When Greek Meets Greek. A novel

Front matter

TJiree Vols. in One, Price QJ. A FEW PRESS OPINIONS ON THE BANISHMENT OF JESSOP BLYTHE. Saturday Review. " A fine effective story, highly coloured, brilliantly lit, with interest steadily sustained, with touches of pathos. — Jessop's last dream is in its way a particularly good piece o( work — and not a few flashes of humour .... The tale has been flung down upon the paper in a broad, bold style." The Scotsman. " There is almost a Shakespearean touch in the action and dialogue by which all the characters are individualised and made to live Jessop's daughter Adser is the heroine, first of a charming idyll, and then of a drama in which terror, tragedy, and heroic action show a human grandeur worthy of the wild and romantic scenery The descriptive charm of tbe bock is more than equalled by its dramatic force and reality."

Yorkshire Daily Post. "The combination of shrewdness and sentimentality, of a certain grim humour and austere complacency, in the commoner folk of the story, is exhibited with a quiet ease which often suggests the earlier work of George Eliot .... A wholesome and powerful story, the art of which is as admirable as the method is pure." Literary World. "Carries the reader by storm .... The heroine delightfully unconstrained and independent .... A splendid specimen of Derbyshire young woman hood .... The story is healthy and well conceived and worked out in the stirring vigorous style that characterises Mr. Hatton's romances, whether they are set in the wilds of Russia or amidst the hills and dales of an English landscape." Liverpool Daily Post. "The scene of reconciliation between father and daughter is powerfully conceived and most artistically carried out, and the startling events which follow are all worked up with the skill and force which Mr. Hatton has at his command."

Sheffield Daily Telegraph. "Very powerful .... The heroine is a striking individuality, limned with mingled force and tenderness .... We have rarely read a story so full of human interest." Westminster Gazette. "Mr. Hatton has given us a brisk and wholesome story, and, deluged as we are with fiction that is as tedious as it is morbid, we are very much obliged to him. Adser Elythe is a figure which Charles Reade, who was proud, and justly proud, of his feminine portraits, might very well have drawn." Daily News. Brilliantly effective pictures of that strange and subterranean world with its vast halls, its wild caves, its hewn rocks and stalactites, resonant with the sound of rising rivers. Upon this background Mr. Hatton places a story of sustained interest. It is picturesque and breezy, it is full of incident, and has many touches of humour."

Chapter I

A FUGITIVE. From the chaos of a bloodthirsty revolt that made itself heard in cries of despair and the clamour of battle, there suddenly started into the light of Marie Bruyset's lamp the fugitive Jaffray Ellicott. ■ Hush, mademoiselle, " he said, as she rose to her feet. " I will not harm you. " " What do you want ? " the girl exclaimed, her hand upon the handle of the door. " Sanctuary ! " he replied, blowing out the light and seizing her as he spoke. " Help ! " half cried the girl, the remaining half of the exclamation being stifled by the fugitive pressing his hand over her mouth, that was far too pretty and sweet for such rough usage. " I will not harm you, mademoiselle, " he whispered, his breath coming and going in gasps. He bolted the door. She made no struggle. There was something reassuring in his voice and touch.

A fugitive sure enough, and in mortal peril, judging from the shouts of execration that followed him, to pass on, however, and become a distant murmur. He was only a youngster, but he held the girl with the grip of a man. Carried out of the way he was going by the human tide of marching men with pikes and fusils, into the storming of the Tuileries, he had had many a narrow escape. Once, when he might have saved himself, the figure of Count de Fournier, tossed hither and thither like a gallant ship with streamers flying, held him a fascinated spectator. All remem brance of the mission which he had received from this daring friend of the Throne had been knocked out of him. When at last there was a lull in the storm and sans-culottism was plundering its dead, Jaffray be thought him of his interrupted mission, now too late in the day for fulfilment; he had become an object of animosity amongst a mob of the hunted and the hunters.

Good fortune, however, flung him aside into the darkness of the Rue Barnabe, while the howling mob passed on. Projected from a human tempest into the calm of an unsuspected creek, he caught sight of Marie Bruyset's lamp, climbed a rain-spout, and from its grotesque gargoyle swung himself upon a friendly balcony among the picturesque buildings of the Rue Barnabe, and here he was. " Believe me, I will not harm you, " said the fugitive, now recovering his breath, but denying the girl a similar privilege, for he kept his strong young hand over her protesting, if silent, lips, "but you must be quiet. I am hunted by a pack of wolves, though I am the veriest sheep ; if I release you, will you keep silent? Nod your head if you mean 'Yes.' I am very sorry to be so exacting." She nodded her head. He removed his hand.

" You are very rough, " she said, " and have no right to bring me into your troubles." "I will not; only let me remain a few minutes and I will be gone." "Permit me to light the lamp," said the girl. "No — for heaven's sake," said Ellicott, straining every nerve to catch any further sounds of the return of his pursuers. " I am not afraid to die, but my life belongs to others." Distant noises of bells and guns and murmurs of A FUGITIVE. 3 far-away voices broke upon the silence of the garret, but there was nothing strange in this. So long as the street below was quiet, the fugitive felt that for the time being he was safe ; and Marie Bruyset had become accustomed to the " immeasurable Briareus wrestle" that was going on around the Rue Barnabe, situated as it was between the Pont Neuf and the Rue St. Honore, and, from her long attic window under the roof, disclosing glimpses of the Seine and the Palais de Justice.

Between the Rue Barnabe and the Seine a network of courts and alleys and dark thoroughfares straggled to the Pont Neuf, and finished there in a higgledy-piggledy complication of little shops and stalls doing a mis cellaneous trade in roasted chestnuts, pancakes, second hand books, quack medicines, light drinks, and heavy pastry. Early on that fatal morning of the i oth of August, 1792, the squadron on the Pont Neuf had withdrawn itself from royal duty and admitted bands of " black browed Marseilles" and bellowing patriots from Saint Marceau to join the sections of St. Antoine and the other federates of the insurrection, summoned by the tocsins of St. Roch and St. Germain l'Auxer rois and the storm bell of St. Jacques de la Boucherie. All day Marie had heard the rumble of the storm, with intervals of crash, and riot, and thunder.

All day she had remained indoors, warned by her father, and advised also by her neighbours. All day long the attack on the Tuileries. All day long the mas sacre of the devoted Swiss. AU day long the hail of death, butchery of the defenceless, mutilation of the dead; only pausing when the day itself died out, Patriotism of the severest continuing even then to hunt its wounded game and stab it to death in ditches or drown it in the Seine. But Marie Bruyset could not know, nor even guess, at the horrors of that black-letter day in the calendar of the French Revolution.

Chapter II. Jaffray Ellicott Explains

" What are you ? Who are you ? How did you find your way hither?" asked Marie. " I am a poor devil, mademoiselle, and I came up the spout," he said, with an effort at a carelessness he did not feel, having just passed through scenes of massacre unparalleled in a civilised community. The moon, which had been hidden by banks of clouds as portentous as those that filled the moral atmosphere of Paris, sent a cold beam of light into the apartment of the young Frenchwoman, and she saw that her visitor was a good-looking young fellow, dressed in a style something better than the bourgeois ; and now that he no longer gasped for breath his voice sounded as pleasantly to her as hers to him. " I'm a stranger," he said, " and in a tight corner. Forgive me for my abrupt intrusion. My noisy attendants have evidently given me up — for more worthy game, I hope."

"They never entered the street," said the girl, "if they had they would have made noise enough: the Rue Barnabe is not a thoroughfare — it is a 'cui de sac,' a back court of old houses: it comes to an end round the corner." " That's lucky ; then they have taken the next turning, no doubt. Allow me to listen a moment at your window." " Yes, certainly. " " You will not call out ? " he said, turning upon her quickly. " I trust you, " she replied, " and therefore I remain silent." "Thank you, mademoiselle; thank you." He went to the window. It was low and narrow, and looked upon a ledge that in its turn gave upon a slanting roof with chimney stacks and flower pots. The room was a garret, separated from other garrets by a low wall and wooden boxes, in which a few flowers and shrubs were cultivated.

The house had once been one of some importance. Now it was divided up into apartments, occupied on the ground floor by the better class of the bour geoisie, narrowing in the social grade as the stairway ascended until the garrets were reached; and here, beneath the picturesque pointed roof with its quaint balconies and ledges, dwelt poor sempstresses, a shoemaker, a washerwoman, who, however, only treated fine linen, a modeller of statuettes, and others earning their living from hand to mouth. Their rooms were cut off from each other by stone walls or wooden partitions. Taking them altogether they were a happy community; though of late they had begun to be afraid of each other on political grounds. Marie Bruyset had the best furnished and most comfortable room among the attics. It was spacious, well kept, and, though humble, with plenty of evidence of good taste.

" Thank you, mademoiselle, a thousand times thank you, " said Ellicott, somewhat effusively, after listen ing intently for any demonstration in the street. " The wolves have passed, as you say. If you will allow me to draw the curtains over the window, you may light your lamp." "You are very kind," said Marie, in something of a sarcastic tone. " I would like to be," said Ellicott, now almost at his ease, and breathing freely for the first time during a long and terrible day that had been liter ally a dance of death. " I am sure it is very condescending of you to permit me to have a light in my own room. But you may draw the curtains." " I accept your gracious permission, " said the young fellow in his best French, and with a flourish of his cap. If it had sported a feather, the feather would have swept the floor in the most courtier like fashion.

He drew the curtains well over the long, low, small-paned window. Marie struck the steel and blew into the tinder-box. " Nay, mademoiselle, permit me, " said the young ster, stooping over the girl and blowing, upon the smouldering tinder, a blast that fetched an almost instantaneous blaze, and the lamp was soon all aglow. " That's how Cupid starts his flame when he finds two hearts " " Less stony than ours, " said Marie, with a laugh, " but this is no place for Cupid, and no time ; Mars or the Furies are more to the purpose; but let me look at you." She faced him, to see a lithe, well-built fellow of four or five and twenty, about her own age, with a frank open face that was slightly disfigured by a bruise on the forehead and a scratch or two upon the cheeks. His eyes were grey, and looked straight into her own.

His hps were firm and well defined, his face pale with undisguised anxiety, and his dress — which bespoke the student or secretary rather than the " ouvrier" — was a good deal torn and disordered in his struggle from the clutches of the mob. Further more, she noticed that he was a foreigner; anyhow, she felt at once that he was not a Parisian. " You are little more than a boy, " she said, " with all the assurance of a grenadier." Jaffray stroked his youthful moustache and smiled. " Rather a ragged grenadier, " he said, " a trifle knocked about, eh ? " "A scratch or two," she said. " They scratched some poor wretches deeper than the marks they have left on me," he replied. " Ah, mademoiselle, it is awful to see defenceless men torn to pieces. Wolves, did I say? but there, I must not distress you further.

Can I get away by this door?" He walked across the room, and tried the only door in sight. It was locked and bolted. " It is no good locking the door if one leaves the window open, is it ? " she said, smiling. " You had better sit down a little while; since you have found sanctuary, give the priestess time to protect you — a few minutes at least." "Thank you, mademoiselle," said Jaffray, still swinging his cap. " You are not a Frenchman ? " she said, placing a chair for him. "No," he replied, seating himself, with his eye on the door. "A Gascon, perhaps?" "No." " A Swiss ? " " No." " Not an Austrian ? " " Is it very bad to be an Austrian, mademoiselle?" " I believe it is. " " Then, my dear mademoiselle, I am not an Austrian." " You are younger than your manners. " " Thank you, mademoiselle."

" What had you done for the people to set upon you? " " The people, mademoiselle, is a villainous, murder ing, cut-throat, blood-stained crew of sexless beasts — the people ! " "You have a graphic vocabulary, monsieur, but you would do well only to think in it ; if you were older you would not use it in conversation." " Thank you, mademoiselle ; the brutes should have known me; I serve in their cause." " Oh, indeed ; then you are not an aristocrat ? " " I am an Englishman, mademoiselle; is that worse? Then I will be an American truly, which I am." " You have the accent of a foreigner ; your manners are French." " Thank you, mademoiselle ; I feared you would think them horrible; but you are as good as you look, and forgive a rudeness that was not inten tional. May I ask, have you the key to your door ?

" " Yes, here it is, " she said, taking up a large key from the mantel, near the stove which was fixed in what had once been a fireplace. " Why do you ask ? " " Someone passed the door stealthily a moment since," he said. "Do you think so?" "I am sure," Jaffray replied. "One's senses of sight and hearing are sharpened when one is hunted. " " Apprehension often makes its own sights and sounds," said Marie, stepping to the door, and listening for a few moments, and then shrugging her shoulders as she remarked, " I am too near the roof for loiterers on this floor, and my character is too well known to invite surveillance." " I noted a face near a lower window a few doors away as I caught sight of your balcony and sprang for it," he said. "Imagination, surely, or the hue-and-cry would have been raised on your track."

" But you have friends, here all around you, have you not?" "I hope so; I think so," said Marie; "one assuredly who has power enough to pinch any neigh bour who should venture to assail me, be assured of that, monsieur." " I hope you may never need his aid, mademoiselle." "Amen to that," she said; "but have no fear, you will not be molested in my room. In case of danger I have other means of concealing a friend in need; and when the moment is opportune I will escort you to the street." " Thank you, " said Jaffray, beginning to feel more and more at ease under the influence of the words and manner of his hostess, who was, however, a good deal of a puzzle to him. "What had you done before the mob set upon you?" "As you advise me to be cautious, may I know my questioner before I answer?" "My name is Marie Bruyset; many know me — everybody in the Rue Barnabe."

"It is a pretty name," said Ellicott. " I am glad you like it. " " And if you wouldn't think it impertinent, I would add that it belongs to a pretty face, now that the light enables me to see my hostess." " You did not care whether she was pretty or gruesome a quart er-of-an-hour ago; half-an-hour since you had never seen or dreamed of her." " A man's a coward when he's running away. I never ran away in my life before; but I'd have run a league or two with ten times the pack behind me to have found sanctuary here. I think I must have dreamed of you in some of my fanciful moments. " " You were not very polite to the owner of the retreat." "It was boorish, I admit, to lay my rough hand upon your mouth; I hope to atone." "Indeed," said the girl, with a coquettish glance from a pair of dark roguish eyes.

"Yes," he said, smiling. "How, monsieur?" " May I show you ? " "No, no, monsieur," she replied, stepping backwards a pace or two. " You may resume your seat and tell me all about yourself; or, what is more to the purpose, take a little refreshment, eh?" "I am your slave," said the young fellow. "You have saved my life ; do with it what you will. " " Very well. Having saved your life, I propose to maintain it with soup and wine, and then it can take itself away to those other persons who belong to it." Ellicott noticed in the manner of this remark a certain tone of inquiry that, had he known the girl longer, might have been jealousy. He was half in clined to indulge in some high-flown complimentary remark, when the thought of his intrusion upon a young girl in her own room and at night, set up against it the sentiment of gratitude due to hospitality, which he was too good a fellow to outrage.

Moreover, looking round the haven into which he had been fortunately driven, he noticed that it was a sitting-room and bed-room in one. He was too well acquainted with the curtained alcove of French chambers not to know that the end of the room was devoted to mademoiselle's couch. The covered cabinet close by was clearly her dressing-table. For the rest, the apartment was a sitting-room, quite daintily furnished; nay more, it was also an artist's studio. This was not shown by anything marked in the way of easels and palettes; but on a large table there were colours of various kinds, in phials and saucers, sundry brushes, and several miniatures evidently in course of production. Upon the walls were a number of engravings and coloured prints, and among them a portrait of the Queen, Marie Antoinette, which gave Ellicott courage.

"Then you are friendly to the Queen?" he asked, pointing to the portrait. " I am friendly to the powers that rule, " she said, opening the door of the stove, lighting a taper at the lamp and thrusting it into the stove with a few scraps of fuel, which under the influence of a powerful draught soon began to glow, and set the pot-a-feu simmering. " When did you come to Paris ? " "Years ago." " With your father and mother ? " she said inquir ingly, as she busied herself with hospitable arrangements for his supper. " With General Lafayette and Deputy Grebauval, " he said, in a reckless outburst of confidence. " They found me at Washington." "Found you?" " A Philadelphian who had fought at Valley Forge under General Lafayette had befriended me. I told him my story. He offered to take me to France and provide for me.

The Citizen Deputy Grebauval, who sailed in the same ship from New York, took a fancy to me. The Philadelphian had been a schoolmaster. I was only sixteen, and Monsieur Grebauval made me his clerk." " The Deputy Grebauval ? " said Marie, in a tone of something like pity. "Yes." " You liked him better than General Lafayette ? " " No, but Monsieur Grebauval evidently liked me better than the General did." " And you came from America ? " " Ten years ago. " " And your father and mother ? Excuse my questions; you interest me, monsieur." " My father and mother, alas, were massacred in the revolutionary war, as I suppose I shall be in this French imitation of the colonial insurrection." " Heaven and the Blessed Virgin protect you ! " said the girl, crossing herself. " Amen ! " said Jaffray. " But heaven and the saints, Protestant nor Catholic, helped us over yonder.

I was only a lad of six or seven, so it didn't matter much to me then; but since! I'm glad you have a father and mother, mademoiselle." " I have no mother ; but here is something that is mother and father also when the heart is low and the knees are weak, " she said, with a laugh that was not spontaneous. " There is hope and courage in a glass of wine, and you need both," she went on, as she drew the cork from a bottle of red wine and poured out a full tankard. Jaffray watched her with greedy eyes. He had not been bold enough to say that he was faint with hunger and thirst. " Drink, it will do you good ; you have turned pale," she said. " Your health, mademoiselle ! " he said ; " and God bless you ! " He emptied the tankard and smiled. " Here is bread, help yourself; and here is soup ; make your supper." , She cut a loaf of bread in two, and ladled from the pot a steaming basin of soup. He fell to it with a will. She watched him with undisguised interest.

Chapter III

A MISSION UNFULFILLED. Within little more than a stone's-throw Paris had held her first great feast of pikes and guns. The taking of the Bastille was child's play to the storming and overthrow of the Tuileries. From dawn until afternoon the burning and butchery had raged at fever heat. The evening sunshine fell upon sorry corpses, which sans-culottes of both sexes turned over and stripped. Human vultures are worse than the obscene creatures of the air. Then the dead-carts began to collect their loads and move in grim proces sions to the cemeteries, the sans-culottes stumbling homewards with relics of the palace — carpets, clocks, furniture. Less frugal citizens drank themselves to death in the royal cellars; while patriotic souls, above such vanities, continued the work of annihilating such betrayed Swiss as might be making their way towards Courbevoie, or such of their comrades or defenders as might seek for shelter in sanctuaries closer at hand.

It had been a day of " Victory " for roused and indignant Patriotism. Jaffray Ellicott had fortunately kept his head and his appetite to good purpose. " Then you know the Deputy Grebauval inti mately ? " said the girl, returning to the question of Jaffray's personal associations, and with a marked tone of interrogation in her voice. "Yes," said Jaffray, enjoying his supper. " Are you one of his secretaries ? " "He has employed me in various ways." "They say he is in love." " With himself? " asked Jaffray, swallowing his soup and cutting a fresh slice of bread. " Firstly with himself, of course, " said Marie, " like all lovers; and secondly with " " Whom ? " asked Jaffray. "A lady." " Of course, " said Jaffray. "And perhaps you know Count de Fournier?" "Most likely," said Jaffray; "many people know him."

" But you were in America." " I only knew that he had been there on the day of the Bastille," Jaffray replied, pausing to look up at his hostess, " and on that day he was a revelation to me. Ah, mademoiselle, he is as brave as he is good; I would say that if it cost me my head." "Hush! not so loud, my friend; I, too, wear the national colours, but I have a heart all the same. The count has been kind to you ?" " It is not treason to say so; I can see that in your kind face." " My hand on it, " said Marie, offering the pretty guarantee of her sincerity, which Jaffray, having wiped his lips, kissed with boyish reverence. " Go on with your supper ; it is good to talk while one eats," said Marie. " I was only a child, little more, about eight ; but I can see Cherry Valley at this moment as if it was yesterday.

I was born in England, near Dover, but my father and mother emigrated to America and carried me there when I was an infant. Often have I heard my mother tell of the hardships of the journey by sea. They settled in Cherry Valley. " We knew the American troops had been defeated not far away, and there was talk of massacres by Tories and Indians; but Cherry Valley had a strong fort, A MISSION UNFULFILLED. 15 and Colonel Alden, who was in command, was confident of our safety. " Unfortunately, he knew nothing of Indian warfare. The villagers remained in their houses until they were aroused by a savage war-cry outside the stock ade and fort. Colonel Alden, it turned out, had been reconnoitring in a free-and-easy way, and was suddenly surprised by an Indian scout. He fired his pistol, and ran for his life; but he was killed before his men inside could repel an assault, and the next moment, as it seemed, the village was full of Indians under their wily chief, Joseph Brant.

"Fifty people were massacred, many of them women and children. My father and mother were among those who fell. The soldiers in the fort barely held their own against a troop of the British; but a young French officer did wonders in the way of combat with the Indians. He snatched me from death, and bore me to the fort where a few others of the villagers found shelter. "The fort was not captured. It stood a siege of several hours, and finally beat off the enemy. Help came, I think; for the French officer, with part of the garrison, went out in pursuit of the Indians; and I never saw my deliverer again until that day of the Bastille when I was lending a hand to the patriots of Paris ; I flung myself among his assailants, and, drawing their attention from him for a moment, assisted his escape.

It had been ordained that gratitude should have a show just then as well as hatred and murder." " It was Count de Fournier ! " exclaimed Marie. "G d bless you!" adding, after a pause, "yet you are in the service of his bitterest enemy." " You mean the Deputy Grebauval ? " " Yes, the friend of Citizen Robespierre. " " If I wear the national colours, " Jaffray replied, "I, too, have a heart." "You are cautious, but you may trust me. I also know the count and the beautiful lady to whom he is this day to be betrothed. Hush ! speak lower. " " You said there was no chance of our being disturbed. " " Nor is there; but there are some things one only whispers in these days. I work for Mademoiselle de Louvet; she was a friend to me long before the day of the Bastille. The duchess, her mother, receives the Deputy Grebauval ; General Lafayette also.

The duke is a Royalist, the duchess has other views ; it is likely to be a sad story. Have you seen the count to-day? " " Yes, " said Jaffray, pushing aside his empty cup. " You were his messenger?" " How, mademoiselle? " " He sent you to the Chateau ? " " How do you know ? " "I don't know; I only guess." " I am in the service of the Citizen Grebauval, " said Jaffray. " If my heart goes out to the ci-devant count, as they call him, it is for the reason I have told you. He snatched me from the Indian hatchet. It was by accident that I was in the midst of the fighting to-day. Oh, the horrors of it ! I seemed to be back again in Cherry Valley ! " Marie went to the window and drew the curtain aside the breadth of her finger. Then she crossed the room to the door and listened. "What is it? " asked Jaffray.