Lord Tony's Wife (7 page)

‘His daughter!’ broke in Chauvelin with a sneer, and his pale, keen eyes had in them a spark of malicious mockery.

Martin-Roget made no immediate retort to the sneer. A curious hot flush had spread over his forehead and his ears, leaving his cheeks wan and livid.

‘What about the daughter?’ reiterated Chauvelin.

‘Yvonne de Kernogan has never seen Pierre Adet the miller’s son,’ replied the other curtly. ‘She is now the affianced wife of Martin-Roget the millionaire banker of Brest. To-night I shall persuade M. le duc to allow my marriage with his daughter to take place within the week. I shall plead pressing business in Holland and my desire that my wife shall accompany me thither. The duke will consent and Yvonne de Kernogan will not be consulted. The day after my wedding I shall be on board the Hollandia with my wife and father-in-law, and together we will be on our way to Nantes where Carrier will deal with them both.’

‘You are quite satisfied that this plan of yours is known to no one, that no one at the present moment is aware of the fact that Pierre Adet, the miller’s son, and Martin-Roget, banker of Brest, are one and the same?’

‘Quite satisfied,’ replied Martin-Roget emphatically.

‘Very well, then, let me tell you this, citizen,’ rejoined Chauvelin slowly and deliberately, ‘that in spite of what you say I am as convinced as that I am here, alive, that your real identity will be known–if it is not known already–to a gentleman who is at this present moment in Bath, and who is known to you, to me, to the whole of France as the Scarlet Pimpernel.’

Martin-Roget laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Impossible!’ he retorted. ‘Pierre Adet no longer exists…he never existed…much…Anyhow, he ceased to be on that stormy day in September, 1789. Unless your pet enemy is a wizard he cannot know.’

‘There is nothing that my pet enemy—as you call him–cannot ferret out if he has a mind to. Beware of him, citizen Martin-Roget. Beware, I tell you.’

‘How can I,’ laughed the other contemptuously, ‘if I don’t know who he is?’

‘If you did,’ retorted Chauvelin, ‘it wouldn’t help you…much. But beware of every man you don’t know; beware of every stranger you meet; trust no one; above all, follow no one. He is there when you lease expect him under a disguise you would scarcely dream of.’

‘Tell me who he is then–since you know him–so that I may duly beware of him.’

‘No,’ rejoined Chauvelin with the same slow deliberation, ‘I will not tell you who he is. Knowledge in this case would be a very dangerous thing.’

‘Dangerous? To whom?’

‘To yourself probably. To me and to the Republic most undoubtedly. No! I will not tell you who the Scarlet Pimpernel is. But take my advice, citizen Martin-Roget,’ he added emphatically, ‘go back to Paris or to Nantes and strive there to serve your country rather than run your head into a noose by meddling with things here in England, and running after your own schemes of revenge.’

‘My own schemes of revenge!’ exclaimed Martin-Roget with a hoarse cry that was like a snarl…It seemed as if he wanted to say something more, but that the words choked him even before they reached his lips. The hot flush died down from his forehead and his face was once more the colour of lead. He took up a log from the corner of the hearth and threw it with a savage, defiant gesture into the fire.

Somewhere in the house a clock struck nine.

V

Martin-Roget waited until the last echo of the gong had died away, then he said very slowly and very quietly:

‘Forgo my own schemes of revenge? Can you even remotely guess, citizen Chauvelin, what it would mean to a man of my temperament and of my calibre to give up that for which I have toiled and striven for the past four years? Think of what I was on that day when a conglomeration of adverse circumstances turned our proposed expedition against the chβteau de Kernogan into a disaster for our village lads, and a triumph for the duc. I was knocked down and crushed all but to death by the wheels of
Mlle.
de Kernogan’s coach. I managed to crawl in the mud and the cold and the rain, on my hands and knees, hurt, bleeding, half dead, as far as the presbytery of Vertou where the curι kept me hidden at risk of his own life for two days until I was able to crawl farther away out of sight. The curι did not know, I did not know then of the devilish revenge which the duc de Kernogan meant to wreak against my father. The news reached me when it was all over and I had worked my way to Paris with the few sous in my pocket which that good curι had given me, earning bed and bread as I went along. I was an ignorant lout when I arrived in Paris. I had been one of the ci-devant Kernogan’s labourers–his chattel, what?–little better or somewhat worse off than a slave. There I heard that my father had been foully murdered—hung for a crime which I was supposed to have committed, for which I had not even been tried. Then the change in me began. For four years I starved in a garret, toiling like a galley-slave with my hands and muscles by day and at my books by night. And what am I now? I have worked at books, at philosophy, at science: I am a man of education. I can talk and discuss with the best of those d–d aristos who flaunt their caprices and their mincing manners in the face of the outraged democracy of two continents. I speak English—almost like a native–and Danish and German too. I can quote English poets and criticize M. de Voltaire. I am an aristo, what? For this I have worked, citizen Chauvelin–day and night—oh! those nights! how I have slaved to make myself what I now am! And all for that one object—the sole object without which existence would have been absolutely unendurable. That object guided me, helped me to bear and to toil, it cheered and comforted me! To be even one day with the duc de Kernogan and with his daughter! to be their master! to hold them at my mercy!…to destroy or pardon as I choose!…to be the arbiter of their fate!…I have worked for four years: now my goal is in sight, and you talk glibly of forgoing my own schemes of revenge! Believe me, citizen Chauvelin,’ he concluded, ‘it would be easier for me to hold my right hand into those flames until it hath burned to a cinder than to forgo the hope of that vengeance which has eaten into my soul. It would hurt much less.’

He had spoken thus at great length, but with extraordinary restraint. Never once did he raise his voice or indulge in gesture. He spoke in even, monotonous tones, like one who is reciting a lesson; and he sat straight in front of the fire, his elbow on his knee, his chin resting in his hand and his eyes fixed upon the flames.

Chauvelin had listened in perfect silence. The scorn, the resentful anger, the ill-concealed envy of the fallen man for the successful upstart had died out of his glance. Martin-Roget’s story, the intensity of feeling betrayed in that absolute, outward clam had caused a chord of sympathy to vibrate in the other’s atrophied heart. How well he understood that vibrant passion of hate, that longing to exact an eye for an eye, an outrage for an outrage! Was not his own life given over now to just such a longing?—a mad aching desire to be even once with that hated enemy, that maddening, mocking, elusive Scarlet Pimpernel who had fooled and baffled him so often?

VI

Some few moments had gone by since Martin-Roget’s harsh, monotonous voice had ceased to echo through the low raftered room: silence had fallen between the two men–there was indeed nothing more to say; the one had unburthened his overfull heart and the other had understood. They were of a truth made to understand one another, and the silence between them betokened sympathy.

Around them all was still, the stillness of a mist-laden night; in the house no one stirred: the shutter even had ceased to creak; only the crackling of the wood fire broke that silence which soon became oppressive.

Martin-Roget was the first to rouse himself from this trance-like state wherein memory was holding such ruthless sway: he brought his hands sharply down on his knees, turned to look for a moment on his companion, gave a short laugh and finally rose, saying briskly the while:

‘And now, citizen, I shall have to bid you adieu and make my way back to Bath. The nags have had the rest they needed and I cannot spend the night here.’

He went to the door and opening it called a loud ‘Hallo, there!’

The same woman who had waited on him on his arrival came slowly down the stairs in response.

‘The man with the horses,’ commanded Martin-Roget peremptorily. ‘Tell him I’ll be ready in two minutes.’

He returned to the room and proceeded to struggle into his heavy coat, Chauvelin as before making no attempt to help him. He sat once more huddled up in the ingle-nook hugging his elbows with his thin white hands. There was a smile half scornful, but not wholly dissatisfied around his bloodless lips. When Martin-Roget was ready to go he called out quietly after him:

‘The Hollandia remember! At Portishead on the last day of the month. Captain K U Y P E R.’

‘Quite right,’ replied Martin-Roget laconically. ‘I’m not like to forget.’

He then picked up his hat and riding whip and went out.

VII

Outside in the porch he found the woman bending over the recumbent figure of his guide.

‘He be azleep, Mounzeer,’ she said placidly, ‘fast azleep, I do believe.’

‘Asleep?’ cried Martin-Roget roughly, ‘we’ll soon see about waking him up.’

He gave the man a violent kick with the toe of his boot. The man groaned, stretched himself, turned over and rubbed his eyes. The light of the swinging lanthorn showed him the wrathful face of his employer. He struggled to his feet very quickly after that.

‘Stir yourself, man,’ cried Martin-Roget savagely, as he gripped the fellow by the shoulder and gave him a vigorous shaking. ‘Bring the horse along now, and don’t keep me waiting, or there’ll be trouble.’

‘All right, Mounzeer, all right,’ muttered the man placidly, as he shook himself free from the uncomfortable clutch on his shoulder and leisurely made his way out of the porch.

‘Haven’t you got a boy or a man who can give that lout a hand with those sacrι horses?’ queried Martin-Roget impatiently. ‘He hardly knows a horse’s head from its tail.’

‘No, zir, I’ve no one to-night,’ replied the woman gently. ‘My man and my son they be gone down to Watchet to ‘elp with the cargo and the pack-‘orzes. They won’t be ‘ere neither till after midnight. But,’ she added more cheerfully, ‘I can straighten a saddle if you want it.’

‘That’s all right then—but…’

He paused suddenly, for a loud cry of ‘Hallo! Well! I’m…’ rang through the night from the direction of the rear of the house. The cry expressed both surprise and dismay.

‘What the–is it?’ called Martin-Roget loudly in response.

‘The ‘orzes!’

‘What about them?’

To this there was no reply, and with a savage oath and calling to the woman to show him the way Martin-Roget ran out in the direction whence had come the cry of dismay. He fell straight into the arms of his guide, who promptly set up another cry, more dismal, more expressive of bewilderment than the first.

‘They be gone,’ he shouted excitedly.

‘Who have gone?’ queried the Frenchman.

‘The ‘orzes!’

‘The horses? What in–do you mean?’

‘The ‘orzes have gone, Mounzeer. There was no door to the ztables and they be gone.’

‘You’re a fool,’ growled Martin-Roget, who of a truth had not taken in as yet the full significance of the man’s jerky sentences. ‘Horses don’t walk out of the stables like that. They can’t have done if you tied them up properly.’

‘I didn’t tie them up,’ protested the man. ‘I didn’t know ‘ow to tie the beastly nags up, and there was no one to ‘elp me. I didn’t think they’d walk out like that.’

‘Well! if they’re gone you’ll have to go and get them back somehow, that’s all,’ said Martin-Roget, whose temper by now was beyond his control, and who was quite ready to give the lout a furious thrashing.

‘Get them back, Mounzeer,’ wailed the man,’ ‘ow can I? In the dark, too. Besides, if I did come nose to nose wi’ ‘em I shouldn’t know ‘ow to get ‘em. Would you, Mounzeer?’ he added with bland impertinence.

‘I shall know how to lay you out, you satanι idiot,’ growled Martin-Roget, ‘if I have to spend the night in this hole.’

He strode on in the darkness in the direction where a little glimmer of light showed the entrance to a wide barn which obviously was used as a rough stabling. He stumbled through a yard and over a miscellaneous lot of rubbish. It was hardly possible to see one’s hand before one’s eyes in the darkness and the fog. The woman followed him, offering consolation in the shape of a seat in the coffee-room whereon to pass the night, for indeed she had no bed to spare, and the man from Chelwood brought up the rear—still ejaculating cries of astonishment rather than distress.

‘You are that careless, man!’ the woman admonished him placidly, ‘and I give you a lanthorn and all for to look after your ‘orzes properly.’

‘But you didn’t give me a ‘and for to tie ‘em up in their stalls, and give ‘em their feed. Drat ‘em! I ‘ate ‘orzes and all to do with ‘em.’

‘Didn’t you give ‘em the feed I give you for ‘em then?’

‘No, I didn’t. Think you I’d go into one o’ them narrow stalls and get kicked for my pains.’

‘Then they was ‘ungry, pore things,’ she concluded, ‘and went out after the ‘ay what’s just outside. I don’t know ‘ow you’ll ever get ‘em back in this fog.’

There was indeed no doubt that the nags had made their way out of the stables, in that irresponsible fashion peculiar to animals, and that they had gone astray in the dark. There certainly was no sound in the night to denote their presence anywhere near.

‘We’ll get ‘em all right in the morning,’ remarked the woman with her exasperating placidity.

‘To-morrow morning!’ exclaimed Martin-Roget in a passion of fury. ‘And what the d–l am I going to do in the meanwhile?’

The woman reiterated her offers of a seat by the fire in the coffee-room.

‘The men won’t mind ye, zir,’ she said, ‘heaps of ‘em are Frenchies like yourself, and I’ll tell ‘em you ain’t a spying on ‘em.’

‘It’s no more than five mile to chelwood,’ said the man blandly, ‘and maybe you get a better shakedown there.’

‘A five-mile tramp,’ growled Martin-Roget, whose wrath seemed to have spent itself before the hopelessness of his situation, ‘in the fog and gloom, and knee-deep in mud…There’ll be a sovereign for you, woman,’ he added curtly, ‘if you can give me a clean bed for the night.’