‘My dear,’ he said, on a note of romantic sorrow, ‘what purpose can it serve to deny my identity?’
‘But — —’ she began, and there she checked. Something compelling in her preserver’s glance interrupted her, and imposed — almost seemed to beg — silent acquiescence. And meanwhile there was Sir Henry sneering.
‘No purpose at all, sir. You very foolishly left the gentleman’s letter behind you, Mary. It only remains for you to tell me whether you are yet married, whether this’ — and he waved a slender hand towards the table from which they had risen— ‘was the wedding feast which we so inconsiderately interrupt?’
‘We are not, sir,’ said the captain, and, remembering what she had told him, added, ‘We were to have been married at Guildford.’
‘I remember that you mentioned it in your letter, Mr Lake. I am relieved by the tense you employ. It is very well for you, sir, that you can place it in the subjunctive and conditional perfect. My dear — —’ He crooked his arm, and proffered it to his ward, with something between mockery and command. Then, melting a little from his sarcastic haughtiness, ‘Come, child,’ he added, ‘you shall yet come to thank me for saving you in time from this broken gamester.’
‘Ay, ay; but are ye sure that you can take his word for’t?’ broke in the bustling little sheriff. ‘I’ve been bubbled once today, when I should have been able to put my hand on that rascal Evans — —’
‘I am sure that I can take hers,’ Sir Henry interrupted. He stood squarely before his errant ward, and looked into her pale face with its troubled eyes, that were now aswim with tears. ‘Tell me, Mary — in a word, yes or no — are you married to him?’
‘No,’ she faltered. ‘I am not.’
‘That is enough, then. Let us be going.’
‘Faith, it may be enough for you, Sir Henry,’ quoth the officious Blount, ‘but it is not enough for me. Abduction is a serious crime, Mr Lake, as you shall learn. Fetch him along, my lads,’ he bade his men. ‘We’ll lodge him snugly in Guildford Gaol for tonight. He’s a poor substitute for Captain Evans, but we’ll take him along.’
At that she flung away from her guardian’s arm, and came running to her preserver, fear, misery, and bewilderment all blending in the appealing eyes lifted to him.
‘Oh, why — —’ she was beginning, when again he checked her.
‘Believe me, my dear, Sir Thomas knows his business. Protests would never avail to turn him aside from it. He is, as you observe, a very conscientious and perspicacious gentleman. Pray let him have his way without waste of words. Good-bye!’
He bore her hand to his lips, and felt it tremble almost convulsively in his grasp. More than his actual words, his glance, so pregnant with a meaning that she could not read, commanded her silence, and — whatever else might baffle her — made her realize that this was the course which he desired that things should take.
And so they parted, she to return to Petersfield in her guardian’s coach, he to be haled away a prisoner in a hired chaise to Guildford. Until they had left Godalming behind them, it had been his dread lest Sir Thomas should summon and question the postboy who had driven him that morning. Fortunately, the bustling sheriff neglected that detail as of no account, never conceiving that the postboy’s story could do other than confirm the matter which the runaways themselves did not attempt to deny.
Captain Evans spent the night in Guildford Gaol, wondering where exactly his knight-errantry would land him. He was visited on the following morning by the sheriff. Sir Thomas was not in the best of humours.
‘You are in luck, Mr Lake,’ he said sourly.
‘I’ve not yet perceived it,’ said the captain.
‘But you will. I cannot proceed against you unless Sir Henry Woodbridge prosecutes, and Sir Henry declines to do so.’
The captain sighed relief.
‘That’s vastly kind of him.’
‘Kind! He doesn’t do it to be kind to you, sir. He declines to prosecute because he realizes that to do so would be to blow upon the fair fame of his ward, Miss Helston. Out of consideration for the lady he must forgo demanding upon you the punishment you deserve. It was a fortunate thing for you, my lad, that he overtook you in time to prevent the marriage. If he had found her your wife, I believe she would have been your widow by now. Sir Henry can be mighty hot, for all his cool ways. Remember that, sir, and let it serve as a warning to you in the future. And now be off. I’ve work to do. I’ve to be on the heels of that damned tobyman Evans, who gave me the slip yesterday, and you’re partly to blame for that.’
‘Oh, Sir Thomas!’ cried the captain, and his tone was pained. ‘I swear you do me an injustice there. It’s no fault of mine if you didn’t gaol your highwayman.’
‘It will be if you keep me talking here,’ snapped Sir Thomas, and on that departed.
Captain Evans went off in a hired chaise to Godalming once more, and there sought his brother Will at the Black Boar. His arrival startled Will out of the deep dejection into which he had sunk, and he came to his feet with an oath at sight of his brother.
‘How did you escape?’ he cried.
‘Escape?’ echoed the captain. It was impossible that Will should have knowledge of his adventure. ‘Escape what?’
‘The trap that was laid for you at Petersfield.’
‘Trap! Was it a trap?’
‘Of course it was. That scoundrel Tim had sold you to the sheriff, and his men were waiting for you until night at the Fox and Hounds. Indeed, for all I know, they may be waiting for you still. Gadslife, Tom, I’d forsaken all hope of ever seeing you again. Where have you been?’
‘With the sheriff,’ says the captain.
‘With the sheriff?’
‘Ay — Sir Thomas Blount. I slept at Guildford Gaol, and parted from him there two hours ago. Let me explain.’
‘I confess it’s necessary.’
The captain told his story. ‘So that, you see,’ he ended, ‘what time the sheriff and his men were waiting to take me, there was I safely hidden in the sheriff’s own hands. Humorous, wasn’t it?’
But Will was blind to the humour of it. He looked reproachfully at his brother.
‘I suppose this ninny of a runaway girl beglamoured you, till you nearly lost your neck in the business.’
‘‘Pon my soul, Will, that’s ungracious, seeing that she saved me.’
‘Saved you? Pshaw! If you hadn’t allowed her to get you into danger there would have been no need for her to have saved you. You’re an incorrigible sentimentalist.’
‘I admit it. But it’s been the salvation of me this time. And you’re not to suppose that I neglected business completely. You’ll remember that I came off with Mr Lake’s coat.’
‘Oh, Lake’s coat!’ sneered Will.
The captain dropped a bag of soft leather on the table. It squelched down with a melodious chink.
‘There’s fifty guineas in that; it was in one of his pockets. And here’s a snuff-box — a pretty thing of gold and brilliants worth at least half as much. I thought I’d like it as a keepsake. Perhaps I am a sentimentalist.’
Will was mollified.
‘But you’ve nothing of the girl’s,’ he complained.
‘Nothing — tangible,’ said the captain, and sighed. ‘After all, you’re no doubt right. I am an incorrigible sentimentalist. I must be.’ And he sighed again.
DUROC
Duroc came down the Rue de la Harpe so stealthily that his steps scarcely made a sound. He moved like a shadow, and when at last he came to a halt before the house of the Citizen Representative Clairvaux it was as if he had totally effaced himself, as if he had become part of the general gloom.
There he paused considering, his chin in his hand; and perhaps because the ground-floor windows were equipped with bars, he moved on more stealthily than ever along the garden wall. Midway between two of the lanterns slung across the narrow street and shedding a feeble yellow light he paused again.
He stood now at a point wh
ere the shadows were deepest. He listened intently for a moment, peered this way and that into the night, and then went over the wall with the swift silent activity of an ape. He found the summit of that wall guarded by a row of iron spikes, and on one of these, for all his care, Duroc left a strip of his breeches.
The accident annoyed him. He cursed all /chevaux de frise/, pronouncing them a damnably aristocratic institution to which no true patriot could be guilty of having recourse. Indeed from the manner in which the Citizen Representative Clairvaux guarded his house it was plain to Duroc that the fellow was a bad republican. What with bars on its windows and spikes on its walls, the place might have been a prison rather than the house of a representative of the august people. Of course, as Duroc well knew, the Citizen Representative had something to guard. It was notorious that this modest dwelling of his in the Rue de la Harpe was something of a treasure-house, stored with the lootings of many a /ci-devant/ nobleman’s property, and it was being whispered that no true patriot — and a Citizen Representative into the bargain — could have suffered himself to amass such wealth in the hour of the nation’s urgent need.
Duroc advanced furtively across the garden, scanning the silent, sleeping house. Emboldened by the fact that no light or faintest sign of vigilance showed anywhere, he proceeded so adroitly that within five minutes he had opened a window and entered a room that was used by the deputy as his study.
Within that room he stood quite still, and listened. Save for the muffled ticking of a clock no sound disturbed the silence. He turned and very softly drew the heavy curtains across the window. Then he sat down upon the floor, took a small lantern from his breast and a tinder-box from his waistcoat pocket. There was the sharp stroke of steel on flint, and presently his little lantern was shedding a yellow disc of light upon the parquetry floor.
He rose softly, placed the light on a console, and crossed the room to the door which stood half open. He listened again a moment then closed the door and came back, his feet making no sound upon the thick and costly rugs that were flung here and there.
In mid-chamber he paused, looking about him, and taking stock of his luxurious surroundings. He considered the painted panels, the inlaid woods, the gilded chairs and the ormolu-encrusted cabinets — all plundered from the hotels of /ci-devants/ who were either guillotined or in flight, and he asked himself if it was in this sybaritic fashion that it became a true republican to equip his home.
He was a short, slender man, this Duroc, whose shabby brown garments looked the worse for the rent in his breeches. He wore a fur bonnet, and his lank black hair hung in wisps about his cheeks and neck. His face was white and wolfish, the jaw thrust forward and ending in a lean square chin; his vigilant quick-moving eyes were close-set and beady as a rat’s; his thin lips were curled now in a sneer as he considered the luxury about him.
But that attitude of his was momentary. Duroc had not come there to make philosophy but to accomplish a purpose, and to this he addressed himself forthwith. He took up his lantern, and crossed to a tall secretaire that was a very gem of the court-finisher’s art in the days of Louis XIV. Setting the lantern on top of it, he drew from his pocket a bunch of skeleton keys, gripping them firmly so that they should not rattle. He stooped to examine the lock, and then on the instant came upright again, stiff and tense in his sudden alarm.
A knock had fallen upon the street door, and the echo of it went reverberating through the silent house.
Duroc’s lips writhed as he breathed an oath.
The knock was repeated, more insistent now. To the listening Duroc came the sound of a window being thrown up. He heard voices, one from above, the other replying from the street, and guessed that the awakened Clairvaux was challenging this midnight visitor before coming down to open.
Perhaps he would not come. Perhaps he would dismiss this inopportune intruder. But that hope was soon quenched. The window rasped down again, and a moment later the flip-flop of slippered feet came shuffling down the stairs and along the passage to the door. A key grated and a chain clanked — this Clairvaux made a Bastille of his dwelling — and then voices sounded in the passage. The door of the house closed with a soft thud. Steps and voices approached the room in which Duroc still stood immoveable, listening.
At last he stirred, realizing that he had not a moment to spare if he would escape detection. He turned, so that his back was to the door, snatched up his lantern and pressed it against his breast, so that while it might still light him forward, its rays should not strike backwards to betray him. Then in three strides he gained the shelter of the heavy velvet curtains that masked the window. Behind them, his back to the casement, he extinguished at last the light.
The door opened an instant later. Indeed had Clairvaux who entered, candle in hand, in nightcap and quilted dressing-gown, bestowed an attentive look upon the curtains he would have detected the quiver that still agitated them. After him came a tall young man in a long black riding-coat and a conical hat that was decorated by a round tricolour cockade to advertise his patriotic sentiments. Under his arm he carried a riding-whip, whose formidable quality as a weapon of offence was proclaimed by its round head in plaited leather with silver embellishments. He placed it upon a table beside his hat, and the thud with which it dropped to the wood further announced its quality.
The Citizen Representative, a short, stiffly built man whose aquiline face was not without some resemblance to that of his visitor, flung himself into a gilt armchair upholstered in blue silk near the secretaire that but a moment ago had been the object of Duroc’s attention. He threw one knee over the other and drew his quilted dressing-gown about his legs.
‘Well?’ he demanded, his voice harsh. ‘What is this important communication that brings you here at such an hour as this?’
The man in the riding-coat sauntered across to the fireplace. He set his back to the overmantel, and the ormolu clock with its cupids by Debureau, and faced the deputy with a smile that was almost a sneer.
‘Confess now,’ he said, ‘that but for your uneasy conscience, my cousin, you would have hesitated to admit me. But you live in the dread of your own misdeeds, with the blade of the guillotine like a sword of Damocles suspended above you, and you dare refuse no man — however unwelcome in himself — who may be the possible bearer of a warning.’ He laughed an irritating laugh of mockery.
‘Name of a name,’ growled the deputy, ‘will you tell me what brings you, without preamble?’
‘You do not like preambles? And a representative! Now that is odd! But there, Etienne, to put it shortly, I am thinking of emigrating.’
It was the deputy’s turn to become mocking.
‘It was worth while being aroused at midnight to hear such excellent news. Emigrate by all means, my dear Gustave. France will be well rid of you.’
‘And you?’ quoth Gustave.
‘And I no less.’ The deputy grinned sardonically.
‘Ah!’ said his cousin. ‘That is excellent. In such a case, no doubt, you will be disposed to pay for the privilege. To carry out this plan of mine I need your assistance, Etienne. I am practically penniless.’
‘Now that is a thousand pities.’ The deputy’s voice became almost sympathetic, yet slurred by a certain note of sarcasm. ‘If you are penniless, so am I. What else did you expect in a member of the National Convention? Did you conceive that a representative of the sacred people — an apostle of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity — could possibly have money at his disposal? Ah, my good cousin, I assure you that all that I possessed has been offered up on the sacred altar of the nation.’
Gustave looked at him, and pursed his lips. ‘You had better reserve that for the National Assembly,’ he said. ‘It may sound convincing from the rostrum. Here — —’ he waved a hand about him at all the assembled splendours, ‘it sounds uncommonly like a barefaced lie.’
The deputy rose with overwhelming dignity, his brows contracted.
‘This to me?’ he demanded.
&
nbsp; ‘Why not?’ wondered Gustave. ‘Come, come, Etienne. I am not a child, nor yet a fool. You are a man of wealth — all the world knows it, as you may discover to your cost one fine morning. These are days of fraternity, and I am your cousin — —’
‘Out of my house,’ the deputy broke in angrily. ‘Out of my house this instant.’
Gustave looked at him with calm eyes. ‘Shall I then go and tell the National Assembly what I know of you? Must I denounce you to the Committee of Public Safety as a danger to the nation? Must I tell them that in secret you are acting as an agent of the emigrés, that you plot the overthrow of the august republic?’
Clairvaux’s face was livid, his eyes were bulging. He mastered himself by an effort. ‘Denounce all you please,’ he answered in a suffocating voice. ‘You’ll leave your own head in the basket. Sainte Guillotine! you fool, am I a man of straw to be overthrown by the denunciations of such a thing as you? Do you think to frighten me with threats of what you will do? Do you think that is the way to obtain assistance from me?’
‘Seeing that no other way is possible,’ flashed Gustave.
‘Out of my house. Go, denounce me! Go to the devil! But out of here with you!’
‘Take care, Etienne!’ The other was breathing hard, and his eyes flamed with anger — the anger of the baffled man. ‘I am desperate, I am face to face with ruin. I need but a thousand francs — —’
‘Not a thousand sous, not a single sou from me. Be off!’ And Clairvaux advanced threateningly upon his cousin. ‘Be off!’ He caught him by the lapels of his riding-coat.
‘Don’t dare to touch me!’ Gustave warned him, his voice shrilling suddenly.
But the deputy, thoroughly enraged by now, tightened his grip, and began to thrust the other towards the door. Gustave put out a hand to the table where his hat and whip were lying, and his fingers closed upon that ugly riding-crop of his. The rest had happened almost before he realized it; it was the blind action of suddenly overwhelming fury. He twisted out of his cousin’s grasp, stepped back, holding that life-preserver by its slender extremity, swung it aloft and brought the loaded end whistling down upon the deputy’s nightcapped head.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 528
