He felt a sense of relief in the knowledge that Henri had gone with his regiment that morning, for though he was grateful that the man had waked up to his real self, putting his cowardice aside and doing a last act of helpfulness in aiding the comtesse to escape, still the knowledge of the hidden cellar was not for him. Dian, when he reached the Saint Frère house, walked up and down the upper cellar for some time, his hands clasped before him, his face lifted to the dark, dusty rafters. He felt that the old comte was very near to him, not a wraith of his person, but the loving earnestness of his spirit. He was doing the best he knew how, this shepherd, in his own simple way. To him it meant only trusting in the power of good to stand by them.
As soon as he had opened the slide he heard Marie Josephine’s voice calling softly to him. The lanthorn had made a scraping noise against the stone wall as he lifted it. Faint as it was, she had heard it, for she had been sitting on the lowest rung of the stairs, listening for him, ever since she had returned, breathless and half bewildered, from the house of Great-aunt Hortense.
She stood before him with clasped hands as he emerged from the gloom of the stairs.
“Maman is safe? Tell me, Dian!” She caught his sleeve and held on to it as they walked toward the others. Rosanne was sleeping in the alcove near the chest. Lisle was walking up and down in the room beyond, Humphrey Trail beside him, both talking earnestly. Jean, who was now very much awake, ran up to Dian and took hold of the other side of his coat.
“She is out of Paris. She reached the Place de la Bastille and went off in the coach as Henri’s sister. The passport was in order. I watched her go through the gates in a public coach. I saw you open the garden gate. You did not come in vain to Paris, Little Mademoiselle!” the shepherd answered her, and his words of praise, as well as the welcome news of her mother’s safety, brought sudden tears to her eyes.
“I do not feel little any more, Dian. I have grown up these last days,” she said, turning to meet Rosanne, who had wakened, and who, with the others, came crowding up to them. Lisle and Marie Josephine held each other’s hands, and Marie Josephine hid her face in his sleeve. Their mother was safe out of Paris. Dian had seen her drive out of the gates in a coach. Very simply Marie Josephine told them what she had done as they all stood about her, tense and eager.
“You danced for those men there in the hall—you! They thought you were Vivi!” Lisle could not believe it. His sister, Marie Josephine!
He stood very still while she told them of going up to her mother, slipping through the dusk when no one saw her, and finding a strange woman of the people who was maman and yet was not! “Maman was so wonderful. I told her that she must try to speak like the people. I said, 'Citizeness, you will do well to remember that you must have the speech of the people at the gates.’ The key would not turn in the lock at first—I mean in the garden door lock—but it did at last and we got safely outside. Maman did not know me, of course. Maman thinks that we are waiting for her near Calais, but just as she said good-by she—she—said, 'There is something about you a little like—like one of them ch—children——’” Marie Josephine drew this last out in a long sob, putting her face down in the hollow of her arm.
How they comforted her, one and all. Humphrey told stories of his Yorkshire farm, until he had to clear his throat again and again, and they begged him to go on even when he said he simply could not say another word. He held Jean on his knee and sang a funny Yorkshire song to him. The time flew by with happy talk as they roasted apples over the little fire, no one objecting in the least to the smoke.
Dian sat back in a far corner, his hands clasped on his knee, his eyes closed. The hidden cellar had performed its task, had justified itself. It had saved the lives of two of the Saint Frères, and of their friends. It had proved itself to be a stronghold, a refuge, even a home. It had opened its dark arms to receive the last Lisle Saint Frère, protecting him from those who would have had his head on the guillotine block. It had opened those same arms for the little girl who knew and loved it, and who had been the one of her generation chosen to know of it. To-morrow was in God’s hands. Dian was not afraid. He was glad for many things. He was glad to hear children’s laughter, glad that the comtesse was through the gates and that Marie Josephine had been the one to aid her, glad of the friendship of honest Humphrey Trail, and that there would be a safe refuge for them all with Humphrey in England.