Douglas had been, of what Archibald had discovered. He had written to her at intervals, it was true, but he had either avoided all reference to the tragedy, or had said that, if the murderer was ever brought to justice, she would doubtless know all. Her husband he never mentioned.

Yet, those who are aware of what she could not guess can understand how difficult a task it would have been for the Jesuit to tell her that he had discovered the assassin, and that Fordingbridge, her husband, was the man. It may be that, after he had handed him over to the proper authorities, he hoped, nay, endeavoured so to arrange that she should never discover that her husband was the criminal. Better that he should disappear from her knowledge forever, go to his doom without her dreaming that he had paid for the crime with his life, than that she should know to what a foul thing she had been united.

The candles guttered lower in their sockets, the attendants were putting out even the few lights that still burned; it was time to go. The opera house was emptying fast of all who had danced the night away there; amidst shrieks and whoops and yells the lower class of visitors were departing in coaches and chairs or on foot--some to their homes, but many to the Place de Grève. The spectacle of one man being broken to death and another decapitated was not to be missed.

"They say," exclaimed Sir Charles, as he returned with the cloaks and hoods of the two ladies, "that an execution takes place this morning on the Place de Grève. Hark! you may hear the creatures chattering over it as they go forth. Well, our coachman need not go through the _Place_, though it is on our road. Surely he can skirt round it. At least, I will bid him do so," and he escorted his wife and Kate to their carriage.

Outside, the crowd that was making its way to the place of execution was stamping down the now fast-falling snow as it fell, and hurrying forward for fear it should be too late for the show. With renewed shrieks and yells it went onward, singing songs and choruses, roaring out ballads that perhaps it deemed suitable to the occasion, beating on _tambours-de-basque_ and little tabours which formed the accompaniments of many of the masquers' costumes, and hammering on doors that were as yet unopened, with their shepherds' crooks and wooden swords (which were allowed to form part of their dress) and canes, and howling at the inhabitants to arise and come forth to _le spectacle_. They halted very little on their short way, sometimes only to shake the falling snow off their clothes, sometimes to wipe the paint and raddle from their faces which the wet snow had turned into sticky filth, and sometimes to kick over the braziers of the early morning chestnut-sellers, or to run into an early-opened wineshop, hastily gulp down a drink, and then go on again.

"Heavens!" exclaimed Sir Charles, as the slow-progressing coach kept pace with the creatures that passed along the miserable three-foot sideways or crunched along the road--"heavens! what a crowd is a Parisian one! Their laughter is as ferocious in its way as the roughness of our English rabble--nay, I believe, far more deadly. How they revel in what they are going to see!"

"I tell you, my friends," screamed one painted harridan from the sedan chair she was being carried in, to a number of her friends who walked beside it, "that it is a great, a magnificent spectacle. I have seen it, _voyez-vous_, at Lyons, on the Place Bellecour, often--once, twice, thrice. _Ma foi!_ the shriek at the first blow as the man lies back, his body tied to the wheel, is _pénétrant écrasant!_ And so on, the cries becoming lower, till they are no better than sobs or groans, until the _coup de grâce_. Then, sometimes, but alas! not always, there will be one more wild shriek, and _voilà! c'est fini_. After that it is always time for breakfast."

One or two girls in the crowd making its way onward glanced at the ogress in the sedan chair and turned white; and Kate, who had heard all her words, grasped Lady Belrose's hand; while a man, walking steadily along through the snow, answered the woman, saying:

"_Peste!_ 'tis not always as good as that. I waited once all through a summer night at Caen to see a man broken--I remember we played cards, I and the others, in the moonlight, and I lost four gold pistoles--and, _dame!_ the fellow was a favoured one. Favoured, you understand. A vile aristocrat. So, as we thought, they strangled him as they bound him, and, _malediction!_ he suffered not at all. Never screamed once--not once. 'Twas a cruel wrong to the spectators."

"'Tis an aristocrat who suffers to-day, they say," another man exclaimed.

"Nay," screamed still another, "not so. The aristocrat will suffer not; they will but slice his head off with the axe. There is no suffering in that; 'tis done and over in a moment. Yet I would see him die, too. He is an English aristocrat, and I hate all English; one beat me the other day for regarding his flaxen-haired wife too admiringly! I have never seen an Englishman die. They are brutes, yet they have the courage of devils."

"An English aristocrat!" said Sir Charles to his companions. "I do not understand this. There have been no Englishmen arrested in Paris for a longtime; otherwise I must have heard of it among our friends here. What does he mean?"

"My dear Charles," replied his wife, "you do not know the Parisians very well. An English aristocrat to them is any Englishman who is outside his own country for pleasure and with his pocket well lined with guineas. Doubtless, however, this is some needy ragamuffin or copper captain, who has come to the scaffold for his sins, and they suppose him an aristocrat."

Whatever Sir Charles may have replied was drowned now by an increase of the howls and yells of the crowd, by fiercer beatings on the _tambours-de-basque_ and tabours, by snatches of wild, frenzied songs, and by bursts of hysterical laughter.

The Place de Grève was in sight.

"Turn off!" said Sir Charles, putting his head out of the window and addressing the coachman--"turn off, I say! I told you to leave the route to that infernal _Place_ and avoid it. Why have you disobeyed me?"

The man shrugged his shoulders as he looked round from his seat--doubtless, in spite of the orders he had received, he meant to see _le spectacle_ himself if possible--then he said:

"Monsieur, it is impossible to turn off, or scarcely now to proceed. The crowd encompasses us. Yet the _Place_ is not so full but we may pass through it. _Mon Dieu!_ if it had been a fine May morning, a fly could not have passed."

"Is--is there anything--dreadful--taking place yet? If so, we will not proceed."

The driver stood up on his box and gazed forward; then he shook his head and said:

"_Non_, monsieur, there is nothing. Only the erection itself, and the soldiers and people; not many of the latter, either. _Nous autres_," pointing to the howling crowd from the Bal Masqué seething around them, "will double the sightseers." But he muttered to himself, "Ere we get into the middle of the _Place_ we shall see something, or I'm a stupid _escargot_."

"Go on, then," said Sir Charles, "as quickly as you can, since you cannot now turn round. Lose no time." And he spoke to his companions, saying, "Best put on your masks. This is no place for ladies to be seen in. But we shall be through it all in five minutes."

Lady Belrose and Kate did as he bade them, and then the coach went on, slowly following all those in the road before them. Unfortunately, it had no curtains to the windows, which shut from within as was the custom of the day, otherwise the baronet would have closed out the whole of their surroundings. But this was impossible.

And still the crowd accompanying them shrieked and howled more and more--fighting and struggling to pass each other; thrusting those in front of them away, elbowing and pushing--the man who had waited all night at Caen playing at cards, throwing another almost under the wheels of Sir Charles's coach, while a girl was borne down in the crush and dragged aside fainting--stamping with glee and excitement, almost dancing in frenzy.

For the bell of the neighbouring church was tolling now, and, through the flakes of snow as they fell, the wheel and the block for the two condemned men were visible on the scaffold.

That scaffold itself was a platform some seven feet high, around which stood a company of the grenadiers, with, on either side of it, a guard of the musketeers. On the left of it was the wheel itself, fixed horizontally between stout wooden supports let into the platform, it being a large cannon-wheel. On the right side was a headsman's block, with, beneath it, a basket filled with sawdust, now half covered by snow. By the wheel and leaning against it was a huge club, iron-bound at the head, and at this sight the crowd became still more excited, if possible, pointing it out to each other and saying, "Behold, _la massue_. She will do her work well, _Ça pese bien_," and laughing and screaming once more, and rubbing their hands.

Next came a roar, with shrieks from women and more faintings among them, while, by some impulse unrecognised perhaps by themselves, all of the latter produced their masks and put them on. It may be that something feminine, some feeling of womanly shame, prompted them to hide their features, to disguise their presence there. As for the men, the excitability of their natures affected them in a different way, for at what was happening now some of them, even strangers to each other, shook hands effusively, and some clapped others on the back.

For the condemned ones were in sight.

They came forth together from a small door in the wall of the _Hôtel de Ville_, side by side, these two who were to suffer; one--he who was to perish on the wheel--being nearly naked, and having on him nothing but a short pair of breeches reaching to his knees and a sleeveless singlet. He was a great, bull-chested man, with massive limbs that would have become a gladiator, and, as he strode along attended by a confessor with a crucifix in his hand, he seemed to the mob to appear like one who would suffer severely. Therefore they roared and shrieked at him, and some waved handkerchiefs and clapped and cried, while he regarded them almost with contempt. Yet there was a glance in his eyes as if he could not comprehend why all these people, whom he saw through the falling flakes, should be thus fantastically dressed and should also be masked.

In truth it was a weird scene in the Place de Grève that morning, with the condemned men approaching the scaffold through the snow, and with, for the greater part of the spectators, these women, through the holes of whose masks their eyes glittered, and whose grotesque costumes were but little suited either to the occasion or the wintry morning.

Yet still there was the other doomed one. He, however, approached the platform very differently from the manner in which the man whose portion was the wheel came forward. He, too, had by his side a confessor with a crucifix--after each there walked the executioners, and also the officials--and it seemed as if he would shelter himself behind the robes of the priest. Yet sometimes, too, he smiled and gibbered at the crowd as though it was composed of his friends, and only when he saw the masked faces of the women and all the quaint garbs of the onlookers did he seem astonished.

At his appearance the crowd appeared startled, the shouts died down; instead of them a whisper ran through their ranks. "He is mad! _Il est fou!_" they cried, and again some women fainted.

"Great God!" muttered Sir Charles Ames hoarsely, catching sight of him. Then, suddenly, he said: "Kate--Lady Fordingbridge--do not look out; for pity's sake do not!" And to his wife he made signs that she should prevent her friend from glancing at the scaffold.

But he was too late! Already she had done so; already she, peering from the window of the coach, her own face masked, had seen the face of the trembling, grinning wretch; and, since gradually the coachman had edged the carriage through the crowd until it was not now ten paces from the platform, he, too, saw her--the woman with her face disguised--glaring at him.

She herself was nearly fainting at this time, yet she could see the headsman grasp his axe and motion to the victim to kneel down and place his head upon the block, and in her agony she raised her hand to her brow. In doing so it struck and loosened the mask, so that it fell off, leaving her face exposed.

And then the crowd's enjoyment culminated!

For he saw the mask fall away from her--he saw her face.

And with a wild scream--a scream that penetrated to the hearts of all in the Place de Grève--he shrieked:

"Kate! Kate! I have seen him! He forgives! He is a prisoner in----" and fell back, dying, into the executioner's arms.

The frenzied brain had failed at last.