Scaramouche (42 page)

"They were betrothed, La Guiche."

La Guiche was flung into an agony of remorse. "André My poor André! I did not know, André. Forgive me. I did not know. I did not dream..."

In silence André-Louis made a gesture as of dismissal. But the Marquis remained rooted there, his hawk face twisted into lines of pain and anger.

"What a Prince to serve! What a Prince to die for What a consistence in his conduct! He could not come to join those who were fighting his battles in Toulon, because he could not leave the pursuit of the woman who belonged to the man who was fighting his battles here in Paris. There's princely gratitude Had I known all when in Hamm I should certainly have pistolled him."

He tossed his arms to the ceiling as if in a protest-to the heavens beyond it, then swung to the fire, and stood with hunched shoulders, staring gloomily into the heart of it.

De Batz crossed the room to set a hand affectionately, silently, upon André's bowed shoulders. But he had no words. His heart was sick within him. Not only was his grief deep and sincere, but he was profoundly annoyed that the news should have come to numb André-Louis' faculties at a time when he would need them all for the final task that now lay before them.

"André!" he said at last, very gently. "Courage, André!" André roused himself. "Go," he said quietly. "Go, both of you."

De Batz looked at him, then looked across at La Guiche, who had turned his, head. He signed to him, and together they quietly went out, leaving André-Louis alone with his sorrow.

CHAPTER XLIII

ON THE BRIDGE

De Batz spent the morning at the Tuileries with the Citizen Sevignon, as La Guiche was known to those with whom he had any acquaintance there. They employed the time in doing what was possible to influence the release of the Chevalier de Pomelles. But their efforts promised little success. Lavicomterie, upon whom de Batz was chiefly depending, pronounced the case a dangerous one in which to meddle. The evidence before the Committee of Public Safety was, he understood, of an overwhelming nature, and it had been examined by Saint-Just, whose bloodthirst would hardly suffer the unfortunate agent's escape. Still, cautiously, Lavicomterie would see what could be done.

Sénard, the secretary of the committee, that other valuable secret associate of the Baron's, also promised to do anything that might be safely possible. But in his view, as in Lavicomterie's, Saint-Just was the insurmountable obstacle.

"Well, well!" said de Batz. "At least delay Pomelles' trial. We shall see what the next few days will bring forth."

To La Guiche, as they stepped down into the chill damp of the gardens, he was more explicit. "If we can gain a few days all should be well, for in a few days the obstacle will have been removed."

Nevertheless, it was in no state of elation that the two came back to the Rue-de-Ménars for the mid-day meal. They found André-Louis seated before the fire, which was now burning low, his foot upon the brass fender, his elbow on his knee, his chin in his hand. He turned his head, and showed them a face that was grey and drawn with pain, the face of a man who had suddenly aged. Having seen who came he resumed his contemplation of the fire.

De Batz went to set a hand upon his shoulder. "Come, André. Leave brooding. I know it hurts. But you must take heart. There are things to do that will shift your thoughts from your own wrongs. That will help."

"There is nothing more for me to do. I have finished."

"That is what you feel now. The blow is heavy. But your youth will lend you the strength to bear it. Turn your mind to other things. Oh, I know my world, André. I am a deal older than you, and I have not lived quite in vain, or without coming into some knowledge of the human heart. Distraction is what you need, and there is no distraction like work."

André-Louis stared up at him and laughed. It was an expression of pain. "Work? What work?"

"Why, the work that lies before us. I have sent for Desmoulins, he should have been here by now. When he comes—"

André-Louis interrupted him.

"I have finished, I tell you. Finished with kingmaking."

"Faith," said La Guiche, "I should feel the same in his case." De Batz wed slowly away, his chin on his breast. At the window he turned. He sighed.

"If this infernal news had reached us before his work was done at Blérancourt..." He spread his hands, his face expressive.

"It would have been disastrous to the cause of his highness the Regent, would it not?" said André-Louis.

"Naturally," said the Marquis. "And I should not have blamed you."

André-Louis took his foot from the fender, and slewed round in his chair.

"I am glad to hear you say that, La Guiche."

"Glad?" quoth de Batz, who did not like either the young man's tone, or his expression. "Do you mean something, André?"

"If I ever meant anything." He paused, then added "Desmoulins has been here in your absence, Jean, and he has gone again."

"You gave him the documents. Good. No time need be lost. What did he say? Wasn't he elated?"

"I did not mention the matter."

"But then..." de Batz checked, frowning. "You didn't give him the documents? But don't you realize the danger of keeping them? At any moment Saint-Just may hear from Blérancourt."

André-Louis laughed again, that odd, hard, mirthless laugh. "On that score at least you need have no anxiety. He will find nothing. There are the documents, Jean." And he pointed to a heap of black ashes that lay on the narrow hearth, half-concealed by the fender.

The Baron came forward, staring as if the eyes would drop from his head. He fetched out a rough oath in a voice suddenly hoarse. "Do you mean that you have burnt them? That you have burnt the proofs? The fruit of all that labour?"

"It surprises you?" André-Louis rose, thrusting back his chair.

"Not me!" said La Guiche.

De Batz swung upon the Marquis, his face purple.

"But—my God!—do you realize what he has burnt? He has burnt the evidence that would have sent Saint-Just to the guillotine and brought down the Robespierrists in execration. He has burnt the cause. That is what he has burnt. He has destroyed the labour of months; rendered fruitless everything that we have done." He checked, and turned again, raging, to André-Louis. "Oh, it is impossible! You haven't done this. You couldn't have done it. You dared not do it. You are fooling me. You thought of it perhaps, and you are making me realize the vengeance that you might have taken."

Coldly André-Louis answered him. "I am telling you what I have done."

De Batz was trembling from head to foot in his anger. He raised his clenched fist, and held it poised a moment, as if about to strike André-Louis. Then he let it fall heavily to his side again.

"You scoundrel! Those papers were not yours to destroy. They belonged to the cause."

"My betrothed was not his to destroy. She belonged to me."

"God of Heaven! You'll drive me mad. Your betrothed! Your betrothed and the Regent! What is either of them when the fate of a nation is at issue? Is only the Regent concerned in this!"

"The Regent or his family," said André-Louis. "It is all one to me."

"All one to you, you fool! Is it all one to you that a cause, the monarchy itself, was at stake?"

"The monarchy means the House of Bourbon. I have not served the House of Bourbon one half so vilely as the House of Bourbon has served me. The harm that I have done to the House of Bourbon may be repaired. The harm that a member of it, the very one for whom I laboured and risked my life, has done to me can never be repaired. Could I continue in his service after this?"

"To leave his service was your right," said La Guiche quietly, sadly, "but not to destroy that which was not strictly yours."

"Not strictly mine? Did I not discover and collect those documents? Did I not hourly risk detection and imperil my neck in doing it, so that I might make kings for France out of such base scoundrels as this Comte de Provence? And you say they are not strictly mine? Mine or not, they are destroyed. It is finished."

Stricken by anger and despair, de Batz could only inveigh.

"And so in a fit of spite, you villain, you wreck all our hopes in the very moment of success. You render vain all that has been done, wasted all the lives that have been sacrificed Chabot, Delaunay, Julien and the rest. The Freys, and even little Léopoldine. The little Léopoldine about whom you were so tender. All just waste. Oh, my God! Everything sacrificed on the altar of your damned resentment. All because—"

"Oh, have done!" rasped André-Louis. "I've heard enough. When you are calmer, perhaps you will understand."

"What will I understand? Your villainy?"

"The agony that inspired me." He passed a hand wearily across his brow. "Jean," he said hoarsely, "if any consideration could have restrained me, it must have been the thought of what this would mean to you. But it did not occur to me at the time. We have been good comrades, Jean. I am sorry it should end thus."

"You may take your regrets to Hell," said de Batz. "And that is where I wish you." He paused merely so as to brace himself to continue: "This is what comes of putting faith in a man who is without loyalties to any but himself, a man who is now a royalist, now a revolutionary, now a royalist again, as suits his own personal ends; just consistent only in that all the time he is Scaramouche. As God's my witness, I marvel that I don't kill you for what you have done." With infinite contempt he repeated: "Scaramouche!" And on the word, he struck André-Louis hard across the face with his open hand.

Instantly La Guiche was at his side, seizing his arm, restraining him, interposing himself between them.

André-Louis, his breathing quickened, the impression of the Baron's fingers showing faintly red upon the livid pallor of his face, smiled faintly.

"It is no matter, La Guiche. No doubt he is as right by his own lights as I am by mine."

But this only served to feed the Gascon's furious temper.

"You'll turn the other cheek, will you? You mealy-mouthed moralist! You cheap-jack philosopher. Get you back to your theatre, you clown. Go!"

"I go, de Batz. I could have wished that we had parted otherwise. But it's no matter. I'll keep the blow, in memory of you." He stepped past him, to the door. "Good-bye, La Guiche."

"A moment, Moreau," the Marquis cried. "Where are you going?"

But André-Louis did not answer him, the truth being that he did not know. He stumbled out, and closed the door. From a peg in the passage he took down his cloak and hat and sword, and with these passed out, and descended the stairs.

In the courtyard below he was arrested. As he issued from the house, a man in a heavy coat and a round hat was entering by the porte-cochere followed by two municipals. It hardly required that escort to announce the police spy. He stood in the path of André-Louis, scrutinizing him.

"You lodge here, citizen? What is your name?"

"André-Louis Moreau, agent of the Committee of Public Safety."

This man, however, was not intimidated by the description. "Your card?"

André-Louis produced it. The fellow looked at it, and nodded to his municipals. "You are my man. Order for your arrest." He waved a paper under André-Louis' nose.

"The charge?" inquired André-Louis, momentarily taken aback.

The man turned on his heel contemptuously. Over his shoulder, as he retreated, he spoke to his men. "Fetch him along."

André-Louis asked no further questions, offered no protest. He had no doubt of the explanation. News had come to Saint-Just from Blérancourt, and the representative had been quick to act. And the papers which by now should have been in the hands of Desmoulins, the papers with which he could have paralysed all action on the part of Saint-Just, and by the production of which he could have justified his unauthorized activities at Blérancourt, were just a heap of ashes over which de Batz was no doubt still raging above stairs.

If it was matter for anything, thought André-Louis, it was matter for laughter. And he laughed. His world had crumbled about him.

They marched him across the Tuileries' Gardens, along the quay, over the Pont Neuf to the Conciergerie. In the porters' lodge they searched him. They found upon him besides a watch and some assignats, to the value of perhaps a thousand livres, nothing of worth or consequence. These effects were restored to him, and he was marched away by dark, vaulted, stone-flagged passages below stairs to a solitary cell where they left him to meditate upon the imminent and abrupt ending of his odd career.

If he meditated upon it, he did so without dismay. There was such pain in his heart, such numbness in his mind that he could contemplate his end with complete indifference.

In a curious detachment he reviewed now the work he had done in Paris since that June morning which had seen the fall of the Girondins. It was not nice. It was all rather sordid. In his kingmaking he had pursued the tactics of the agent provocateur. It was ignoble. But at least it was appropriate in that it was done in the service of an ignoble prince. It would be best to end it all, to sleep, and to be free at last. Of Aline he sternly endeavoured not to think at all, since he could not bear the image which the thought of her brought to stand before his mental eyes.

Late that night as he sat in the dark the key grated in his door. It opened, and in the yellow light of a lantern, two men stood framed in the doorway. One took the lantern from the other, spoke some words, entered, and closed the door. He came forward, and set the lantern on the soiled deal table. He was a slender, elegant young man with the face of an Antinous under a cluster of golden hair. His eyes were large, liquid and tender, but as they looked upon André-Louis who sat unmoved, the lines of the handsome face were stern. It was Saint-Just.

"So you are the rogue who went to play comedy at Blérancourt?" He spoke on a note of quiet derision.

Something of the old spirit of Scaramouche flared up from that dejected soul.

"I am rather a good comedian, don't you think, my dear Chevalier."

Saint-Just frowned, annoyed by the title. Then he faintly smiled as he shook his golden head. "Not good enough for comedy. I hope you'll play tragedy better. The stage is set for you on the Place de la Revolution. The play is The National Barber."

"And you are the author, I suppose. But there may be a part there for you, too, before very long, in a play called 'Poetic Justice' or 'The Biter Bit.'"