Chapter C: L. Dodgson (lewis Carroll)

WHO GAVE "ALICE IN WONDERLAND" TO ALL OF ELLEN TERRY'S FAMILY]

Pearl Craigie had a man's intellect, a woman's wit and apprehension. "Bright," as the Americans say, she always managed to be even in the dullest company, and she knew how to be silent at times, to give the "other fellow" a chance. Her executive ability was extraordinary. Wonderfully tolerant, she could at the same time not easily forgive any meanness or injustice that seemed to her deliberate. Hers was a splendid spirit.

I shall always bless that little play of hers which first brought me near to so fine a creature. I rather think that I never met any one who _gave out_ so much as she did. To me, at least, she _gave_, _gave_ all the time. I hope she was not exhausted after our long "confabs." I was most certainly refreshed and replenished.

J. M. BARRIE

FROM THE PAINTING BY LESLIE BROOKE. BARRIE'S PLAY, "ALICE-SIT-BY-THE-FIRE," WHICH HE WROTE FOR MISS TERRY, WAS PRODUCED BY HER IN 1905]

The first performance of "Journeys End in Lovers' Meeting" she watched from a private box with the Princess of Wales (our present Queen) and Henry Irving. She came round afterwards just burning with enthusiasm and praising me for work which was really not good. She spoiled me for other women.

Her best play was, I think, "The Ambassador," in which Violet Vanbrugh, who is now Mrs. Bouchier, played a pathetic part very beautifully, and made a great advance in her profession. There was some idea of Pearl Craigie writing a play for Henry Irving and me, but it never came to anything. There was a play on the same subject as "The School for Saints," and another about Guizot.

* * * * *

Feb. 11, 1898.

"My very dear Nell:

"I have an idea for a real four-act comedy (in these matters nothing daunts me!), founded on a charming little episode in the private lives of Princess Lieven (the famous Russian ambassadress), and the celebrated Guizot, the French Prime Minister and historian. I should have to veil the identity _slightly_, and also make the story a husband-and-wife story; it would be more amusing this way. It is comedy from beginning to end. Sir Henry would make a splendid Guizot, and you the ideal Madame de Lieven. Do let me talk it over with you. 'The School for Saints' was, as it were, a born biography. But the Lieven-Guizot idea is a play.

"Yours ever affectionately,

"PEARL MARY TERESA CRAIGIE."

In another letter she writes:

"I am changing all my views about so-called 'literary' dialogue. It means pedantry. The great thing is to be lively."

_"Captain Brassbound's Conversion"_

It has always been a reproach against Henry Irving in some mouths that he neglected the modern English playwright; and of course the reproach included me to a certain extent. I was glad, then, to show that I could act in the new plays when Mr. Barrie wrote "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire" for me, and after some years' delay I was able to play in Mr. Bernard Shaw's "Captain Brassbound's Conversion." Of course I could not have played in "little" plays of this school at the Lyceum with Henry Irving, even if I had wanted to; they are essentially plays for small theatres and a single "star."

ELLEN TERRY AND HER SON, GORDON CRAIG, IN "THE DEAD HEART"]

In Mr. Shaw's "A Man of Destiny" there were two good parts, and Henry, at my request, considered it, although it was always difficult to fit a one-act play into the Lyceum bill. For reasons of his own Henry never produced Mr. Shaw's play, and there was a good deal of fuss made about it at the time, 1897. But ten years ago Mr. Shaw was not so well known as he is now, and the so-called "rejection" was probably of use to him as an advertisement. "A Man of Destiny" has been produced since, but without any great success. I wonder if Henry and I could have done more with it?

ELLEN TERRY AS MISTRESS PAGE IN "MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR" ]

At this time Mr. Shaw and I frequently corresponded. It began by my writing to ask him as musical critic of the Saturday Review, to tell me frankly what he thought of the chances of a composer-singer friend of mine. He answered "characteristically," and we developed a perfect fury for writing to each other. Sometimes the letters were on business, sometimes they were not, but always his were entertaining, and mine were, I suppose, "good copy," as he drew the character of Lady Cecily Waynflete in "Brassbound" entirely from my letters. He never met me until after the play was written. In 1902 he sent me this ultimatum:--

"3rd April, 1902.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw's compliments to Miss Ellen Terry.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw has been approached by Mrs. Langtry with a view to the immediate and splendid production of 'Captain Brassbound's Conversion.'

"Mr. Bernard Shaw, with the last flash of a trampled-out love, has repulsed Mrs. Langtry with a petulance bordering on brutality.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw has been actuated in this ungentlemanly and unbusinesslike course by an angry desire to seize Miss Ellen Terry by the hair and make her play Lady Cecily.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw would be glad to know whether Miss Ellen Terry wishes to play Martha at the Lyceum instead.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw will go to the length of keeping a minor part open for Sir Henry Irving when 'Faust' fails, if Miss Ellen Terry desires it.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw lives in daily fear of Mrs. Langtry recovering sufficiently from her natural resentment of his ill manners to re-open the subject.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw begs Miss Ellen Terry to answer this letter.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw is looking for a new cottage or house in the country and wants advice on the subject.

"Mr. Bernard Shaw craves for the sight of Miss Ellen Terry's once familiar hand-writing."

Isn't it Horace who says that there is nothing to prevent the man who laughs from speaking the truth? I think I have heard so, and I always remember it coupled with the name of Bernard Shaw. He laughs, but he speaks the truth.[11] The first time he came to my house I was not present, but a young American lady, who had long adored him from the other side of the Atlantic, took my place as hostess. I had to be at the theatre, as usual, but I took great pains to have everything looking nice; I spent a long time putting out my best blue china, and ordered a splendid dinner, quite forgetting that the honoured guest usually dined off a Plasmon biscuit and a bean.

_Mr. Shaw--a Gentle Creature with "Brainstorms"_

Mr. Shaw read "Arms and the Man" to my young American friend, Miss Sally Fairchild, without even going into the dining-room where the blue china was spread out to delight his eye. My daughter, Edy, was present at the reading, and appeared so much absorbed in some embroidery and paid the reader so few compliments about his play, that he expressed the opinion that she behaved as if she had been married to him for twenty years.

The first time I ever saw Mr. Shaw in the flesh--I hope he will pardon me such an anti-vegetarian expression--was when he took his call after the first production of "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" by the Stage Society. He was quite unlike what I had imagined from his letters.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

WHOSE PLAY, "CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION," WRITTEN FOR MISS TERRY, WAS PRODUCED BY HER IN 1906 ]

When at last I was able to play in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" I found Bernard Shaw wonderfully patient at rehearsal. I look upon him as a good, kind, gentle creature whose "brainstorms" are due to the Irishman's love of a fight; they never spring from malice or anger. It doesn't answer to take Bernard Shaw seriously. He is not a man of convictions; that is one of the charms of his plays, to me, at least. One never knows how the cat is really jumping. But it _jumps_. Bernard Shaw is alive, with nine lives, like the cat.

_Shakespeare's Rabelaisian Mood_

On Whit Monday, 1902, I received a telegram from Mr. Tree saying that he was coming down to Winchelsea to see me on "an important matter of business." I was at the time suffering from considerable depression about the future.

The Stratford-on-Avon visit had inspired me with the feeling that there was life in the old 'un yet, and had distracted my mind from the strangeness of no longer being at the Lyceum permanently with Henry Irving. But there seemed to be nothing ahead, except two matinées a week with him at the Lyceum, to be followed by a provincial tour in which I was only to play twice a week, as Henry's chief attraction was to be "Faust." This sort of "dowager" engagement did not tempt me. Besides, I hated the idea of drawing a large salary and doing next to no work. So when Mr. Tree proposed that I should play Mrs. Page (Mrs. Kendal being Mrs. Ford) in "Merry Wives of Windsor" at His Majesty's, it was only natural that I should accept the offer joyfully. I telegraphed to Henry Irving, asking him if he had any objection to my playing at His Majesty's. He answered: "Quite willing if proposed arrangements about matinées are adhered to."

I have thought it worth while to give the facts about this engagement, because so many people seemed at the time and afterwards to think that I had treated Henry Irving badly by going on playing in another theatre, and that theatre one where a certain rivalry with the Lyceum as regards Shakespearian productions had grown up. There was absolutely no foundation for the rumors that my "desertion" caused further estrangement between Henry Irving and me.

"Heaven give you many, many merry days and nights," he telegraphed to me on the first night, and after that first night, the jolliest that I ever saw, he wrote delighting in my success. It was a success, there was no doubt about it. Some people accused the "Merry Wives" of rollicking and "mafficking" overmuch, but these were the people who forgot that we were acting in a farce, and that farce is farce, even when Shakespeare is the author. The audience at first used to seem rather amazed. This thwacking, rough-and-tumble, Rabelaisian horse-play Shakespeare? Impossible! But as the evening went on we used to capture even the most civilized, and force them to return to a simple Jacobian frame of mind.

In my later career I think I have had no success like this. Letters rained on me--yes, even love-letters, as if, to quote Mrs. Page, it were still "the holiday-time of my beauty." As I would always rather make an audience laugh than see them weep, it may be guessed how much I enjoyed the hearty laughter at His Majesty's during the run of the madcap absurdity of "Merry Wives of Windsor."

On the nineteenth of July, 1902, I acted at the Lyceum for the last time, although I did not know it then. These last Lyceum days were very sad. The reception given by Henry to the Indian princes who were in England for the Coronation was the last flash of the splendid hospitality which had for so many years been one of the glories of the theatre.

During my provincial tour with Henry Irving in the autumn of this year I thought long and anxiously over the proposition that I should play in "Dante." I heard the play read, and saw no possible part for me in it. I refused a large sum of money to go to America with Henry Irving, because I could not consent to play a part even worse than the one that I had played in "Robespierre." As things turned out, although "Dante" did fairly well at Drury Lane, the Americans would have none of it, and Henry had to fall back upon his repertoire.

_Ibsen's_ "_Vikings_"

Having made the decision against "Dante," I began to wonder what I should do. My partnership with Henry Irving was definitely broken; most inevitably and naturally "dissolved." There were many roads open to me. I chose the one which was, from a financial point of view, madness. Instead of going to America, and earning £12,000, I decided to take a theatre with my son, and produce plays in conjunction with him.

I hope it will be remembered, when I am spoken of by the youngest critics after my death as a "Victorian" actress, lacking in enterprise, an actress belonging to the "old school," that I produced a spectacular play of Ibsen's in a manner which possibly outstripped the scenic ideas of to-day by a century; of which at any rate the orthodox theatre managers of the present age would not have dreamed. At the Imperial Theatre, where I spent my financially unfortunate season in April, 1903, I gave my son a free hand. Naturally I am not inclined to criticise his methods. When I worked with him I found him far from unpractical. It was the modern theatre which was unpractical when he was in it. It was wrongly designed, wrongly built. We had to disembowel the Imperial behind scenes before he could even start, and then the great height of the proscenium made his lighting lose all its value.

When his idea of dramatic significance clashed with Ibsen's, strange things would happen. Mr. Bernard Shaw, though impressed by Ted's work and the beauty that he brought on to the stage of the Imperial, wrote to me that the symbolism of the first act of "Vikings" was Dawn, youth rising with the morning sun, reconciliation, rich gifts, brightness, lightness, pleasant feelings, peace. On to this sunlit scene stalks Hiördis, a figure of gloom, revenge, of feud eternal, of relentless hatred and uncompromising unforgetfulness of wrong.

At the Imperial, said Mr. Shaw, the curtain rose on profound gloom. When you _could_ see anything, you saw eld and severity--old men with white hair personating the gallant young sons of Ormulf; everywhere murky cliffs and shadowy spears, melancholy, darkness. Into this symbolic night enter, in a blaze of limelight, a fair figure robed in complete fluffy white fur, a gay and bright Hiördis, with a timid manner and hesitating utterance! The last items in the topsy-turviness of Ted's practical significance were entirely my fault.

I singed my wings a good deal in the Imperial limelight, which, although our audiences complained of the darkness on the stage, was the most serious strain on my purse. But a few provincial tours did something towards restoring some of the money that I had lost in management.

On one of these tours I produced "The Good Hope," a play by the Dutch dramatist, Heijermans, dealing with life in a fishing village. This was almost as new a departure for me as my season at the Imperial. The play was essentially modern in construction and development--full of action, but the action of incident rather than the action of stage situation. It had no "star" parts, but every part was good, and the gloom of the story was made bearable by the beauty of the atmosphere, of the _sea_, which played a bigger part in it than any of the visible characters. For the first time I played an old woman, a very homely old peasant woman, too. I flattered myself that I was able to assume a certain roughness and solidity of the peasantry in "The Good Hope," but although I stumped about heavily in large sabots, the critics said that I walked like a fairy instead of like a fisherwoman.

My last Shakespearian part was Hermione in "A Winter's Tale." By some strange coincidence it fell to me to play it exactly fifty years after I had played the little boy Mamilius in the same play. I sometimes think that Fate is the best of stage-managers. Hermione is a gravely beautiful part, well-balanced, difficult to act, but certain in its appeal. If only it were possible to put on the play in a simple way and arrange the scenes to knit up the ravelled interest, I should hope to play Hermione again.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SCAFFOLD

BY HARRY GRAHAM

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ANDRÉ CASTAIGNE

"_C'est le crime qui fait la honte, et non pas l'échafaud._"

The clock in the public gardens outside the Conciergerie had just struck the half hour. Richard, the prison warder, a rough old veteran whose patient face wore that air of tolerant kindliness which stamps the features of all whose duty it is to be the daily witness of human suffering, stirred uneasily in his hard wooden chair. Somewhere in the huge building a gate clanged noisily, and the old man opened his eyes with the guilty start of the day-dreamer and looked expectantly round towards the door.

The room in which he sat, with its simple wooden bed, its plain deal table in the center, its squalid jug and basin in the corner, was but one of a score or so of similar cells in the old Conciergerie prison. To Richard it had always seemed a dingy apartment enough, but even to his accustomed eye, as it fell upon the little white linen bonnet which hung from a peg beside the bed and looked so singularly out of place amid its surroundings, the gloom had never appeared so deep and joyless as it did upon this warm evening of July, in that time of bloodshed, of passion, and of terror, that sinister summer of 1793. The dazzling light which flooded the stone courtyard outside seemed reluctant to force its way through the high barred window of this dingy cage, as if timid of intruding its brilliance upon a scene whose atmosphere was already clouded by the shadow of death.

"Half-past five," said Richard to himself, with a yawn. "My little captive will soon be back."

He glanced up at the few simple garments that lay neatly folded on a low shelf beneath the window. "Poor little soul!" he murmured. "She was surely created for sunnier scenes than this! But there," he added, after a moment's reflection, "justice can't afford to make distinctions! Young and old, rich and poor, men and women, we all suffer alike--when we get found out!"

Richard's reverie was interrupted by a loud knock at the door, which was immediately flung open, and a short, middle-aged man, dressed almost entirely in faded black, entered the room.

The newcomer closed the door behind him with a swift, sinuous movement and, turning noiselessly, confronted the startled veteran with a malevolent expression in his small, beady eyes.

Richard could not conceal his astonishment.

"The Deputy Chabot!" he exclaimed, with an air of surprise.

"It is indeed the Deputy Chabot," replied the other.

The warder rose awkwardly to his feet.

"I am very sorry," he said apologetically, "but the prison regulations do not allow admittance to the public. It is against the rules." He crossed to the door as though to open it. With a quick gesture the Deputy stopped him.

"I am not of the public," he said in a pompous voice. "I am above regulations." He took a paper from the pocket of his coat. "See here, I have a pass signed by the Police Commissioner." And he handed the paper to Richard.

With great difficulty the old man retrieved a large pair of horn spectacles from his forehead and adjusted them on the very tip of his nose.

"'Admit Citizen Chabot,'" he read, spelling out each word laboriously, "'Deputy of the Department of Loir-et-Cher, member of the Legislative Assembly ... um ... um ...; signed Guellard, Police Commissioner.' That seems correct enough," he added, as he re-folded the document and handed it back to its owner.

The Deputy laughed shortly. "As you see," he said, "your regulations are of no great value where a man of my position is concerned."

Richard still hesitated. "Perhaps you are not aware that this is the cell of the prisoner, Charlotte Corday."

"The criminal, Charlotte Corday?" corrected the other. "Yes, I am perfectly aware. I have just come from her trial, where I spent a very dull afternoon, and wasted much valuable time."

"You were at the trial?" exclaimed the warder, with a fresh note of anxiety in his voice. "Then you can tell me, citizen. What has happened?"

"What has happened?" repeated the Deputy scornfully. "The only thing that could possibly have happened, I am thankful to say. Justice has been done. Marat's, the martyr Marat's death will be avenged. The woman who struck so foul a blow at liberty and the Constitution has been sentenced!" He walked up and down the narrow cell in his excitement. Suddenly, stopping short in front of the old man, "She dies on the scaffold this evening," he ended in a quiet voice of triumph.

Richard sank heavily into a chair. A troubled look came over his face.

"Ah, I am sorry," he said, after a pause. "The wife will be sorry, too," he added thoughtfully, "and my little boy, my little Jean, he will be sorry. The wife has taken a great fancy to this Charlotte Corday," he explained; "and little Jean, he thinks the world of her. But there, she spoils him," he continued apologetically. "Well, well, citizen, I am indeed sorry."

Chabot had not moved during the old man's speech. "You are sorry for a murderess who receives her just deserts?" he asked.

"I am sorry for a lovely woman," replied the warder. "I am an old veteran of the Conciergerie," he went on. "I have had many prisoners pass through my hands; and I judge them by what they are, not by what they may have done; not by what they may be accused of doing.

"I know nothing of this Charlotte Corday," he continued, "nothing beyond what I have seen of her during the last few days. I have never questioned her as to her crime, nor as to her reasons for committing it. That is none of my business," with a shrug of his shoulders. "My duty is to keep her here, to take care that she does not escape, to see that she has whatever is necessary--which is little enough," he added with a smile. "I judge people as I find them; and I have found this girl gentle and well-behaved. The wife likes her, and my little Jean worships the ground she treads on. She gives me no trouble; she is more than grateful for any small kindness; and Heaven knows there is not much that I can do."

The old man was quite out of breath. He crossed over to the window, mopping his brow as he went.

"I see," said the Deputy bitterly; "like the rest of them, you are won over by her beauty!"

"I am too old for that," replied the warder. "I am won over by her charm, if you will; by her sweet nature. And the wife, too, and little Jean; and he is a good judge of character, I can tell you, is little Jean."

Chabot turned away with an expression of disgust.

"She is a devil," he exclaimed, with a tone of intense hatred in his voice, "she is a fiend in human form!"

Richard thought for a moment before replying.

"You may be right, citizen," he said, "but to me, at any rate, she seems a quiet, modest girl enough; and my little Jean, he----"

"Modest!" interrupted Chabot. "Bah! is it modest to force one's way into a man's bed-room? Is murder, cold-blooded murder, a practice that commends itself to modest persons?" He turned round with an angry snarl. "I tell you," he said, "she is a devil!"

The old warder shrugged his shoulders, as he was wont to do when his powers of argument failed him--and argument was not his strong point.

"Well," he stoutly reiterated. "I am sorry for her, nevertheless. She is only a girl; so young, so frail, so delicate----"

"Delicate!" burst in the indignant Deputy. "Why, after she had murdered Marat--and," he smiled sarcastically, "with what delicacy she performed the deed, eh?--when the porter, Laurent Basse, rushed in to seize her, it was only after twice striking her with a chair that he was able to overpower her. Oh, she is a delicate creature, truly!"

For the moment Richard seemed nonplussed.

"Well," he replied with determination, "I would not strike any woman with a chair myself. Ask the wife whether I would! Not--" he added, as though to explain this apparent idiosyncrasy of his--"not while the good God has given me two hands for the purpose."

"Nonsense!"

There was a brief silence, during which Richard's glance fell upon the few pathetic garments so carefully folded upon the narrow bed.

"So my poor little prisoner is to die to-day," he murmured sadly.

"Yes," answered the Deputy, "and I am glad of it. There is no room in France for such vermin. They must be exterminated, and the sooner the better. I know what I am saying, and I tell you that this woman Corday is a dangerous character. She has others behind her. She is but an accomplice. I am here this evening," he explained, "to try and find out from her the names of her confederates. She would give no satisfactory replies this afternoon, but perhaps, now that the fear of death is upon her, we may be more successful."

"Well," affirmed the veteran, with the stubbornness of his class, "whatever you may say, I cannot help pitying the girl. How I am to break the news to little Jean, I don't know!" he added pathetically. "Myself, I shall have no appetite for supper. Poor girl! My heart goes out to her in her time of trouble."

"Yes," said Chabot, with a sardonic smile, "and yours is not the only heart, my friend."

Richard looked puzzled.

"There is a young painter," continued the Deputy, "Hauer, by name. He has been sketching her in the court-house; yes, and speaking to her as well. He had better be careful," he added threateningly. "I have my eye on him; and so has the Committee of Public Safety." Chabot was standing by the window; he picked up one of the garments lying folded there on the shelf, examined it for a moment, and threw it down again in disdain.

"Yes, this Citizen Hauer is a fool. Like you," he turned to Richard, "and your little Jean, and the rest. His head has been turned by the woman's looks. He will lose it altogether if he is not careful."

To so simple a mind as that of the old warder, the Deputy's fierce and bitter hatred toward his prisoner seemed difficult to understand until he remembered certain stories connected with her arrest, stories in which his visitor had played an important, if not a very edifying part.

In early life Chabot had been a member of the priesthood, but renounced his vows in order to enter the sphere of politics. After the murder of Marat, when Charlotte Corday had been conveyed to the Abbaye prison, Chabot was among those who had helped to search her, a task in which his zeal had so far outrun his discretion as to induce him to retain a watch which he found upon the prisoner's person, until she somewhat sarcastically reminded him of his early and apparently forgotten vows of priestly poverty.

It was Chabot, too, who, suspecting Charlotte of having important papers concealed about her, had profited by the fact of her hands being tied to search for them. The wretched girl, supposing him to be bent upon some fresh outrage, sprang away with so violent a gesture, in her efforts to elude his touch, that the front of her dress burst open. With a natural and spontaneous movement of shame, she turned quickly away and stood with her face to the wall, begging to be allowed to rearrange her dress. So genuine was her emotion, and so strongly did her innocent modesty appeal to her jailors, that the request was immediately granted, and she was even permitted to draw down and arrange her sleeves in such a manner as to interpose them between her wrists and the cords that bound her none too tenderly.

Richard recalled those incidents, which had been related to him by Lafondée, the dentist, who lived opposite Marat's house, and who had been one of the first to rush to the scene of the murder; and he smiled knowingly to himself as he looked across the narrow space at the passionate, revengeful face of the ex-priest.

He was about to formulate some further arguments in defence of his little protégée, when a movement at the threshold of the cell attracted his attention, and in another moment the object of his thoughts stood framed in the open doorway.

What a child she looked, standing there, with her hands behind her back, wearing a simple country-made frock of some dark material, a white fichu crossed over her breast and fastened behind at the waist. Her auburn hair was tied back by a green ribbon, and a little white cap, the "bonnet" of the period, similar to that worn by Marie Antoinette in David's celebrated picture, rested lightly upon her small, girlish head.

There was nothing of the convicted criminal about her appearance, save the slight shade of pallor which these last few days of captivity had left upon her cheek; there was nothing of the prisoner in her bearing, save that her hands were bound behind her. Her wide gray eyes, fresh from the dazzling sunshine of the street, seemed to open wider still in an endeavor to pierce the prison gloom into which she was returning. But, as she saw the old warder's homely figure, standing there in a kindly attitude of welcome, an expression of relief, almost of happiness, illumined her face.

Two soldiers, who had accompanied her as far as the entrance, withdrew as soon as their prisoner had crossed the threshold, and the door closed upon them.

The old warder advanced to meet his captive.

"So you are back again, citizeness?" he said, with an assumed cheerfulness which he was far from feeling.

"Ah, my good friend," replied the girl, in a low voice, which bore signs of the long and fatiguing cross-examination to which she had just been subjected, "I shall not trouble you much longer."

Richard shrugged his shoulders, as though to deny that any trouble was involved in the care of so well-behaved a prisoner.

"I will tell the wife of your return," he said. "You promised to take your supper with us, you remember."

"I fear I must break my promise," said Charlotte, with a sad smile. "There will be no time for supper to-night."

"But my little Jean is so looking forward----"

"Poor little Jean," she interrupted; "I am so sorry to disappoint him. But he will forgive me, I know. And by the by," she continued, "I am expecting a visitor this evening. Will you please see that he is admitted the moment he arrives?"

Chabot, who up to this time had been sitting unperceived in the corner of the cell, gave vent to a low chuckle.

Charlotte looked about at the sound, and as her eye fell upon the sinister figure of the ex-priest, she could not repress a shudder.

"You!" she exclaimed, starting back suddenly.

Chabot advanced toward her, with mock politeness, which the expression on his face belied. "At your service!" he said, with a low bow.

"But why are you here? What do you want with me?" asked the frightened girl.

"I am here to see you, on a little matter of--er--business. I want a few moments' conversation with you."

Charlotte turned an appealing glance upon the old warder. "Surely," she exclaimed, with a tone of passionate entreaty in her voice, "surely I have a right to ask that the short hour of life that is left to me shall be undisturbed?"

Richard made a weak, deprecating movement with his hands. "I am not to blame," he explained. "The Deputy has a pass, signed by the Police Commissioner."

He crossed over behind the prisoner, and was about to untie her hands. Chabot, noticing his intention, stopped him with a peremptory gesture.

"Leave that to me," he said. "I will see to it myself."

"But--citizen--" the old man began.

Chabot pointed sternly toward the door.

"Go!" he said. "Go! For time is short, and I have things to say to the prisoner in private."

Richard hesitated, as though about to refuse, but his natural weakness was no match for the firm attitude of the Deputy, and, after an uneasy glance at Charlotte Corday, he shambled clumsily to the threshold and went out.

Chabot crossed to the door and made sure that it was properly closed. Then he turned quickly and advanced to where Charlotte was still standing.

"And now," he said, "now that we are alone, quite alone together, you and I, let us for the moment forget our mutual--shall I say dislike?--our distrust of one another, eh?"

He approached and laid his hands upon her wrists, stooping to undo the cords with which the prisoner was bound.

At his touch Charlotte, who had been watching his movements with a look of terror on her face, sprang sharply back, as though she had been stung by some poisonous reptile.

"Don't come near me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I could not bear you to touch me!"

She retreated to the farthest end of the cell and stood at bay there with her back to the wall.

"As you will! as you will!" replied the other. "I merely thought that perhaps you would chat more freely if--but no matter."

"Will you not sit down?" he added, motioning her to a chair.

"I will stand!" she answered coldly.

"By all means," said Chabot, in an amused voice, "by all means. But I suppose you have no objection to my sitting?"

The girl made no reply.

Chabot ensconced himself as comfortably as possible in the hard wooden chair which the warder had vacated.

"Let us be sensible," he said, after a pause. "Your little game is over, you know. You have lost."

"I have won!" exclaimed Charlotte, with a touch of triumph in her voice.

"We will not discuss the point," said Chabot. "I do not argue with women. I wish you to tell me what you were unwilling, and very naturally unwilling, to admit at your trial--the true motive of your crime. I want to know the source from which came the inspiration. You have executed the deed alone, but you cannot have planned it alone. Others have helped you. You are to die, remember, alone; to suffer alone; and yet it is not you alone who are guilty. There are, there must be, others who have urged you to commit this crime. The Girondist Barbaroux, for instance," he suggested, "a friend of yours, who has just been arrested----"

"Had nothing whatever to do with it," exclaimed the girl, breaking in upon his unfinished sentence. "What I have done, I have done alone, and I am proud of it! I confided in none; I asked advice of none. The idea was my own; the conception was my own; and I carried it out by myself!"

There was in her voice a note of exultation, of glory, of triumph in the success of her crime; she seemed almost to boast of the solitude of her guilt, as though conscious of the fact that one executes but ill that which another's brain has conceived.

"Oh, it is very loyal of you to try and conceal the identity of your accomplices," said Chabot, with a sneer.

"My loyalty is for my country alone. It was my love of her that inspired me to plan my project; my love of her that helped me to undertake it; my desire for her welfare that gave me strength to carry it out!"

"Indeed," said the Deputy sardonically. "And doubtless it required unusual strength to deal so fatal a blow, straight to the heart!"

The girl looked at him in surprise.

"The indignation in my own heart showed me the way," she said quietly.

"One would think," continued Chabot, "that you had practised with the knife before on some other----" He left the sentence unfinished.

The blood rushed to Charlotte's cheek. A fire of indignation and resentment burned in her usually tender eyes, making them blaze and flame until even the cold-blooded Deputy was moved to admire the beauty of this emotional woman, so fierce in the defence of her honor.

"You know well that I am no ordinary assassin," she exclaimed. "My hands are clean in the eyes of Heaven. My soul is guiltless before God."

The ex-priest took a step forward. "How dare you speak of God? You?"

"I dare speak of Him," replied the girl, in an impassioned voice, "because I believe that it was He who inspired me, as He inspired Judith of old, to make this sacrifice in the cause of liberty. I believe that He chose me to bear this message of His righteous vengeance to a people who have forgotten His name; that He nerved my arm to strike the blow at which you wonder. I have completed my task," she went on, in a quieter tone, "I leave the rest to others. I have avenged much innocent blood. I have prevented the shedding of much more." She turned proudly round and faced the Deputy with flashing eyes.

"I have killed one man," she said, "to save a hundred thousand!"

Chabot smiled grimly.

"Do you then imagine," he asked, "that you have murdered all the Marats?"

"I have destroyed one," she retorted. Her fearless gaze met the crafty eyes of her examiner, and they quailed before it.

"Perhaps the others will be afraid," she added meaningly.

"I must admit," replied the Deputy with a nervous assumption of jocularity, "I am relieved to think that for the moment I am beyond the reach of those pretty hands of yours. For I have no desire, believe me, to be added to the list of your victims!"

Charlotte smiled scornfully. "You need have no fears," she said. "Were my hands as free as yours, or my heart as black, you would still be safe. You surely cannot flatter yourself that the question of the life or death of such as you could be of any importance to the State."

The natural egotism of the man was wounded; his vanity was touched. Confident of Charlotte's helplessness, he approached to within a few feet of her.

"Are you not afraid to speak in such a tone to me?" he asked. "We are alone here--" he looked meaningly round at the empty cell. "The walls are thick. No one can hear us."

Charlotte looked him up and down with a slow, scornful gaze. "Afraid?" she asked. "Of you?" She smiled. "Do you think that one can look at you; at your shifty eyes--at your restless mouth--" involuntarily the Deputy's hand rose to his lips--"without discovering the secret which you conceal so badly behind a mask of insult and of bluster? Do you think I cannot see what a coward you are at heart?"

"Truly polite!" exclaimed the other nervously. "At any rate, I am no murderer!"

"Because you have not the courage!" replied the girl. "But be sure that however great the guilt of those who have shed all this innocent blood, you who have allowed it to be spilt will also have to answer for it."

Her face was transfigured by emotion as she spoke. She seemed to be gazing into the caverns of eternity with the eyes of some inspired prophetess. "I look forward into the future," she continued, "and I see you, and the other brigands who surrounded Marat, whom God only allows to live so as to make their fall the more terrible,--so as to frighten all who would attempt to establish their fortunes on the ruins of a misguided people,--I see you dragged by force up the scaffold steps--the ladder to Eternity which I scale so willingly--till your coward's eyes gaze forth flinching from that blood-stained casement, that is for me the window looking out on immortality!"

Chabot stared in amazement at this young girl, who seemed to speak with the assurance of a seer. He could not subdue his admiration of a woman who was so obviously fearless of death. "Come," he said, "I like your pluck." He inspected her with a critical eye. "You're not a bad-looking girl, either, for an aristocrat." He came very close to her, apparently unconscious of the loathing with which she regarded his approach. "Turn round and let me have a look at you," he ordered. Charlotte did not seem to have heard him, but kept her head high in the air, and the same lofty look of disdain in her eye.

"Proud, are you?" said the deputy, with a snarl. "I suppose I'm not good enough to speak to you, eh?"

Charlotte still remained silent.

"Hoity toity!" continued Chabot, "with your fine airs and graces! You won't be so damned haughty in an hour's time, _I_ know! You won't hold your head so high then, I'll be bound!" He came quite close and leered into her face. "Why do you treat me like this?" he asked. "Aren't I good enough for you?" There was no tremor of fear in the girl's attitude, but almost unconsciously she turned her head away. "Come here!" he said sharply. "Come closer!" Charlotte Corday did not move. Chabot stooped until his face was only a few inches from hers. "I've a good mind to take a kiss from you," he said, with an ugly smile. "What do you say to that, eh?" he asked. The girl moved her head still further away so as to avoid looking upon the hideous features which were now so close to her own pure lips.

"What's the use of making all this fuss?" said Chabot impatiently. Still no reply from the woman, who, beneath her appearance of calm and courage, could feel her heart beating wildly with terror and apprehension. "What?" continued the Deputy, "Look at me!" he commanded. Then, as Charlotte seemed to pay no attention to his orders, "Damn you!" he said, "you _shall_ look at me!" And he placed his hands upon her shoulders and turned her quickly round so as to face him.

Then, and not till then, did her self-reliance give way. With the amorous touch of his hateful fingers upon her neck, she realized the helplessness and horror of her position. With a convulsive movement she tried to free her hands. The face of her enemy came closer and closer to hers, and she read the coarse desires of his vicious soul in the lustful brightness of his eyes. In a perfect agony of disgust and terror she fought desperately to fling herself out of his reach.

"Let me go!" she appealed, "let me go! Ah, God!" she cried, in a strangled voice, "Let me go!"

Her cry must have been loud enough to penetrate the thick prison door, for in a moment it was flung open, and two men, Richard and another, rushed into the room, and Charlotte was aware that the old warder had interposed his burly person between her and the man she loathed.

"I should have known better than to leave you alone with a man of his character," exclaimed the veteran, glowering at the ex-priest. "The wife will never forgive me."

Chabot had recovered his self-possession, and was regarding the old man's perturbation with evident amusement.

The stranger who had entered the cell with Richard was a young man of about thirty, clean-shaven, with dark, almost black hair shading a high, intellectual brow and eyes of unusual brilliance. He was dressed in the uniform, such as it was, of the National Guard, but his appearance was not that of a soldier, and the artist's block and sketching materials which he carried in his hand proclaimed him to be, what indeed he was, a portrait painter.

He had heard the woman's agonized cry. The scene that he had witnessed on entering the room had shown him the cause of her distress, and, with the blind, impetuous rage which the sight of any act of violence or injustice towards the weak or helpless rouses in a young and chivalrous soul, he rushed to where Chabot was standing and seized that worthy violently by the shoulder.

"What the devil are you doing?" he demanded furiously.

"That is no business of yours," retorted Chabot, coolly disengaging himself from the other's grasp. "You evidently do not know who I am, young man."

"I have no wish to. It does not interest me. But I do know that you are not wanted here!"

"I am the Deputy Chabot, of the Department of Loir-et-Cher!"

"Indeed," replied the young man, apparently unabashed by so much distinction. "Well, I am Jean Jacques Hauer! And to the devil with your 'deputy'!"

"So you are the fortunate Citizen Hauer," said Chabot, with a dark smile of comprehension. "I see, I see!"

"What do you mean?" asked the artist threateningly.

Chabot turned to Charlotte Corday with a bow.

"I congratulate you, mademoiselle," he said, with meaning in his voice, "I congratulate you on the possession of so well-bred, so well-mannered a lover!"

Hauer sprang forward with a cry of rage, and would have hurled himself upon the Deputy, had not Charlotte's quiet voice stopped him.

"Leave him alone," she begged. "Let him be, I pray you. He is not worthy of your anger."

Chabot moved toward the entrance slowly.

"Good-by, mademoiselle," he said, "and thank you"--ironically--"thank you for a very pleasant chat, which I shall always remember, when you are--what shall we say?--forgotten!"

Charlotte faced him with quiet dignity.

"I may be forgotten," she replied, "and that soon. But what I have done shall not readily be forgotten."

With a sarcastic laugh the Deputy crossed the threshold and was gone.

Richard watched his departure with evident relief, and then turned to address his prisoner.

"There is a priest without," he said, "who asks whether you desire his services."

Charlotte shook her head. "Will you thank him on my behalf for his kindness. But I do not need the offices of the Church."

She crossed to the table and leaned one hand upon it.

"The blood that I have spilt, and my blood that I am about to shed, are the only sacrifices that I can offer to God," she said. "I have no fears. He knows all, and will forgive."

The warder bowed his head, took a last look round the cell to see that all was well, and left the room.