Chapter Seventeen.
The overturned diligence in the Rue Saint Antoine.
For a night or two I haunted the Quai without success. If Mr Lestrange really lived there, he was either too fearful of venturing out, or some misadventure had already befallen him. I durst not make any inquiries, for fear of attracting attention to him, which was the last thing any one desired just then.
At last one night, after a week’s patient waiting, and when the lightness of my own, or rather poor Cassidy’s purse reminded me that I should soon have to seek, among other things, for my daily bread, I was skulking off for my lodging, when a woman hurried past me, whom, in the momentary glimpse I got of her, I recognised as Biddy McQuilkin, my father’s old gossip of Kerry Keel.
“Whisht, Biddy,” said I, laying my hand on her arm, “is it you? Sure, I’m Barry Gallagher, and I’m looking for your master, Mr Lestrange.”
She gave a gasp of terror as she felt my hand on her.
“Saints help us! what a fright you gave me, Barry, my boy. Sure, it’s not safe to be seen speaking with any one in the streets. I’m told there’s fifty more to die to-morrow!”
“I’ll follow you; you needn’t fear me; and I’ve a message for the master.”
“Thank God for that, if it’s a good one!” said she. “Keep close on the other side, and mark where I go in. I will leave the door open; we are on the top stage.” And she darted across the road.
I kept her well in view, till she disappeared at the door of a tall, dingy house of some six stories high. The bottom floor was occupied by a seller of wreaths and candles for worshippers at the cathedral—a poor enough business in those days. Above him was a dresser of frills and lace shirt-fronts; and above this were various tenants, some with callings, some with none, all apparently needy, and glad of the chance of hiding in so economical a tenement. A list of the occupants was hung on the door, by order of the Convention, and the names of Lestrange, femme, et domestique, duly figured upon it. A common staircase led to all the floors, but I encountered no one as I toiled to the top of all, where stood Biddy, with her finger up, motioning to me to be silent.
It went to my heart to see the two poor rooms into which I was ushered—one occupied as a bedroom and sitting-room by the old couple, the other as a kitchen and bedroom by Biddy. The walls were plain plaster, behind which you could hear rats running. The ceiling was low and black with smoke, the windows small and broken. The furniture, once good, was faded and in rents; and the few luxuries, such as books and pictures, looked so forlorn that the place would have seemed more comfortable without them.
All this I took in as I advanced into the room at Biddy’s heels.
“Plaze, yer honour, this is Barry Gallagher from Knockowen with a message for yez.”
Mr Lestrange sat dozing beside the fire, with a Moniteur on his knee. His wife, a sweet and placid-looking woman, sat opposite him knitting.
At the sound of Biddy’s announcement both started to their feet.
“A message!” exclaimed Mr Lestrange; “what message?”
“None too cheery,” said I, anxious not to raise false hopes.
I then recounted my adventures by the road, and ended up with reciting the contents (or most of them) of the letter from my lady at Knockowen. I took care to omit the little sentence about Miss Kit’s interest in Captain Lestrange’s movements, which did not seem to me worth recalling.
Mr Lestrange’s face fell heavily as he heard me out.
“No money!” he groaned. “We are still penned here. Yes, to be sure, you did well to destroy the letter. I thought Alice would have sent something—”
“Maybe she will bring some help with her,” said his lady.
The selfish old man laughed bitterly.
“She brings herself and her girl—a pretty help in times like these. Thank God, there is no room in the house for them!”
“You forget they cannot have heard of our losses. When last they heard of us we had received Gorman’s money for the mortgage, and were in comfort. It is since then that all has been confiscated.”
“That mortgage was robbery itself,” said Mr Lestrange. “Gorman knew I was hard hit, and not likely to stand out for a bargain, and he took advantage of it. The estates are worth treble what he gave.”
“That is past and gone,” said the lady. “We must be patient. Perhaps Felix will help us.”
“My nephew is a selfish man,” said the old gentleman; “besides, he has but his pay. And now he has no expectations from us we need not expect him to come near us.”
All this talk went on while Biddy and I stood near, hearing it all. At last the sturdy Biddy could stand it no longer.
“Hoot! take shame to yourself, Mr Lestrange. Thank God you’re not one of the fifty that ride in the tumbrel the morrow; thank God you’ve got a sweet wife that will bear with your grumblings; and thank God you’ve got a body like me that’s not afraid to tell you what I think of yez. Hold yer tongue now, and get to your beds.”
Biddy, as I learned later on, had stuck of her own accord to her master and mistress through all their troubles, and presumed on her position to take her chicken-hearted lord severely to task when, like to-night, the grumbling fit was upon him.
As for me, I was dismissed with little thanks from anybody; but Biddy bade me call now and again to have a crack with her.
“I had a liking for your father, poor soul!” said she, wiping a corner of her eye, “and thought he might have done worse than make me a mother to you and Tim, rest his soul! But it’s as well as it is, maybe. Poor Tim! I always liked him better than you. He was his mother’s son. Well, well, he’s dead too. Barry, my boy, we can’t all just have what we’ve not got; we all have to stand out of our own. Good-night to yez, and come and see an old body sometimes that held you in her arms when you were a fine kicking boy.”
I confess Biddy puzzled me a little by her talk. Whenever she spoke of old days she had the air of keeping a secret to herself, which roused my curiosity, and made me recall my poor mother’s dying words to myself. That set me thinking of Kilgorman and the strange mystery that hung there; and that set me on to think of Knockowen, and his honour and my lady and Miss Kit; and so by the time I had reached my shabby kennel in the Rue Saint Antoine, I was fairly miserable and ready to feel very lonely and friendless.
However, I was not left much time to mope, for in the night the street was up with a rumour that a “federalist” deputy, who was known to be in the pay of Pitt, the English minister, had been traced to some hiding-place near, and that a strict house-to-house search was being made by the soldiers for him.
“A bas les mouchards! à bas Pitt! à bas les étrangers! Vive la guillotine!” shrieked the mob.
Whereat I deemed it prudent to join them and shriek too, rather than await the visit of the soldiers. Not, thought I, that any one would do me the honour of mistaking me for an agent of Mr Pitt; but there was no knowing what craze the Paris mob was not ready for, or on what slight pretext an innocent man might not be sent to the scaffold.
So I sneaked quietly down the stairs, where, alas! I found I had fallen from the frying-pan into the fire.
A file of soldiers was ready for me, and received me with open arms.
“Your name, your business, your destination,” demanded they.
“Citizen soldiers, my name is Gallagher; I am a stranger in Paris in search of occupation.”
“Enough. You are arrested. Stand aside!”
“But, citizen—”
A stroke with the flat of the soldier’s sword silenced me, and I gave myself up for lost. But as a prisoner of the Revolution I should at least not be lonely, and on the guillotine itself I should have company.
The soldiers were too intent on watching for further fugitives to do more than keep me in sight of their loaded pistols. That was bad enough, however, and would have sufficed to land me in the Conciergerie, had not an alarm of fire, followed by volumes of smoke, just then proceeded from a house opposite that in which the fugitive deputy was supposed to be hidden. A rush took place for the spot and the loud sounding of the tocsin down the street, and in the midst of the confusion I dived between the legs of my captors, upsetting the one who covered me with his pistol, so that the weapon went off harmlessly over my head, and next moment I was safe in the thick of the crowd, struggling for a view of the fire.
It was a strange, motley crowd, composed not only of the rascality of Paris, but of a number of shopkeepers and respectable citizens whom the rumour of the fire and the arrest of the notorious deputy had called on the scene at this midnight hour. Many of the faces lit up by the lurid glare of the flames were haggard and uneasy, as if they belonged to those who, like me, found a crowd the safest hiding-place in those days. A few seemed drawn together by a love of horror in any form. Others were there for what they might steal. Others, sucked in by the rush, were there by no will of their own, involuntary spectators of a gruesome spectacle.
Among the latter were the unfortunate occupants of a travel-stained coach, who, after surviving all the perils of the road between Dieppe and Paris, had now been suddenly upset by the crowd, and were painfully, and amid the coarse jeers of the onlookers, extricating themselves from their embarrassing position. Just as the tide swept me to the spot, a male passenger had drawn himself up through the window and was scrambling down on to terra firma.
“Help the ladies!” cried he, glad enough evidently of his own escape, but not over-anxious to return to the scene of his alarm; “help the ladies, some one!”
Just then, first a hand, then a pale face appeared at the window, which, if I had seen a ghost, could not have startled me more. It was the face of Miss Kit, with the red light of the fire glowing on it.
“Help us!” she said, in French.
Need I tell you I had her in my arms in a moment; and after her her mother, who was not only frightened but hurt by the shock of the overturn.
That little moment was worth all the perils and risks of the past months; and if I could have had my own way, I would have stood there, with my little lady’s hand clutching my arm, for a month.
It was impossible they could recognise me, with my back to the light, happening upon them in so unlooked-for a way. But when I said, “Trust to me, Miss Kit,” her hand tightened on my sleeve with a quick pressure, and she said,—
“Barry! thank God we are safe now!”
I was a proud man that night as I fought my way through the crowd with two distressed ladies under my wing, and a fist and a foot for any one who so much as dared to touch the hem of their garments.
Mrs Gorman became so faint in a little that I was forced, as soon as we were out of the thick of the crowd, to call a vehicle.
The soldiers at the end of the street, when they saw who our party was, and heard that we were passengers in the overturned carriage, let us go by; “for we had been already well overhauled at the barrier,” said they.
Once clear—and she kept her hand on my arm all the time—Kit said,—
“Then you are alive still, Barry?”
“Ay, Miss Kit; and ready to die for you.”
“This is a dreadful place!” said she with a shiver, looking up at the high houses we passed; “but it was worse before you found us.”
How could I help, by way of answer, touching her hand with mine, as if by accident?
“We are to go to the Hotel Lambert, Rue Boileau,” said she; “and to-morrow we are to seek our kinsmen the Lestranges.”
“I have found them,” said I.
Here Mrs Gorman looked up.
“Found them? That is good; we shall have shelter at last.”
“Alas, mistress,” said I, “they have lost all their goods and are living in great poverty. It will be poor shelter.”
Here the poor lady broke down.
“O Kit!” moaned she, “why did your father send us on this cruel journey? Did he want to be rid of us before our time?”
“Nonsense, mother; he thought we should be safer here than among the Leaguers in Donegal. So we shall be—at least we have Barry to protect us.”
Whereat we drove up at the Hotel Lambert.