The Maid of Maiden Lane by Amelia E. Barr (free novels to read TXT) 📗

Marat, but no! his nobility obliged him to stand by his order and his king. So for them, he died. Poor Athanase! He expected me to follow him, but I could not make up my mind to the knife. Oh how terrible it was!” Then she began to sob bitterly, and Cornelia let her talk of her sufferings until she fell into a sleep—a sleep easy to see, still haunted by the furies and terrors through which she had passed.

For a week Cornelia remained with her friend, and Madame Jacobus joined them as often as possible, and gradually the half-distraught woman recovered something of her natural spirits and resolution. In this week she talked out all her frightful experiences in the great prison of La Force, and was completely overwhelmed at their remembrance. But the trouble which has been removed, soon grows far off; and Arenta quickly took her place in her home, and resumed her old life. Of course with many differences. She could not be the same Arenta, she had outlived many of her illusions. She took but little interest for a while in the life around her; her thoughts and conversation were still in Paris, and this was evident from the fact, that during the whole week of Cornelia’s stay with her, she never once named Cornelia’s love, or life, or prospects. Rem she did talk about, but chiefly because he was going to marry an English girl, an intention she angrily deplored.

“I am sure,” she said, “Rem might have learned a lesson from my sad fortune. What does he want to marry a foreigner for? He ought to have prevented me from doing so, instead of following my foolish example.”

“No one could have prevented you, Arenta. You would not listen even to your father.”

“Oh indeed, it was my fate. We must all submit to fate. Why did you refuse Rem?”

“He was not my fate, Arenta.”

“Well then, neither is George Hyde your fate. Aunt Jacobus has told me some things about him. She says he is to marry his cousin. You ought to marry Rem.”

As she said these words Van Ariens, accompanied by Joris Van Heemskirk entered the room, and Cornelia was glad to escape. She knew that Arenta would again relate all her experiences, and she disliked to mingle them with her renewed dreams of love and her lover.

“She will talk and talk,” said Cornelia to her mother, “and then there will be tea and chocolate and more talk, and I have heard all I wish to hear about that dreadful city, and the demons who walk in blood.”

“Arenta has made a great sensation, Cornelia,” answered Mrs. Moran. “She has received half the town. Gertrude Kippon stole quietly home and has hardly been seen, or heard tell of.”

“But mother, Arenta has far more genius than Gertrude. She has made of her misfortunes a great drama, and wherever you go, it is of the Marquise de Tounnerre people are talking. Senator Van Heemskirk came in with her father as I left.”

“I hope he treated you more civilly than madame did.”

“He was delightful. I courtesied to him, and he lifted my hand and kissed it, and said, ‘I grew lovelier every day,’ and I kissed his cheek and said, ‘I wished always to be lovely in his sight.’ Then I came home, because I would not, just yet, speak of George to him.”

“Arenta would hardly have given you any opportunity. I wonder at what hour she will release Joris Van Heemskirk!”

“It will be later than it ought to be.”

Indeed it was so late that Madame Van Heemskirk had locked up her house for the night, and was troubled at her husband’s delay—even a little cross:

“An old man like you, Joris,” she said in a tone of vexation—“sitting till nine o’clock with the last runaway from Paris; a cold you have already, and all for a girl that threw her senses behind her, to marry a Frenchman.”

“Much she has suffered, Lysbet.”

“Much she ought to suffer. And I believe not in Arenta Van Ariens’ suffering. In some way, by hook or crook, by word or deed, she would out of any trouble work her way.”

“I will sit a little by the fire, Lysbet. Sit down by me. My mind is full of her story.”

“That is it. And sleep you will not, and tomorrow sick you will be; and anxious and tired I shall be; and who for? The Marquise de Tounnerre! Well then, Joris, in thy old age it is late for thee to bow down to the Marquise de Tounnerre!”

“To God Almighty only I bow down, Lysbet, and as for titles what care of them has Jons Van Heemskirk? Think you, when God calls me He will say ‘Councillor’ or ‘Senator’? No, He will say ‘Jons Van Heemskirk!’ and I shall answer to that name. But you know well, Lysbet, this bloody trial of liberty in Paris touches all the world beside.”

“Forgive me, Joris! A shame it is to be cross with thee, nor am I cross even with that poor Arenta. A child, a very child she is.”

“But bitter fears and suffering she has come through. Her husband was guillotined last May, and from her home she was taken—no time to write to a friend—no time to save anything she had, except a string of pearls, which round her waist for many weeks, she had worn. From prison to prison she was sent, until at last she was ordered before the Revolutionary Tribunal. From that tribunal to the guillotine is only a step, and she would surely have taken it but for—”

“Minister Morris?”

“No. Twenty miles outside the city, Minister Morris now lives; and no time was there to send him word of her strait. Hungry and sick upon the floor of her prison she was sitting, when her name was called, for bead after bead of her pearl necklace had gone to her jailor, only for a little black bread and a cup of milk twice a day; and this morning for twenty-four hours she had been without food or milk.”

“This is what she did, and blame her I will not. When in that terrible iron armchair before those bloody judges, she says she forgot then to be afraid. She looked at Fouquier-Tinville the public prosecutor, and at the fifteen jurymen, and flinched not. She had no dress to help her beauty, but she declares she never felt more beautiful, and well I can believe it. They asked her name, and my Lysbet, think of this child’s answer! ‘I am called Arenta JEFFERSON de Tounnerre,’ she said; and at the name of ‘Jefferson’ there were exclamations, and one of the jurymen rose to his feet and asked excitedly, ‘What is it you mean? Jefferson! The great Jefferson! The great Thomas Jefferson! The great American who loves France and Liberty?’ ‘It is the same,’ she answered, and then she sat silent, asking no favour, so wise was she, and Fouquier-Tinville looked at the President and said—‘among my friends I count this great American!’ and a juryman added, ‘when I was very poor and hungry he fed and helped me,’ and he bowed to Arenta as he spoke. And after that Fouquier-Tinville asked who would certify to her claim, and she answered boldly, ‘Minister Morris.’