Free Dark Rosaleen by Marjorie Bowen

wrote hurriedly to Pamela.
    ‘I must go to this banquet. I cannot stay away. Do not be uneasy. No harm will come of it, and in a few days we shall be in England.’ He scratched out that word and wrote in ‘Ireland.’
    Tony was lighting candles in the inner room which served as a dressing closet. Fitzgerald continued to sit at his desk. Never in all his wanderings had he felt so far from home, so much an exile. It was not the place but his destiny that had become strange and unfamiliar.
    *
    The British dinner held at White’s to celebrate Jemappes was an affair at once sober and brilliant. There was no fanatic talk, no boasting, no violent invective, but when dinner was over there were these toasts:
    ‘ The Armies of France . May the example of its citizen soldiers be followed by all enslaved countries till tyrants and tyrannies be extinct.’
    Then proposed by General Dillon:
    ‘ The People of Ireland . May government profit by the example of France and reform prevent revolution.’
    Sir Robert Smith then drank to:
    ‘ Speedy abolition of all hereditary titles and feudal distinctions ,’ and if this last toast had a slightly fantastic air, there was nothing to be said against the sobriety and good taste of the other sentiments so publicly proclaimed.
    Edward Fitzgerald, when he returned to his chambers, could not feel that he had been guilty of any vast indiscretion. To publicly renounce his courtesy title was at the utmost a rather childish act which he was slightly ashamed of, but for the rest his mind was eased and his spirit relieved by this act of public adherence to his countrymen’s cause.
    *
    The following morning he was out early, searching the florists’ shops for flowers for Pamela. They were difficult to find in mid-winter and very costly, and he had not much money with him. He had sent Tony to Madame de Sillery’s with his letter pleading for forgiveness for his attendance at the banquet, and he followed this himself almost immediately, taking with him to the pale room faint winter violets and primroses, cold beneath moss and leaves in a basket of gilt straw.
    He found Pamela upon her knees beside the sofa on which Mademoiselle d’Orléans lay, her face hidden in a cushion. M. d’Orléans had been arrested, and his friends had warned his family that it would be wise for them to leave Paris immediately.
    ‘Pamela, we will go at once, as soon as we are married.’
    ‘I cannot wait for that. Madame de Sillery leaves tomorrow.’ She gazed at him with an intense earnestness. ‘Do you care enough for me to come with us?’
    ‘Pamela! I will come with you this instant. I have no affairs that I cannot settle in a few hours, and we will be married in Switzerland, in Belgium, where you will, at the first place where we halt long enough.’
    ‘That is the answer I hoped for,’ said Pamela. Through her distress a wild joy flashed in her blue eyes. ‘I believe we shall be very happy, you and I.’
    ‘Are you surprised, Pamela? Did you expect me to hesitate on niceties?’
    ‘No, but I am expecting a great deal of you. Adelaide, look up.’
    The young princess sat up.
    ‘Monsieur must excuse me,’ she sighed. ‘I regret this disorder.’ Her handkerchief, already damp with tears, went again to her eyes. ‘What have I to live for that I should fly? — but my father wishes me to go.’
    ‘But surely the National Assembly would not touch M. d’Orléans?’ cried Fitzgerald. He again had that curious sense of bewilderment which had come to him so forcibly when he had noticed the unpopularity of the young hero of Jemappes. He thought of those Frenchmen whom he had met at the dinner last night. All appeared intelligent, moderate, enlightened men. Was it possible that there might be other influences at work and that an era of anarchy, chaos, was really at hand?
    ‘Is it really true that M. de Chartres cannot obtain the release of his father?’ he asked, frowning.
    ‘It is indeed true,’ said