II
A quarter of an hour later half a dozen men of the Republican Guard, with corporal and sergeant in command, were in the small apartment on the fifth floor of the tenement house in the Rue Jolivet. They had demanded an entry in the name of the Republic, had roughly hustled petite maman and Rosette, questioned them to Lenègre’s whereabouts, and not satisfied with the reply which they received, had turned the tidy little home topsy-turvy, ransacked every cupboard, dislocated every bed, table or sofa which might presumably have afforded a hiding place for a man.
Satisfied now that the “suspect” whom they were searching for was not on the premises, the sergeant stationed four of his men with the corporal outside the door, and two within, and himself sitting down in the centre of the room ordered the two women to stand before him and to answer his questions clearly on pain of being dragged away forthwith to the St. Lazare house of detention.
Petite maman smoothed out her apron, crossed her arms before her, and looked the sergeant quite straight in the face. Rosette’s eyes were full of tears, but she showed no signs of fear either, although her shoulder—where one of the gendarmes had seized it so roughly—was terribly painful.
“Your husband, citizeness,” asked the sergeant peremptorily, “where is he?”
“I am not sure, citizen,” replied petite maman. “At this hour he is generally at the government works in the Quai des Messageries.”
“He is not there now,” asserted the sergeant. “We have knowledge that he did not go back to his work since dinnertime.”
Petite maman was silent.
“Answer,” ordered the sergeant.
“I cannot tell you more, citizen sergeant,” she said firmly. “I do not know.”
“You do yourself no good, woman, by this obstinacy,” he continued roughly. “My belief is that your husband is inside this house, hidden away somewhere. If necessary I can get orders to have every apartment searched until he is found: but in that case it will go much harder with you and with your daughter, and much harder too with your husband than if he gave us no trouble and followed us quietly.”
But with sublime confidence in the man who had saved Pierre and who had given her explicit orders as to what she should do, petite maman, backed by Rosette, reiterated quietly:
“I cannot tell you more, citizen sergeant, I do not know.”
“And what about the Englishman?” queried the sergeant more roughly, “the man they call the Scarlet Pimpernel, what do you know of him?”
“Nothing, citizen,” replied petite maman, “what should we poor folk know of an English milor?”
“You know at any rate this much, citizeness, that the English milor helped your son Pierre to escape from justice.”
“If that is so,” said petite maman quietly, “it cannot be wrong for a mother to pray to God to bless her son’s preserver.”
“It behooves every good citizen,” retorted the sergeant firmly, “to denounce all traitors to the Republic.”
“But since I know nothing about the Englishman, citizen sergeant—?”
And petite maman shrugged her thin shoulders as if the matter had ceased to interest her.
“Think again, citizeness,” admonished the sergeant, “it is your husband’s neck as well as your daughter’s and your own that you are risking by so much obstinacy.”
He waited a moment or two as if willing to give the old woman time to speak: then, when he saw that she kept her thin, quivering lips resolutely glued together he called his corporal to him.
“Go to the citizen Commissary of the Section,” he commanded, “and ask for a general order to search every apartment in No. 24 Rue Jolivet. Leave two of our men posted on the first and third landings of this house and leave two outside this door. Be as quick as you can. You can be back here with the order in half an hour, or perhaps the committee will send me an extra squad; tell the citizen Commissary that this is a big house, with many corridors. You can go.”
The corporal saluted and went.
Petite maman and Rosette the while were still standing quietly in the middle of the room, their arms folded underneath their aprons, their wide-open, anxious eyes fixed into space. Rosette’s tears were falling slowly, one by one down her cheeks, but petite maman was dry-eyed. She was thinking, and thinking as she had never had occasion to think before.
She was thinking of the brave and gallant Englishman who had saved Pierre’s life only yesterday. The sergeant, who sat there before her, had asked for orders from the citizen Commissary to search this big house from attic to cellar. That is what made petite maman think and think.
The brave Englishman was in this house at the present moment: the house would be searched from attic to cellar and he would be found, taken, and brought to the guillotine.
The man who yesterday had risked his life to save her boy was in imminent and deadly danger, and she—petite maman—could do nothing to save him.
Every moment now she thought to hear milor’s firm tread resounding on stairs or corridor, every moment she thought to hear snatches of an English song, sung by a fresh and powerful voice, never after today to be heard in gaiety again.
The old clock upon the shelf ticked away these seconds and minutes while petite maman thought and thought, while men set traps to catch a fellow-being in a deathly snare, and human carnivorous beasts lay lurking for their prey.