Scaramouche (41 page)

"Premonition? Bah! Leave premonitions to old wives, and let's to supper. I've a couple of bottles of a Gascony wine that's as big a braggart as I am. It will paint the future a bright rose for you."

But proof was fast approaching that this evil premonition was anything but idle, that this dejection in the hour of triumph was justified by facts. The bearer of it was the Marquis de La Guiche, who had reached Paris that same evening.

CHAPTER XLII

PRINCELY GRATITUDE

De la Guiche arrived at the Rue-de-Ménars at nine o'clock on the following morning, whilst de Batz and André-Louis, having broken their fast, still sat at table discussing the immediate measures to be taken. A message had been dispatched to Camille Desmoulins begging him to come at once, so that André-Louis might acquaint him with the famous note which he had prepared, and determine with him, and perhaps with Danton as well, what form of publication it should be given; whether it should appear as an article in the Vieux Cordelier, or form the basis of a denunciation to be launched from the tribune of the Convention.

The unexpected arrival of La Guiche took them by surprise, and created a momentary diversion of their thoughts from this all-engrossing topic. De Batz sprang forward to embrace this oldest of his associates, who latterly and for so long had been absent from his side, serving the cause of the monarchy in other regions.

"La Guiche! Wherever you spring from, you could not be more opportune. You come in the very nick of time to lend a hand in the triumph of our long endeavours. What good angel sent you?"

The warmth of the welcome momentarily broke La Guiche's solemnity. A thin smile crossed the white hawk-face, but was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

"I see that you haven't heard," he said.

The gravity of his countenance, the dejection in his eyes, gave pause to both of them.

"Heard what?" asked de Batz.

"Pomelles was arrested late last night by order of the Committee of Public Safety. His papers have been seized. If I had arrived in Paris an hour earlier I might have been taken with him, for my first visit was to Bourg-Egalité to report events abroad. I am from Brussels."

He loosened and removed his cloak, and bestowed it on a chair together with his conical hat which was adorned by a tricolour cockade. He stood forth, tall, slim, and elegant in a wine-coloured frock, buckskins and boots, his lustrous bronze hair tied in a ribbon of black silk.

De Batz stood before him momentarily dismayed and shaken. He was thinking quickly, anxiously watched by both his companions. Then, characteristically, he shrugged.

"Bad luck for Pomelles. It's the fortune of war. Who embarks on these enterprises must be prepared to leave his head in them. I always have been, God knows. But I've moved more carefully than old Pomelles. I often warned him that he did not take enough precautions. His continued immunity was increasing his carelessness, and now..." He shrugged again and spread his hands. "Poor devil!"

"The fact is," said La Guiche grimly, "nothing prospers with us. Toulon has fallen."

"That is stale news. We have known it for over three weeks, and we've grown reconciled. If Toulon has fallen, the royalist rising in the Vendee has gathered impetus. The loss in one place has been more than counterbalanced in the other."

But La Guiche was not disposed to optimism. "If I am a judge at all, the stand in the Vendee will end like that of Toulon and every other stand that has been made for the House of Bourbon."

"There's no reason for that fear," cut in André-Louis. "And anyway there's a stand to be made here in Paris that can hardly fail." Briefly he sketched the situation for La Guiche.

The newcomer's countenance brightened a little as he listened. "Faith! That's the first really good news I've heard in weeks. The first ray of light in all this gloom."

He pulled up a chair and sat down by the fire, spreading one of his fine hands to the blaze. The January morning was sharp. There had been a frost in the night, and the sun had not yet dispelled the chill mists that hung upon the city.

"There is nothing among Pomelles' papers, I suppose, that would incriminate you?"

De Batz shook his head. "Nothing. Pomelles was d'Entragues' man. I work independently. I should never, have kept my head so long had it been otherwise."

"Can you do nothing for this poor devil, Jean? He is an old friend of mine, and he's done stout service. I would gladly take a risk for him."

"Perhaps. It is possible that I could buy him off. I've bought off so many. But nearly all the Conventionals who worked with me are awaiting the guillotine at this moment. Still there's Lavicomterie, and there's L'Huillier, who is on the Committee of Public Safety. I'll see them at the Tuileries to-day, and try to enlist their help."

He sat down. André-Louis followed his example, speaking as he drew out a chair from the table. "It's bad luck. A few more days and there would have been no more question of arresting him. Yes. It's bad luck."

"Bad luck, as you say," the Marquis agreed from where he sat facing the other two. "But we have the luck that we deserve. Which is to say, not luck at all, but the natural effect of the causes that we provide." He spoke with a singular bitterness that provoked from de Batz a sharp denial.

"Ah, that no. I'll not suffer you to say it. Fate has fooled us rather mischievously at moments. But our endeavours have deserved well."

"Oh, I am not speaking of you and your loyal band here in Paris. I am thinking of that fat fool in Hamm.

"My God, La Guiche! You are speaking of the Regent."

"Who may one day be King. I am well aware of it."

De Batz frowned, between annoyance and perplexity. "You haven't turned sansculotte by any chance?"

"I've been tempted to do so ever since the fall of Toulon." André-Louis shared the Baron's impatience.

"Toulon! Toulon! You have it on the brain. Do you deny that we were ill served by fortune there?"

"I do. We were ill served by the Comte de Provence. I place the responsibility for that defeat upon him."

"Upon him? Oh, this is madness!"

La Guiche curled his lip. "Madness, is it? Do you know the facts? Do you know that for months the defenders of Toulon clamoured for the presence of the Prince. They desired him at their head. Message after message was sent to him by Maudet, urging him, beseeching him to come; representing to him how his presence would stimulate those who had raised the royal standard for him."

"But he went in the end," said André-Louis.

"He set out to go. When it was too late. Even then I believe that he set out only because I shamed him into it. He started for Toulon at the very moment when weary of resistance, the royalists were about to own defeat. Discouraged by the indifference to their heroism and sufferings shown by the continual absence of the head of the house on whose behalf they sacrificed themselves, their will to conquer had gradually left them."

Still de Batz loyally defended his Prince. "It may not have been possible for him to leave Hamm before. How can you judge?"

"Because it happens that I know. A woman kept the Regent in Hamm. The pursuit of a banal amour was of more consequence to that sluggish imbecile than his duty or all the blood that was being shed for him."

"Are you mad, La Guiche!"

La Guiche smiled weary contempt. "Not now. I was almost mad when I made the discovery. But I have since come to realize that the cause is greater than the man; that the cause is all; the man nothing. Because of this I have but one regret. That I did not pistol him when I found out what kept him from his sacred duty. It was neither more nor less than dishonouring rumour proclaimed it. Whilst that loyal band was bleeding to death for him in Toulon, he was retained in Hamm by nothing more than the soft embraces of Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. With her he consoled himself for the faithlessness of Madame de Balbi, of whom it is reported in Brussels that she has taken a Russian lover."

With a last angry shrug the Marquis stewed round in his chair to face the fire, and again held out his hands to the blaze.

In the room behind him the silence was unnatural. The other two seemed scarcely to draw breath. For some moments the only sound was the soft ticking of the Sévres clock on the overmantel, marking the hour of half-past nine. De Batz felt as if a hand had suddenly clutched his heart. He sat rigidly, staring straight before him, afraid to turn his head lest he should see the face of André-Louis, who sat just out of arm's length on his right.

As for André-Louis, he had jerked himself bolt upright at the mention of Aline's name. He sat now, as if carved of wood or marble, his face, indeed, of a marble pallor.

Thus for half a dozen heart-beats. Then the Marquis, growing conscious of that uncanny stillness, turned, and, puzzled, looked from one to the other of them.

"What the devil ails you?"

The question dissolved the bonds that had pinioned André-Louis. He rose, and stood very straight and stiff. He spoke slowly, his tone cold and incisive.

"An evil tongue is the flag of a cruel heart. I have listened to you in growing disbelief, Monsieur le Marquis. The last foul lie you uttered proves the worthlessness of all the rest."

And now both La Guiche and de Batz were on their feet as well, the Baron nervous for once in his life. La Guiche curbed his quick temper by an effort.

"Moreau, you must be out of your senses. These are not terms that I will suffer any man to employ towards me."

"I am aware of it. You have a remedy."

De Batz thrust himself forward, so that he could stop the rush of either of them.

"What's this? What's this? Mordiou! This is no time for private quarrels amongst ourselves. We have a cause to serve..."

André-Louis interrupted him. "I have other things to serve as well, Jean. There is something that I set even above the cause. The honour of Mademoiselle de Kercadiou, which this liar has besmirched."

La Guiche took a step forward.

"Ah that, Parbleu! There may be a revolution in France. But not all the revolutions in the world—"

"Quiet, in the name of God!" The Baron's grip was upon the arm of the Marquis. "Listen a moment, both of you. Listen, I say! La Guiche, you do not understand. You do not know what you have said."

"Not know what I have said?" La Guiche looked down his nose at him. "A thousand devils, Jean! Am I an evil tongue as he has called me? Am I a man lightly to slur a woman's honour?"

"It is what you have proved yourself," barked André-Louis, the eyes blazing in his bloodless face.

And de Batz anxiously, to cover that fresh provocation, ran on: "You have listened to tales, to gossip, to scandal which is ever about the name of a prince, which—"

"Listened to scandal, you fool? Should I monger scandal? I speak to what I know. This tale, this scandal was current in Toulon when I was there. Because of it, because of the harm it was doing Monsieur's cause, Maudet dispatched me to Hamm, to inform Monsieur, so that he might come at once before it was too late to save even his honour. There I taxed d'Entragues with it, and d'Entragues could not deny it. But that is not all. I demanded to be taken instantly before the Regent. In my indignation I would not be denied. I was taken, and I surprised him in the arms of his woman. I saw him, I tell you, with these eyes. Do I make myself plain? I found him in the arms of Mademoiselle de Kercadiou, in Mademoiselle's room at the Bear Inn, whither I was conducted."

De Batz loosed his arm, and fell back uttering a groan of despair. He looked at André-Louis, and pity smote him at the sight of the young man's face.

"You say that you saw...that you saw..." André-Louis could not utter the words. The voice that had been so cold and hard broke suddenly. "Oh, my God! My God! Is this true, La Guiche? Is this true?"

The sudden change from anger to grief, from menace to pleading, bewildered the Marquis. He put aside his own indignation to answer solemnly.

"As God's my witness, it is true. Should I swear away a woman's honour?"

André-Louis continued to stare at him for a moment. Then he covered his white face with trembling hands, his knees were loosened, and he sank down upon his chair again. Recollection had supplied something to confirm this dreadful story. His thoughts flashed back to Coblentz. Again Madame de Balbi stood before him in that room of the Three Crowns, warning him against Monsieur's interest in Aline, and against Madame's intention of taking Aline with her to Turin. He remembered words almost heated that had passed between Aline and himself when she had censured him for endangering the esteem which his highness showed her. And he, poor fool, had never drawn the obvious inference from that heat. He remembered that scene in the Prince's room at Hamm when Monsieur had slighted his brother so as to remove all obstacles to André-Louis' departure for Paris with de Batz. He reviewed it all in the revealing light of La Guiche's terrible disclosure, and perceived that here was the reason why in all these months Aline had never written, why she had ignored his last and so insistent prayer to send him just two lines in her own hand. And there was more.

He sat there, a man in agony, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.

"That slug!" he sobbed. "That obscene, gross slug crawl upon my pure white lily!"

La Guiche recoiled, a sudden horror on his face. His questioning glance asked unnecessary confirmation of de Batz, and de Batz unnecessarily confirmed.