Calvert of Strathore Part 26

Almost before he had finished speaking the little company had vanished which it had taken such secrecy and courage and fidelity to call together; the great plan was overthrown which had taken such daring and patience and wealth to set afoot. Timidity and bad faith had, in a moment, destroyed what had taken so many weeks to build up, and for the future calamities the King and Queen of France were to bear, they had only themselves to thank.

Calvert ran down the stairs again quickly to the anteroom, where the boyish figure in the long cloak awaited him.

"Come," he said, briefly, and, ordering a fresh horse for the rider, whose mount was weary, almost without a word the two galloped back together under the fading stars to the city of tumult and horror and crime. And as they raced forward in silence, a thousand hopes and fears crowded in upon Calvert's mind, but he put them steadily from him, trying to think but of the King and Queen and if there might yet be help for them or service to render. Only as he looked at the pale face beside him, at the blue eyes, tired and strained now, a mad wonder would steal over him that she had done this thing. And with this wonder tugging at his heart and brain they pressed onward with all speed. They entered Paris as the first streaks of dawn were beginning to redden the sky, and in this rosy morning glow the haggard faces of the mult.i.tudes of men and women pacing the streets--for who could sleep during that awful night?--looked more haggard and wretched than ever before. Bands of armed ruffians marched through the streets from all sections of the city. 'Twas plain that some movement of importance was going forward.

The two riders made their way as quickly as possible past the Place du Carrousel, where Calvert could see the faithful Swiss regiment at their post, over the Pont Royal and so to the Faubourg St. Germain and the American Legation.

"Mr. Morris's house is the only safe place in all this mad city, I think," he said to Adrienne. "I will leave you in his care while I go and see what has befallen the King and Queen."

Early as was the hour, the Legation was all astir, and Mr. Morris himself came out to meet Calvert and Adrienne as they dismounted. He had not been to bed during the night and looked hara.s.sed and weary. He drew them into the house, where they found a large company a.s.sembled. Madame de Montmorin was there, agony and terror written on her pallid face; the old Count d'Estaing, who had fought so gallantly in America; Dillon, Madame de Flahaut, and a dozen others, who had taken refuge with the American Minister during that terrible night.

"You see!" said Mr. Morris, in a low tone, to Calvert, and indicating the little group. "They have fled for protection here, but G.o.d knows whether even this spot will afford them safety! I call you to witness, Calvert, that if my protection of these persons should become a matter of reproach to me here, or at home (and I have reason to expect it will, from what I have already experienced), I call you to witness that I have not violated the neutrality of this place by inviting them here, but I will never put them out now that they are here, let the consequences be what they may!"

"Who could believe that you could act in any other way!" said Calvert, warmly, touched by the n.o.bility and earnestness of Mr. Morris's manner, very different from his usual cynical one. "And I am come to put another in your charge until the Queen sends for her," he went on. "She has ridden through this terrible night--G.o.d knows how--to give us warning that the King and Queen have abandoned us and the great plan and have chosen to remain at the palace. I must go to the Tuileries and find out what has befallen their Majesties and then I will return."

"I know all," said Mr. Morris, bitterly. "I scarcely dared to hope that their Majesties would stand by us or their promises. 'Tis as I thought, my boy. Sacrifices and devotion, time and money have all been wasted in their behalf. So be it! I think no power can save them now. You have bravely done your share. Let this end it. And it were best that you should leave Paris at once. D'Angremont has died n.o.bly without revealing our secrets--he was murdered within two hours of his capture--but this is no safe place for you. Go to the Tuileries, if you will, but return to me as soon as possible. You have lost at the palace, but I think there is a reward waiting for you here at the Legation," he says, smiling a little and turning away.

Scarcely had Calvert left the Legation when he heard the alarm from the great bell of St. Germain l'Auxerrois--that fatal bell which had rung in the Ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew two hundred and twenty years before--and almost immediately after there came the sounds of musketry and cannonading from the direction of the palace of the Tuileries. The attack had already begun, and Calvert thought with a thrill of horror of the fate that awaited Beaufort and those other loyal servants of their Majesties within the palace.

The fearful drama of that day is too well known to need repeating. On that day Louis XVI of France pa.s.sed from history and the revolution was consummated. By the time Calvert had reached the Quai opposite the Louvre the battle was begun, the mob was forcing its way past the scattered National Guard, whose commander lay murdered on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, past the stanch, true Swiss Guard, who, left without orders, stood, martyrs at their posts, _ne sacramenti fidem fallerent_, through the Carrousel up to the very palace itself. There, surrounded by seven hundred loyal gentlemen, whom he was to abandon as he had abandoned all his friends and servants, the King awaited his doom in apathetic resignation. It was impossible to reach his Majesty or to do aught for him, and Calvert could only look on from afar. There was no place in that fearful scene for an American. The French at last knew their power, had at last got the bit between their teeth, and no outside interference could stay that fearful pace. The mob surged about Calvert, increased every instant by fresh additions from the lowest quarters of the city, reinforced by deputations from the provinces. The firing from without grew quicker and quicker; from within fainter and less frequent, as those devoted servants of the King were shot down, until finally there was silence within the palace and the scarlet of the Swiss could be seen scattered and fleeing in every direction as the armed and triumphant mob pushed its way forward. Looking into the mad whirlwind of faces, Calvert saw the great, disfigured head, the ma.s.sive shoulders of Danton, (but just come, on that fearful morning, to the fulness of his infamy and power), followed by Bertrand, battling his way beside his great leader.

"And 'twas for this I saved him!" said Calvert to himself. "Truly the ways and ends of Providence are inscrutable!"

He watched the terrible scene a long while, and then, seeing that he was powerless to aid those in the palace, he made his way back to the Legation with a beating heart. The great disappointment the night had brought, the failure of all those plans in which he had been so profoundly interested and for which he had hazarded so much, even the peril of the King and Queen, faded from before his mind as he thought of Adrienne and asked himself why she had risked her life to come to him.

He saw her still galloping by his side, her face pale in the light of the full August moon, her dusky hair blown backward, the strange, inscrutable expression in her eyes.

She was not with the rest of the little company when Calvert once more entered the Legation. He found her in an upper chamber, where she stood alone beside an open window, looking out on the agitation and tumult of the city below. She had doffed her travel-stained boy's clothes and now wore a dress, which Madame de Montmorin had offered her, of some soft black stuff that fell in heavy folds about her slender young figure. As he entered she turned, hearing the sound, and their eyes met. He stood silent, trying to fathom the strange look on that pale face. It was the same beautiful face that he had seen in pictured loveliness that last night at Monticello, the same that he had seen in reality for the first time at Mr. Jefferson's levee at the Legation, and yet how changed! All the haughty pride, the caprice, the vanity, the artificiality were gone, and instead, upon the finely chiselled features and in the blue eyes, rested a serene, if melancholy beauty, a quiet n.o.bility born of suffering. There rushed through Calvert's mind the thought that, after all, that loveliness had at last developed into all that was best and finest.

He stood thus looking at her in silence and thinking of these things, and then he went slowly forward, scarce knowing how to address her or explain his presence, who had so long avoided her.

"I am come," he says, at length, "to thank you for the great service that you have this night rendered me and those other gentlemen engaged with myself in the King's business. I dare not think what might have been the fate of us all had you not come to our a.s.sistance. Were they here they would, like myself, thank you with all their hearts."

"'Twas no great service," she says, "and I could scarce have done less for one who has done so much--who has sacrificed so much for me."

"I have sacrificed nothing," says Calvert, in a low, compa.s.sionate voice. "'Twas you who sacrificed yourself, and all in vain! Believe me, I suffered for you in that knowledge. I should not have let you--should have found a way, but I was weak and ill and scarcely struggled against the fate that gave you to me. I wish that 'twere as easy to undo the evil as for you to forget me."

"Forget you! I wish I could forget you. I have thought of you so much that sometimes I wish I could forget you entirely. But I think 'tis out of my power to do so now. I think I should have to be quite dead--and even then I do not know--I am not sure--if you should speak to me I think I would hear," she says, wildly, and covering her eyes with her hand.

He looked at the dark-robed figure, the dark head bowed on the heaving breast, and suddenly a joy such as he had never thought to feel ran through his veins. He went over to her, and, lifting the hand from the closed eyes, he put it to his lips.

"Adrienne," he says, tenderly and wonderingly, "you are crying! Why?"

"I am crying for so many things! For joy and despair and hope and dead love, because this means nothing to you and everything to me, because I love you and you love me not, because you once loved me--!" She stopped in an access of anguish and, sobbing, knelt before him. The humility of true love had at last mastered her.

"Not to me--not to me," he said, unsteadily, lifting her.

"And why not to you? There is no one so true, no one I honor so much! In my pride and ignorance I thought you were not the equal of these fine gentlemen who have abandoned their King and their country. But I have learned to know you, and my own heart, and what I have thrown away! I am not ashamed to say this--to own to you that I love you." She threw back her head and looked at Calvert with eyes that shone with a sorrowful light. "For you once told me that you loved me, and though I know I have lost that love, the memory that I once had it will stay with me and be my pride forever."

"'Tis yours still, believe me," said Calvert. "'Tis yours now and forever--forever." He put his arm around her and drew her to him. "Far or near I have loved you since the first day I saw you, but I never dreamed that you would come to care, and in my pride I swore I would never tell you of my love after that day in the garden at Azay."

"I must have been mad, I think," she said, wonderingly. "Mad to have laughed at you--mad to have thrown away your love. Ah, I have learned since then!"

"'Tis like a miracle that you should have come to care for me," said Calvert, his lips upon her dark hair.

"The hour you left me I knew that I loved you. Oh, the agony of that knowledge and the thought that I would never see you again! Even then my pride would not let me tell you--I thought you would come again--and then--then when later you turned from me--my heart broke, I think--'twas quite numb--I was neither sorry nor glad--" She stopped again.

"Are you glad now, Adrienne?" asked Calvert, looking at her tenderly.

"Yes," she said, quietly.

"And will you be content to leave this France of yours and come with me to America? There is a home waiting for you there--'tis not a splendid place like those you know, but only a country house that stands near the n.o.blest and loveliest river of the land, upon whose banks peace and happiness dwell." As he spoke, grim sounds of tumult, cannonading, fierce cries, and hoa.r.s.e commands came to them from the hot, crowded street below, but they did not heed them--they were far away from that terrible, doomed city. Words were scarcely needed--they stood there soul to soul, alone in all the world, and happy.

"I am going back to that land of mine, where there is work for me to do.

Will you not go with me? There is nothing more we can do here. The last chance to save their Majesties is gone. Will you leave this troubled, fated land and come with me to that other one, where I will make you forget the horrors, the sufferings you have endured in this--where I swear I will make you happy? Will you go to this America of mine?" he asked.

She gazed into the eyes she so loved and trusted with a glance as serene and true as their own.

"I will go," she said.