IV

There was also a stampede for the door. One man gave the signal. Seeing that his mates were wasting precious time by venting their wrath against Paul Friche and then quarrelling among themselves, he hoped to effect an escape ere the police came to stop the noise. No one believed in the place being surrounded. Why should it be? The Marats were far too busy hunting up rebels and aristos to trouble much about the Rat Mort and its customers, but it was quite possible that a brawl would bring a patrol along, and then 'ware the police correctionnelle and the possibility of deportation or worse. Retreat was undoubtedly safer while there was time. One man first: then one or two more on his heels, and those among the women who had children in their arms or clinging to their skirts: they turned stealthily to the door—almost ashamed of their cowardice, ashamed lest they were seen abandoning the field of combat.

It was while confusion reigned unchecked that Yvonne—who was cowering, frankly terrified at last, in the corner of the room, became aware that the door close beside her—the door situated immediately opposite the front entrance—was surreptitiously opened. She turned quickly to look—for she was like a terror-stricken little animal now—one that scents and feels and fears danger from every quarter round. The door was being pushed open very slowly by what was still to Yvonne an unseen hand. Somehow that opening door fascinated her: for the moment she forgot the noise and the confusion around her.

Then suddenly with a great effort of will she checked the scream which had forced itself up to her throat.

"Father!" was all that she contrived to say in a hoarse and passionate murmur.

Fortunately as he peered cautiously round the room, M. le duc caught sight of his daughter. She was staring at him—wide-eyed, her lips bloodless, her cheeks the colour of ashes. He looked but the ghost now of that proud aristocrat who little more than a week ago was the centre of a group of courtiers round the person of the heir to the English throne. Starved, emaciated, livid, he was the shadow of his former self, and there was a haunted look in his purple-rimmed eyes which spoke with pathetic eloquence of sleepless nights and of a soul tortured with remorse.

Just for the moment no one took any notice of him—every one was shrieking, every one was quarrelling, and M. le duc, placing a finger to his lips, stole cautiously round to his daughter. The next instant they were clinging to one another, these two, who had endured so much together—he the father who had wrought such an unspeakable wrong, and she the child who was so lonely, so forlorn and almost happy in finding some one who belonged to her, some one to whom she could cling.

"Father, dear! what shall we do?" Yvonne murmured, for she felt the last shred of her fictitious courage oozing out of her, in face of this awful lawlessness which literally paralysed her thinking faculties.

"Sh! dear!" whispered M. le duc in reply. "We must get out of this loathsome place while this hideous row is going on. I heard it all from the filthy garret up above, where those devils have kept me these three days. The door was not locked.... I crept downstairs.... No one is paying heed to us.... We can creep out. Come."

But at the suggestion, Yvonne's spirits, which had been stunned by the events of the past few moments, revived with truly mercurial rapidity.

"No! no! dear," she urged. "We must stay here.... You don't know.... I have had a message—from my own dear milor—my husband ... he sent a friend to take me out of the hideous prison where that awful Pierre Adet was keeping me—a friend who assured me that my dear milor was watching over me ... he brought me to this place—and begged me not to be frightened ... but to wait patiently ... and I must wait, dear ... I must wait!"

She spoke rapidly in whispers and in short jerky sentences. M. le duc listened to her wide-eyed, a deep line of puzzlement between his brows. Sorrow, remorse, starvation, misery had in a measure numbed his mind. The thought of help, of hope, of friends could not penetrate into his brain.

"A message," he murmured inanely, "a message. No! no! my girl, you must trust no one.... Pierre Adet.... Pierre Adet is full of evil tricks—he will trap you ... he means to destroy us both ... he has brought you here so that you should be murdered by these ferocious devils."

"Impossible, father dear," she said, still striving to speak bravely. "We have both of us been all this while in the power of Pierre Adet; he could have had no object in bringing me here to-night."

But the father who had been an insentient tool in the schemes of that miserable intriguer, who had been the means of bringing his only child to this terrible and deadly pass—the man who had listened to the lying counsels and proposals of his own most bitter enemy, could only groan now in terror and in doubt.

"Who can probe the depths of that abominable villain's plans?" he murmured vaguely.

In the meanwhile the little group who had thought prudence the better part of valour had reached the door. The foremost man amongst them opened it and peered cautiously out into the darkness. He turned back to those behind him, put a finger to his lip and beckoned to them to follow him in silence.

"Yvonne, let us go!" whispered the duc, who had seized his daughter by the hand.

"But father...."

"Let us go!" he reiterated pitiably. "I shall die if we stay here!"

"It won't be for long, father dear," she entreated; "if milor should come with his friend, and find us gone, we should be endangering his life as well as our own."

"I don't believe it," he rejoined with the obstinacy of weakness. "I don't believe in your message ... how could milor or anyone come to your rescue, my child?... No one knows that you are here, in this hell in Nantes."

Yvonne clung to him with the strength of despair. She too was as terrified as any human creature could be and live, but terror had not altogether swept away her belief in that mysterious message, in that tall guide who had led her hither, in that scarlet device—the five-petalled flower which stood for everything that was most gallant and most brave.

She desired with all her might to remain here—despite everything, despite the awful brawl that was raging round her and which sickened her, despite the horror of the whole thing—to remain here and to wait. She put her arms round her father: she dragged him back every time that he tried to move. But a sort of unnatural strength seemed to have conquered his former debility. His attempts to get away became more and more determined and more and more febrile.

"Come, Yvonne! we must go!" he continued to murmur intermittently and with ever-growing obstinacy. "No one will notice us.... I heard the noise from my garret upstairs.... I crept down.... I knew no one would notice me.... Come—we must go ... now is our time."

"Father, dear, whither could we go? Once in the streets of Nantes what would happen to us?"

"We can find our way to the Loire!" he retorted almost brutally. He shook himself free from her restraining arms and gripped her firmly by the hand. He tried to drag her toward the door, whilst she still struggled to keep him back. He had just caught sight of the group of men and women at the front door: their leader was standing upon the threshold and was still peering out into the darkness.

But the next moment they all came to a halt: what their leader had perceived through the darkness did not evidently quite satisfy him: he turned and held a whispered consultation with the others. M. le duc strove with all his might to join in with that group. He felt that in its wake would lie the road to freedom. He would have struck Yvonne for standing in the way of her own safety.

"Father dear," she contrived finally to say to him, "if you go hence, you will go alone. Nothing will move me from here, because I know that milor will come."

"Curse you for your obstinacy," retorted the duc, "you jeopardise my life and yours."

Then suddenly from the angle of the room where wrangling and fighting were at their fiercest, there came a loud call:

"Look out, père Lemoine, your aristos are running away. You are losing your last chance of those fifty francs."

It was Paul Friche who had shouted. His position on the table was giving him a commanding view over the heads of the threatening, shouting, perspiring crowd, and he had just caught sight of M. le duc dragging his daughter by force toward the door.

"The authors of all this pother," he added with an oath, "and they will get away whilst we have the police about our ears."

"Name of a name of a dog," swore Lemoine from behind his bar, "that shall not be. Come along, maman, let us bring those aristos along here. Quick now."

It was all done in a second. Lemoine and his wife, with the weight and authority of the masters of the establishment, contrived to elbow their way through the crowd. The next moment Yvonne felt herself forcibly dragged away from her father.

"This way, my girl, and no screaming," a bibulous voice said in her ear, "no screaming, or I'll smash some of those front teeth of yours. You said some rich friends were coming along for you presently. Well then! come and wait for them out of the crowd!"

Indeed Yvonne had no desire to struggle or to scream. Salvation she thought had come to her and to her father in this rough guise. In another moment mayhap he would have forced her to follow him, to leave milor in the lurch, to jeopardise for ever every chance of safety.

"It is all for the best, father dear," she managed to cry out over her shoulder, for she had just caught sight of him being seized round the shoulders by Lemoine and heard him protesting loudly:

"I'll not go! I'll not go! Let me go!" he shouted hoarsely. "My daughter! Yvonne! Let me go! You devil!"

But Lemoine had twice the vigour of the duc de Kernogan, nor did he care one jot about the other's protests. He hated all this row inside his house, but there had been rows in it before and he was beginning to hope that nothing serious would come of it. On the other hand, Paul Friche might be right about these aristos; there might be forty or fifty francs to be made out of them, and in any case they had one or two things upon their persons which might be worth a few francs—and who knows? they might even have something in their pockets worth taking.

This hope and thought gave Lemoine additional strength, and seeing that the aristo struggled so desperately, he thought to silence him by bringing his heavy fist with a crash upon the old man's head.

"Yvonne! A moi!" shouted M. le duc ere he fell back senseless.

That awful cry, Yvonne heard it as she was being dragged through the noisome crowd. It mingled in her ear with the other awful sounds—the oaths and blasphemies which filled the air with their hideousness. It died away just as a formidable crash against the entrance door suddenly silenced every cry within.

"All hands up!" came with a peremptory word of command from the doorway.

"Mercy on us!" murmured the woman Lemoine, who still had Yvonne by the hand, "we are undone this time."

There was a clatter and grounding of arms—a scurrying of bare feet and sabots upon the floor, the mingled sounds of men trying to fly and being caught in the act and hurled back: screams of terror from the women, one or two pitiable calls, a few shrill cries from frightened children, a few dull thuds as of human bodies falling.... It was all so confused, so unspeakably horrible. Yvonne was hardly conscious. Near her some one whispered hurriedly:

"Put the aristos away somewhere, maman Lemoine ... the whole thing may only be a scare ... the Marats may only be here about the aristos ... they will probably leave you alone if you give them up ... perhaps you'll get a reward.... Put them away till some of this row subsides ... I'll talk to commandant Fleury if I can."

Yvonne felt her knees giving way under her. There was nothing more to hope for now—nothing. She felt herself lifted from the ground—she was too sick and faint to realise what was happening: through the din which filled her ears she vainly tried to distinguish her father's voice again.