Scaramouche (27 page)

Thus he elaborated the opinion conveyed to him in a half-dozen words by André-Louis.

The Freys considered the point of view, and were partially pacified. But only in so far as the past was concerned.

"This time it may be so," said Junius. "But there will always be danger so long as that evil-disposed woman is about. She may surprise other secrets. Chabot is not discreet. He drinks too much, and when he's drunk he's given to boasting. Sooner or later she may be in a position to ruin him, and, what is worse—oh, I am frank with you, citizen—she will be in a position to ruin those who are associated with him."

"She must be eliminated," said the Baron, so grimly that it startled them.

Emmanuel shivered and breathed noisily. Junius stared. "How?"

"That's to be discovered. But discovered it must be. It is more important even than you yet realize. For very soon you may be needing Chabot's support as you have never yet needed it."

That shook them afresh. Scared interrogation was in the eyes of both. De Batz flung his bombshell.

"It has just come to my knowledge that there is a movement on foot to demand that the confiscation be decreed of the property of all foreigners resident in France."

This was terrifying. Emmanuel, in a long shabby coat that added to his overgrown appearance, stood paralysed, with fallen jaw. Junius, on the other hand, mixed rage with his panic. He turned purple and grew voluble. Such a thing would be an outrage. It was against the comity of nations. It must be the work of madmen. The Convention would never yield to any such demands.

"The Convention!" In utter frankness de Batz permitted himself to be scornful. "Are you still under the delusion that the Convention governs France. It may do. But the mob governs the Convention. Vox populi, vox dei, my dear Junius. That is the watchword of the Republic. The mob, directed by the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, is the real master. Hébert is to print an article demanding this expropriation. The demand will be so popular that the Convention will be powerless to resist it even if it has the will to do so."

Emmanuel found his quavering voice to demand the source of the Baron's information.

"That is not important. Accept my word for it that the article is already written. Within a few days it will be printed and read. Within a few days again you will see the decree promulgated. That is inevitable."

Junius accepted conviction. "I suppose that sooner or later it was inevitable in such a country as this, with a people such as this." He was bitter about the land of his adoption, this land which was being swept by the exhilarating and purifying winds of Liberty.

His conviction shattered Emmanuel's last hopeful doubt. His weak eyes looked tearfully at his sturdy brother.

"Oh. my God! Oh, my God! This is ruin Ruin! The end of everything!"

De Batz agreed with him. "It is certainly grave."

Junius let his anger run free. Furiously he held forth upon his patriotic sentiments, his republicanism, his services to and his sacrifices in the holy cause of Liberty. He dwelt upon the friendships he had formed in the Jacobins and the Convention, spoke of the national representatives who had been free of his table and who had enjoyed even to the point of abuse the hospitality which he dispensed to all true patriots. It was unthinkable that he should be so ill-requited.

"It's an ungrateful world," de Batz reminded him. "Fortunately I am able to warn you in time."

"In time? In time for what? You mock me, I think. What measures can I take?"

"You have a stout friend in Chabot."

"Chabot! That poltroon!" Wrath was rendering Junius Illuminatingly frank.

"He served you well in the matter of the corsair fleet."

"He had to be driven to it, simple as it was. How should we drive him now, and if the decree is passed what can he do? Even he?"

"True, he would be powerless, then. You must act before the decree is promulgated."

"Act!" Junius strode wildly about the room on his sturdy legs. "How can I act? What is in your mind, Citizen de Batz?"

"Make his interests one with your own, so that he rises or falls with you. Oh, a moment. I have given this matter thought for naturally it interests me too. If you sink, my friend Moreau and I will suffer heavily in our investments with you. This is no time for half measures, unless you are prepared to see all your wealth absorbed into the national treasury, and yourselves cast naked upon the world. Chabot can save you if you can arouse in him the courage and the will to do so."

"Heiliger Gott! Tell me how it is to be done. How? There's the difficulty."

"No difficulty at all. Bind Chabot to you in bonds that will make your cause his own, and so compel him for his own sake to champion it."

"Where am I to find such bonds?" demanded Junius at the height of exasperation.

"In God's name where?" cried Emmanuel, wagging his narrow head.

"They are under your hand. The only question is will you care to employ them.

"That would not be the question. I should like to know what bonds I possess that I would not employ in such an extremity."

De Bata tapped his snuff-box and proffered it. Junius swept the courtesy aside by an impatient gesture; Emmanuel declined by a gentle shrinking. They were breathing hard in their impatience. But the Gascon was not to be hurried. Between poised finger and thumb, delicately, he held the pinch.

"Chabot is fortunately unmarried. You have an eminently marriageable and very attractive sister. Have you not observed that Chabot is susceptible to the attraction? This may offer a means to save your fortune."

Smiling quietly upon their stupefaction, he snapped down the lid of his snuff-box with the thumb of one band, whilst with the other he bore the pinch to his nostrils.

Junius, his feet planted wide, his dark brows knit, stood glowering at him in silence. It was Emmanuel who first found his voice.

"Not that! Not little Léopoldine! Ah, that...that is too much. Too much!"

But de Batz paid no heed to him. He knew that decision lay with the elder brother, and that no merely emotional explosions from Emmanuel would influence it. He dusted some fragments of snuff from his cravat, and waited.

At last Junius growled a question. "Is Chabot in this? Have you discussed it with him?"

De Batz shook his head. "He is not even aware that the decree is to be demanded. And he should be kept in ignorance until you have him fast. That is why it is necessary to act quickly."

"Why should you suppose that he will agree?"

"I have seen the way he looks at your sister."

"The way he looks at her! That satyr! It's the way he looks at every woman. The result of a monastic education."

"But Léopoldine!" Emmanuel was complaining. "You could not contemplate it, Junius."

"Of course not. Besides, what could it avail us in the end? And we do not even know that Chabot desires a wife."

"The desire might be quickened." De Batz sat back in his chair, crossing his legs. "A dowry might determine the matter. It need not be exorbitant. Chabot's views of money are still comparatively modest. Say a couple of hundred thousand francs."

Junius exploded. His visitor must suppose that his supplies were inexhaustible. He had to pay here and pay there and pay everywhere. He could not move without paying. He was growing tired of it.

"If you let things take their course, you'll have no more troubles of that kind," said the sardonic de Batz. "After all, you must one day be marrying your sister, and you will have to provide her with a dowry. Could you possibly marry her to greater advantage than to one who is already almost the first man in France, and may soon stand firmly in that position? Think of your republican sentiments, my friend."

Suspecting mockery, Junius eyed him not without malevolence.

"But Chabot!" Emmanuel was bleating in horror. "Chabot!"

"Bah!" said Junius at length. "What, after all, can the marriage profit us? Shall we be foreigners any the less when it is made? Shall we be the less liable to these expropriations?"

De Batz smiled the smile of superior shrewdness. "Evidently you have not perceived the possibilities. It might, indeed, be that the brothers-in-law of a representative of Chabot's consequence would never be regarded as foreigners; that no legislation against foreign property could be understood to include theirs. This may come to be the case. But I have something more solid and assured for you."

"You will need to have, by Heaven!"

"Once your sister is married to Chabot, she, at least, will have ceased to be a foreigner. Marriage will bestow upon her the French nationality of her distinguished husband. Her funds will be in no danger of confiscation whatever happens. Do you see how simple it becomes? You transfer to her—to her and Chabot—all your possessions, and that is the end of your difficulties."

"The end of my difficulties!" Junius' deep voice went shrill in protest. "You tell me that will be the end of my difficulties! I am to make over all my property to my sister, to my sister and her husband Chabot, and that makes me safe, does it? But at that rate, my friend, I might as well suffer confiscation."

De Batz waved a hand to quiet him. "You assume too much. The transference I suggest need not amount to the surrender of a single franc. I have thought it out. In the marriage contract you enter into an engagement to pay Chabot's wife over a term of years certain sums which in the aggregate will amount to your total present possessions. Don't interrupt me, or we shall never be done. Such an engagement, absorbing all you possess, will leave nothing available for confiscation."

Junius could contain himself no longer. "You substitute one form of confiscation by another. Fine advice, as God lives!"

"I do nothing of the kind. Observe my words more closely. I say that you enter into an engagement to pay. I did not say that you actually pay."

"Oh! And the difference?"

"The engagement is of no effect. You engage to donate. Now a donation, under our existing laws, is valid only if formally accepted. Léopoldine being a minor has no legal power to accept. The donation must be accepted for her by a guardian or trustee. You will overlook this legal necessity, and you may rest assured that the omission will never be noticed. Whilst, then, leaving the donation without validity, so that neither Chabot nor your sister could ever claim fulfilment, it will, nevertheless, create the appearances necessary to place your fortune beyond the reach of confiscation. That, my good friends, is the way to save it. And it is the only way."

It was indeed, as Junius at last perceived. A guttural German oath was his intimation that the light of this revelation had momentarily dazzled him.

"Oh, but Léopoldine! My little Léopoldine!" Emmanuel was quavering in tearful protest.

Savagely Junius turned upon him. "Don't distract me with your bleating." He took a turn in the room, and came to a halt with his shoulders to the overmantel and the clock of Sèvres biscuit. The earlier gloom had passed from his face. There was a lively keenness in his dark eyes. Thoughtfully he stroked his long, pendulous nose. "It is the way. Undoubtedly it is the way," he muttered. "Oh, but one cannot hesitate to take it, provided that Chabot..."

"I will answer for Chabot. The prospect of so much wealth will bring him to your will. Be sure of that. If more is necessary remind him that the looseness of his frequent amours is putting a weapon into the hands of his enemies. The day of aristocratic vice is overpast. The people demands purity of life in its representatives. He must not lie exposed to scandal. It is time he sought refuge from it in matrimony. That is the second argument. The third is Léopoldine herself."

Junius nodded his big head. Emmanuel regarded him in distress without daring to protest again.

CHAPTER XXVIII

LÉOPOLDINE

The Baron de Batz came back to the Rue de Ménars, to find André-Louis in shirt sleeves, writing the closing words of his encomium on Chabot. He was in high spirits, the result of fruitful concentration.

"I have endowed François Chabot with all the virtues of Brutus, Cicero, and Lycurgus." There was a sparkle in the dark eyes, a flush on the lean face as he flung down his pen. "A great morning's work!"

But de Batz accounted his own labours of greater consequence. "Whilst you have been merely praising Chabot, I have been marrying him."

With a touch of pride he reported his transaction with the Freys. He was met by stark dismay.

"You have done this? Without consulting me?"

De Batz was not only disappointed of the praise for which he had looked; he was piqued.

"Without consulting you? Am I to consult you upon every step I take?"

"It would be more prudent, and more courteous. I have consulted you at every step."

There was argument upon this, and it began to assume a tone of acerbity. De Batz set himself to point out all the advantages which this marriage must bring to the campaign they were conducting. André-Louis broke in upon these indications.

"I know all that. I perceive it all. But the means! It is with the means that I am quarrelling. There is a limit to those we may employ. A limit imposed by decency, which no cynicism may overstep.

"On my soul, this comes well from you You shrink from cynicism? You? Why, what the devil ails you?"

"We'll play this game without using that unfortunate child as a pawn in it."

De Batz passed from amazement to amazement. "Of what account is she?"

André-Louis smote the table with his open palm. "She has a soul. I do not traffic in souls."

"I could tell you of others who possess souls. Others whom you hound relentlessly. Has Chabot no soul, or Delaunay, or Julien, or the Freys, or that fellow Burlandeux whom you sent to the guillotine without a twinge of conscience? Or Julie Berger, with whom you would have dealt in the same way?"

"Those persons are vile. I give them what they seek. Burlandeux wanted blood. He got it. His own. But why quibble? Will you compare the beasts we are engaged in exterminating with this poor inoffensive child?"

And now de Batz, remembering a moment in the courtyard of the Rue d'Anjou, broke into laughter and derision.

"I see, I see! The little partridge, as Chabot calls her, was to be preserved for you. I am sorry, my friend. But we are the servants of a cause that admits of no such personal considerations."

André-Louis came to his feet. He was white with anger. "Another word in this strain, and we quarrel, Jean."

Swift as lightning came the peppery Gascon's riposte: "That is a thing I never avoid."

Their breathing slightly quickened, they eyed each other with defiance whilst a man might count to twelve. André-Louis was the first to master himself. He turned aside.

"This way lies madness, Jean. It is not for you and me, surrounded as we are by dangers any one of which may at any moment send either of us to the guillotine, to set up a quarrel."

"The word was yours," said the Baron.

"Perhaps it was. You stung me with your imputation of base motives. It seemed an offence less against me than against someone who is to me an inspiration. To imply that I should be wanting in fidelity..." He broke off. De Batz was surveying him with a surprise that was faintly cynical. "It is the thought of her, who is pure and spotless, as I am sure is this poor child of the Freys, that makes the prospect horrible. If there were any such conspiracy against my Aline! I contemplate the agony to her, and grow the more conscious of the agony involved for little Léopoldine. She must not be a pawn in this game, Jean. She must not be a victim of our intrigues. She must not be part of the price at which we are to purchase the head of Chabot for the advancement of the House of Bourbon. We are on the fringe of infamy. And I will have no part in it, or countenance it."

De Batz heard him out with tightening lips and narrowing eyes, his Gascon temper roused by this unexpected opposition, this hostility to a piece of strategy in which he had been taking pride. But he curbed his feelings. As André-Louis had said, the circumstances surrounding them were too dangerous to admit of their quarrelling between themselves. The matter must be settled by argument. De Batz must adopt conciliation.

"No need to harangue me at such lengths, André. I am sorry if my thought offended you, and I am relieved that your interest in the girl is not personal. That would have been a serious obstacle."

"Not more serious than it is."

"Ah, wait. You have insufficiently considered. You have lost sight of the aim. Great ends are not to be served without sacrifice. If we are to let emotion or sentiment govern us, we should never have set our hands to this task. It is not for ourselves that we labour. We are here to rescue a whole people from damnation, to recover a throne for its rightful owners, and to bring back to France the best of her children who have been driven into exile. Are we to boggle over the sacrifice of an insignificant little foreign Jewess in the course of a scheme which may send a hundred heads to the guillotine? Can we be nice? Will you remember that we are kingmakers?"

André-Louis knew that there was no answer save on the grounds of sentiment. But so repugnant was the vision of that 'pure, innocent child being flung in prey to the loathsome, crapulous, blood-stained ex-capuchin, that André-Louis could not harden himself against it.

"It may all be as you say," he answered. "And yet this thing shall not be. It will recoil upon us. Evil will come of it. I have been ruthless, as you say. At moments my ruthlessness has left you aghast. But I am not ruthless enough for this. It is too foul."

Still de Batz kept a tight grip upon his restive patience. "Oh, I admit the foulness. But there are other foulnesses to be combated, to be avoided. We want no repetitions of the September massacres, and such horrors. For that you never hesitated to lay a train that will end in bringing a score of Girondin heads under the knife of the guillotine. They are fine heads, too. Yet you quibble about this child of no account. We cannot be selective in our means. This is the only certain way, and I have taken it."

"It is not the only way. Others would have been found as effective. It was only a question of patience."

"Patience! Patience, when the Queen is languishing, tortured and insulted in prison, and may at any moment be haled forth to trial and ignominious death, together with her children? Patience, when the little King of France is in the hands of assassins who are ill-treating him and brutalizing him? Don't you see that it is a race between us and the forces of evil that are at work to destroy those sacred members of the royal family? And you can talk of patience! You yield to gusty emotion over a negligible girl, to whom we do no worse wrong than thrust her into a wedlock to which she may at first be reluctant. Where is your sense of proportion, André?"

"In my conscience," he was fiercely answered. "I am not responsible for the sufferings of the Queen, and I..."

"You will be responsible for their protraction beyond what is necessary if you neglect any means to curtail them."

"The Queen herself would not desire her freedom, her safety, at this evil price."

"As a mother and a queen she must desire that of her children at any price."

"It remains that this price is one which my conscience will not suffer me to pay. It is idle to argue with me, Jean. I will not suffer it to be done."

"You will not suffer it? You?" And then, quite suddenly, de Batz broke into a laugh. He had seen something to which anger had been blinding him.

"You will not suffer it!" he cried yet again, but on an entirely different note, a note of unalloyed derision. "Prevent it then, my friend."

"That is my intention."

"And how will you accomplish it?"

"I shall go to the Freys at once."

"To ask for Léopoldine's hand in marriage for yourself? Not even so would you prevent it, unless you could inspire them with a faith in yourself greater than their faith in Chabot. Why, you fool, André! Do you dream that those avid Jews, faced with destitution and starvation unless they take prompt measures to entrench themselves, are going to allow any scruples about Léopoldine to check them? Faith You are amusing, do you know? You are moved to a tenderness for their sister greater than that which they feel themselves, and this with no intention to make her either your mistress or your wife. Do you begin to see that you are ridiculous?"

"It does not make me ridiculous simply to be less foul than those about me."

"In which you include me, no doubt. Well, well, I'll suffer it. I must allow something to your knight-errant's chagrin."

"I'll prevent it somehow, God helping me."

"It will tax your quixotry, short of murdering Chabot, which would merely bring you to the guillotine. You are beating your head against a wall of sentiment, mon petit. Leave it. Ours is a serious mission. Sacrifices there must be. At any moment we may be sacrificed ourselves. Does not that justify us of everything?"

"It cannot justify us of this. And I will have no part in it." He was vehement.

De Batz ill-humouredly shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

"So be it. There is no need why you should have part in it. The train is laid. Not all your efforts could now stamp it out. Salve your conscience with that. The rest will happen of itself."

It was true enough. It was happening even then. For in his panic Junius allowed no time to be lost. And Fate conspired with de Batz by sending Chabot to dine with the Freys that day after the sitting of the Convention.

Léopoldine was in her usual place at table, flushing and uncomfortable, her pudicity affronted by the increasingly ardent oglings of Chabot, her flesh creeping when he pawed her soft round arm and leered into her eyes as he called her his little partridge. Once before Emmanuel, observing this amorousness in the ex-capuchin, had proposed to his brother that Léopoldine should not be brought to table when Chabot was present, and Junius had been disposed to adopt the suggestion. But to-day things were different. Symptoms which previously had dismayed Emmanuel and annoyed Junius were now not welcomed.

When the meal was done, and Chabot sat back replete and at ease, his greasy reingote unbuttoned, Junius opened the attack. Léopoldine had gone about her household duties, and the three men sat alone. Emmanuel was nervous and fidgety. Junius stolid as an Eastern idol for all his inner anxieties.

"You have a housekeeper, Chabot."

"So I have," said Chabot with disgust.

"She is dangerous. You must get rid of her. One of these days she will sell you. She has been to demand a present from me, as the price of her silence upon our transactions with the corsairs. That is not a woman to retain about you."

Chabot was disturbed. He cursed her roundly and obscenely. She was a vile baggage; insolent and ill-natured. It was only wanting that she should turn blackmailer as well.

"But, after all, what can I do?"

"You can send her packing before she is in a position seriously to compromise you. Such a woman is unworthy of association with a republican of your integrity."

Chabot scratched his unkempt head and grunted. "All that is very true. Unfortunately the association has already gone rather far. You may not have observed that she is about to become a mother."

It was a momentary set-back for Junius. But only momentary.

"All the more reason to get rid of her."

"You don't understand. She asserts that I am the father of this future patriot."

"Is it true?" came the quavering voice of Emmanuel.

Chabot blew out his cheeks, and raised his shoulders; he inflated his chest. The impeachment was not one that in any case would have disturbed him. "I am like that. What use to inveigh against it? It is no more than human, I suppose. I was never built for celibacy."

"You should take a wife," said Junius sternly.

"I have thought about it."

"At the moment it would afford you a sound pretext for ridding yourself of that squinting beldame. You cannot keep a wife and a mistress under the same roof. Even the Berger must recognize that, and so she may be less vindictive than if you put her in the street for any other reason."

Chabot was scared. "But you've said that she is blackmailing you with her knowledge of that corsair transaction." He got up, upsetting his chair in his perturbation. "May God damn me, I knew I was engaging in a dangerous business. I should have sent you all to the devil before ever I—"

"Calm, man! Calm!" Junius thundered. "Was ever anything achieved by panic? Of what can she accuse you, after all? Are you so poorly regarded that the breath of a vindictive woman can blow you away? Where are her proofs of what she asserts? You have but to say that she lies, and the National Barber will do the rest. A little firmness, my friend. That is all you need. Show her plainly what will be the consequences of denouncing you."