Scaramouche (22 page)

CHAPTER XXIII

THE BROTHERS FREY

That frail beauty, Madame de Sainte-Amarande, and her still more beautiful daughter had not yet ceased in these days of Prairial of the Year 2 to do the honours of that famous gaming-house known as the Fifty. The place, if already beginning to decline from its former splendid exclusive character, was still the best patronized of all the public places within the precincts of the Palais Royal, and admission was still to be gained only by introduction.

Thither in quest of Proly, who was known to frequent it assiduously, went the Baron de Batz that evening accompanied by André-Louis. The Baron was well-known there, and the doors opened readily to him and to his companion.

They wandered through fairly well tenanted rooms, where ponderously ornate furnishings and decorations were beginning to show signs of wear. A few elegant, courtly men with powdered heads, who a couple of years ago would have been of the only type to be met there, were now outnumbered by the raffish pleasure-seekers whom the revolution with its doctrines of equality had made free of every public place and every house of entertainment. The women, almost without exception, were the feminine counterpart and natural companions of these interlopers.

De Batz studied the punters about a faro-table before passing into the farther room where roulette was being played and where the attendance was greater. There he espied the blonde, graceful, pale-complexioned Proly, an inveterate gamester, seated at play. They were in luck, for behind his chair stood Junius Frey, sturdy and swarthy, a man in the early thirties, dressed with truly republican simplicity.

De Batz pointed them out to his companion, and would have conducted him to them, but at that moment a moderately tall and very shapely girl in mauve and silver with heavy golden tresses dressed high, and the clearest of blue eyes, in turning away from the table came suddenly face o face with André-Louis. A frown was instantly effaced from between those fine brows. Amazement dawned on the comely face, and in a moment it was transfigured; the dainty lips parted to reveal her strong white teeth.

"Scaramouche!" she cried, and was upon him, and had kissed him, there before all the world, in a reckless surrender to impulse.

"Columbine!" he answered her in an equal amazement. For here before him stood a companion of his old histrionic days, the Columbine of the Binet troupe which he had directed to fortune before bringing it to ultimate disaster.

A heavy figure loomed beside them. Delaunay's quiet voice addressed André-Louis.

"You already have the advantage of the Citoyenne Descoings' acquaintance?"

Four words of explanation served to melt the deputy's scowl and to reassure him that here was no enterprising rival for the favours of a woman for whose sake Delaunay was ready to sell his country and risk his head.

"And so," said André-Louis, "you are the famous, the fortunate Descoings!"

"The unfortunate Descoings," she answered him with a rueful smile. "I have just lost a hundred louis."

"You play too steeply," Delaunay admonished her. "Perhaps. But, my friend, it is money I need, not reproofs. Lend me a hundred louis, Delaunay."

The round face seemed to grow rounder in blankness. The eyes were troubled under their black brows. "Faith! I don't possess them, little one."

"Fifty, then. I must make good my losses. You'll not deny me fifty."

"It breaks my heart, child," said Delaunay. Her frown terrified him. "My dear..."

It was a moment of crisis, as André-Louis perceived. Softly he murmured: "Can I be of assistance?"

"If you can lend me fifty louis, Scaramouche..." she was beginning, when Delaunay elbowed him away from her, and followed him. Over his shoulder he begged of her: "A moment, little one! A moment!" Then to André-Louis, when he had thrust him beyond her hearing: "We are to operate together. That is settled. It is only the moment that has not yet arrived. Advance me a hundred louis out of the share that is ultimately to come to me, and you make me your friend for life."

"My dear Delaunay!" André-Louis' tone implied a protest of any doubt in the other's mind. Forth from his pocket he' pulled a bundle of assignats, and thrust it into the deputy's big hand. "Here are three hundred. Repay me when you please."

Incredulously, effusively, Delaunay thanked him and went off, to rejoin and satisfy the Descoings.

André-Louis reflected that a packet of assignats which had already served that day as one man's probable passport to the guillotine was likely now to discharge the same office by another. With that grim reflection he sauntered after de Batz, who was already deep in conversation with Proly. The Baron had drawn the gamester away from the table and also away from his swarthy companion. The two were alone and a little apart when André-Louis came up with them. De Batz presented him. To Proly, who knew de Batz for a royalist agent, just as de Batz knew him for an Austrian spy, this was a sufficient introduction. A sort of freemasonry existing between them, Proly was quite frank on the subject of the Freys. But it added little to the Baron's previous knowledge. The republicanism of the brothers was entirely a pretence. They were in France only to satisfy their appetite for money. They played their patriotic part extremely well. They courted in particular the men of the Mountain, the men of the party standing to-day about Robespierre who undoubtedly, thought Proly, aimed at nothing less than a dictatorship. Not only Chabot, but Simon of Strasbourg and Bentabolles were entirely under the influence of the Freys, and Lebrun the minister, who owed them favours, also gave them his protection.

De Batz was disappointed in the information. Not so André-Louis.

"There is enough and to spare. It is established that they are hypocrites, and the conscience of a hypocrite is a sensitive thing, a ragged panoply that leaves him vulnerable."

By Proly the two conspirators were presented to the unsuspecting Junius. To de Batz he had little to say, but he remembered Moreau's name from the days of the Legislative Assembly, and in his guttural French effusively expressed his satisfaction at making the acquaintance of a man who deserved so well at the hands of all lovers of freedom. After that he talked fantastically of the glories of the revolution and the overthrow of despotism which had trampled the dignity of man under its monstrous feet.

They became such good friends that André-Louis did not hesitate to pay him a visit two days later at his handsome house in the Rue d'Anjou.

Junius Frey, swarthy, paunchy and oily, coarsely dressed in his affectations of sansculottism, opened wide metaphorical arms to this member of that great army of intellectuals who had been the pioneers in the great work of delivering France from the fetters of tyranny in which she had writhed. Thus at great length, in the best manner of the orators of the Jacobins, Junius Frey gave him welcome. He presented him to his brother Emmanuel, who was a year or two younger, a cadaverous man with an overgrown look, a furtive manner and a high-pitched voice. They made an odd contrast. The elder brother so intensely virile, the younger almost emasculate. And there was also a sister, Léopoldine, a child of not more than sixteen, although displaying already the appearance of a full muliebrity, who so little resembled either of them that it was difficult to believe them of the same blood. She was small and shapely, of a lighter complexion than either of her brothers, with clear-cut features, gentle brown eyes, and a mass of brown hair swathed turbanwise about her head above the row of curls that rippled on her wide brow.

Having been presented and duly informed of the exalted civic virtues of the Citizen André-Louis Moreau, she was permitted to procure cake and wine for the visitor's refreshment, and thereafter encouraged to efface herself.

Junius desired to know if there was any way in which he could serve the Citizen Moreau. Emmanuel supplied a high-pitched echo.

"Why, since you offer it, my friends, I will take advantage of you."

He looked round the solidly appointed room in which they sat and noted here none of the Spartan republicanism that distinguished the dress and speech of his hosts.

"This machine," he said, "of which you do me the honour to regard me as one of the constructors, marches none too well of late."

"Alas!" Junius sighed profoundly. "The human factor! Can we hope for perfection where that is present?"

"If we are earnest and sincere we should seek to eliminate as far as possible the imperfections."

"A sacred duty," said Junius.

"A noble task," added Emmanuel, washing his enormous bony hands in the air.

"We who are not of the government," said André-Louis, "should employ our talents so as to influence in the right direction those who are."

"Assuredly. Oh, assuredly!" cried both as with one voice.

"François Chabot is your friend. You will, I know, have given him the advantage of your wide, almost cosmopolitan, vision. You will have employed your influence to whet him like a knife for the incisive work that still lies before all right-minded patriots."

"How well you express it," purred Junius.

"How perfectly!" cried Emmanuel.

"At the same time," André-Louis continued in a tolerant tone, "you have turned him to your own profitable account."

Junius was startled out of his oily complacency. "How so?"

"Oh, but who shall blame you? Money in such noble hands as yours is held in trust for mankind. You would never employ it in any but worthy aims. Such men as you make it your task to remove the bandage from the eyes of Fortune. You render her discerning in the distribution of her favours, acting in this as her deputy. It is indeed a sacred charge. You render it the nobler by the risks you incur, the risks of being misunderstood, misrepresented. But what are these risks to men of your patriotic heroism?"

The brothers' eyes were intently upon him. In those of Junius anger began to smoulder. Emmanuel's reflected only fear. Although André-Louis paused, they said nothing. They waited for him to come further out into the open to display his aims more clearly, before they countered. So André-Louis, smiling amiably, resumed.

"Now I, my friends, am actuated by very similar intentions. Like yourselves I have perceived that here all is not as well as it should be, not as well as we who helped to make this revolution could desire. But we who originally made are the ones who can mend, who can guide. Together with the Citizen de Batz, who is associated with me, I have made certain proposals to the Representative Chabot, which he is now considering. The result of these would be to make for the aggrandisement of the sacred cause of Liberty. But the esteem in which you, my friends, are held by the Citizen Chabot is as high as it is no doubt deserved. He permits himself to be guided by you, in which he is heartily to be applauded. He would make no decision in the matter we set before him until he has taken counsel with you. Perhaps he has already done so?"

Junius, shrewd enough to perceive already whither his visitor was travelling, and relieved that it was no worse, spoke at last to answer him.

"He has not."

"Then I come in good time. Aware as you are of my republican virtues, your own will hardly suffer you to advise him other than to associate himself with me in these little enterprises which de Batz and I have in view."

He had done. He sat back in his chair, and waited. Emmanuel was shifting nervously, looking from his brother to their visitor, until Junius, who had sat stolidly throughout, at last delivered himself.

"That, my dear Citizen Moreau, must depend upon the nature of these enterprises when the Citizen Chabot reveals them to me. Our duty to the cause—"

He was interrupted. André-Louis raised a hand in protest. "My dear Frey! Could I suggest any course from which it would be your duty to turn him? Can you impute such a thing as that to me, whose patriotism I venture to say stands as high as your own, and rests, if you will suffer the comparison, upon better evidence in our respective past actions?" He did not give the financier time to answer, but went on: "Situated as we are, actuated as we are by the same sentiments of an unquestionable purity, you must see, citizen, as I see, that united we can be of great assistance to each other." Very slyly he added. "Almost it might be said of us that united we stand, severed we fall."

If the threat was delicately veiled, it was none the less instantly apparent to Junius.

He laughed uncomfortably. "Really, Citizen Moreau! Really! What you desire me to understand is that I shall find co-operation with you valuable, opposition to you dangerous."

André-Louis smiled. "It does happen that I can pull strings in both directions."

"In short, you are threatening me, I think."

"Threatening? My dear Citizen Frey! What a word to use!"

"Would it not be better to be plain?" Junius was severe. Emmanuel sat timorously observant and effaced.

"That is what I have endeavoured. One may be plain without employing terms of an unnecessary harshness."

"You appear, Citizen Moreau, to be a master of that art."