El Dorado - Baroness Orczy (best ebook reader for surface pro TXT) 📗

Five golden louis! The poor, hardworking woman’s eyes gleamed at the thought. Five louis meant food for at least two months if one was careful, and⁠—

“Give me the letter, citizen,” she said, “time to slip on a warm petticoat and a shawl, and I’ll go myself. It’s not fit for the boy to go at this hour.”

“You will bring me back a line from my sister in reply to this,” said Armand, whom circumstances had at last rendered cautious. “Bring it up to my rooms that I may give you the five louis in exchange.”

He waited while the woman slipped back into her room. She heard him speaking to her boy; the same lad who a fortnight ago had taken the treacherous letter which had lured Blakeney to the house into the fatal ambuscade that had been prepared for him. Everything reminded Armand of that awful night, every hour that he had since spent in the house had been racking torture to him. Now at last he was to leave it, and on an errand which might help to ease the load of remorse from his heart.

The woman was soon ready. Armand gave her final directions as to how to find the house; then she took the letter and promised to be very quick, and to bring back a reply from the lady.

Armand accompanied her to the door. The night was dark, a thin drizzle was falling; he stood and watched until the woman’s rapidly walking figure was lost in the misty gloom.

Then with a heavy sigh he once more went within.

In a small upstairs room in the Rue de Charonne, above the shop of Lucas the old-clothes dealer, Marguerite sat with Sir Andrew Ffoulkes. Armand’s letter, with its message and its warning, lay open on the table between them, and she had in her hand the sealed packet which Percy had given her just ten days ago, and which she was only to open if all hope seemed to be dead, if nothing appeared to stand any longer between that one dear life and irretrievable shame.

A small lamp placed on the table threw a feeble yellow light on the squalid, ill-furnished room, for it lacked still an hour or so before dawn. Armand’s concierge had brought her lodger’s letter, and Marguerite had quickly despatched a brief reply to him, a reply that held love and also encouragement.

Then she had summoned Sir Andrew. He never had a thought of leaving her during these days of dire trouble, and he had lodged all this while in a tiny room on the topmost floor of this house in the Rue de Charonne.

At her call he had come down very quickly, and now they sat together at the table, with the oil-lamp illumining their pale, anxious faces; she the wife and he the friend holding a consultation together in this most miserable hour that preceded the cold wintry dawn.

Outside a thin, persistent rain mixed with snow pattered against the small window panes, and an icy wind found out all the crevices in the worm-eaten woodwork that would afford it ingress to the room. But neither Marguerite nor Ffoulkes was conscious of the cold. They had wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and did not feel the chill currents of air that caused the lamp to flicker and to smoke.

“I can see now,” said Marguerite in that calm voice which comes so naturally in moments of infinite despair⁠—“I can see now exactly what Percy meant when he made me promise not to open this packet until it seemed to me⁠—to me and to you, Sir Andrew⁠—that he was about to play the part of a coward. A coward! Great God!” She checked the sob that had risen to her throat, and continued in the same calm manner and quiet, even voice:

“You do think with me, do you not, that the time has come, and that we must open this packet?”

“Without a doubt, Lady Blakeney,” replied Ffoulkes with equal earnestness. “I would stake my life that already a fortnight ago Blakeney had that same plan in his mind which he has now matured. Escape from that awful Conciergerie prison with all the precautions so carefully taken against it was impossible. I knew that alas! from the first. But in the open all might yet be different. I’ll not believe it that a man like Blakeney is destined to perish at the hands of those curs.”

She looked on her loyal friend with tear-dimmed eyes through which shone boundless gratitude and heartbroken sorrow.

He had spoken of a fortnight! It was ten days since she had seen Percy. It had then seemed as if death had already marked him with its grim sign. Since then she had tried to shut away from her mind the terrible visions which her anguish constantly conjured up before her of his growing weakness, of the gradual impairing of that brilliant intellect, the gradual exhaustion of that mighty physical strength.

“God bless you, Sir Andrew, for your enthusiasm and for your trust,” she said with a sad little smile; “but for you I should long ago have lost all courage, and these last ten days⁠—what a cycle of misery they represent⁠—would have been maddening but for your help and your loyalty. God knows I would have courage for everything in life, for everything save one, but just that, his death; that would be beyond my strength⁠—neither reason nor body could stand it. Therefore, I am so afraid, Sir Andrew,” she added piteously.

“Of what, Lady Blakeney?”

“That when he knows that I too am to go as hostage, as Armand says in his letter, that my life is to be guarantee for his, I am afraid that he will draw back⁠—that he will⁠—my God!” she cried with sudden fervour, “tell me what to do!”

“Shall we open the packet?” asked Ffoulkes gently, “and then just make up our minds to act exactly as Blakeney has enjoined us