Lord Tony's Wife (20 page)

The proconsul laughed and shrugged his shoulders—of a truth he thought citizen Martin-Roget an awful fool.

‘Very well then,’ he said, ‘we will call the matter settled. I confess that it amuses me, although remember that I have warned you. With all these aristos, I believe in the potency of my barges rather than in your elaborate schemes. Still! it shall never be said that Jean Baptiste Carrier has left a friend in the lurch.’

‘I am grateful for your help, citizen Carrier,’ said Martin-Roget coldly. Then he added slowly, as if reviewing the situation in his own mind: ‘To-night, you say?’

‘Yes. To-night. My Marats under the command of citizen Fleury will make a descent upon the Rat Mort. Those shall be my orders. The place will be swept clean of every man, woman and child who is inside. If your two Kernogans are there…well!’ he said with a cynical laught and a shrug of his shoulders, ‘they can be sent up to Paris with the rest of the herd.’

‘The dinner bell has gone long ago,’ here interposed young Lalouλt drily, ‘the soup will be stone-cold and the chef red-hot with anger.’

‘You are right, citizen Lalouλt,’ said Carrier as he leaned back in his chair once more and stretched out his long legs at his ease. ‘We have wasted far too much time already over the affairs of a couple of aristos, who ought to have been at the bottom of the Loire a week ago. The audience is ended,’ he added airily, and he made a gesture of overweening condescension, for all the world like the one wherewith the Grand Monarque was wont to dismiss his courtiers.

Chauvelin rose too and quietly turned to the door. He had not spoken a word for the past half-hour, ever since in fact he had put in a conciliatory word on behalf of his impetuous colleague. Whether he had taken an active interest in the conversation or not it were impossible to say. But now, just as he was ready to go, and young Lalouλt prepared to close the doors of the audience chamber, something seemed suddenly to occur to him and he called somewhat peremptorily to the young man.

‘One moment, citizen,’ he said.

‘What is it now?’ queried the youth insolently, and from his fine eyes there shot a glance of contempt on the meagre figure of the once powerful Terrorist.

‘About the Kernogan wench,’ continued Chauvelin. ‘She will have to be conveyed some time before night to the tavern next door. There may be agencies at work on her behalf…’

‘Agencies?’ broke in the boy gruffly. ‘What agencies?’

‘Oh!’ said Chauvelin vaguely, ‘we all know that aristos have powerful friends these days. It will not be over safe to take the girl across after dark from one house to another…the alley is badly lighted: the wench will not go willingly. She might scream and create a disturbance and draw…er…those same unknown agencies to her rescue. I think a body of Marats should be told off to convey her to the Rat Mort…’

Young Lalouλt shrugged his shoulders.

‘That’s your affair,’ he said curtly, ‘Eh, Carrier?’ And he glanced over his shoulder at the proconsul, who at once assented.

Martin-Roget—struck by his colleague’s argument—would have interposed, but Carrier broke in with one of his uncontrolled outbursts of fury.

‘Ah ηa,’ he exclaimed, ‘enough of this now. Citizen Lalouλt is right and I have done enough for you already. If you want the Kernogan wench to be at the Rat Mort, you must see to getting her there yourself. She is next door, what? I won’t have anything to do with it and I won’t have my Marats implicated in the affair either. Name of a dog! have I not told you that I am beset with spies. It would of a truth be a climax if I was denounced as having dragged aristos to a house of ill-fame and then had them arrested there as malefactors! Now out with you! I have had enough of this! If your rabble is at the Rat Mort to-night, they shall be arrested with all the other cut-throats. That is my last word. The rest is your affair. Lalouλt! the door!’

And without another word, and without listening to further protests from Martin-Roget or Chauvelin, Jacques Lalouλt closed the doors of the audience chamber in their face.

VII

Outside on the landing, Martin-Roget swore a violent, all comprehensive oath.

‘To think that we are under the heel of that skunk!’ he said.

‘And that in the pursuit of our own ends we have need of his help!’ added Chauvelin with a sigh.

‘If it were not for that…And even now,’ continued Martin-Roget moodily, ‘I doubt what I can do. Yvonne de Kernogan will not follow me willingly either to the Rat Mort or elsewhere, and if I am not to have her conveyed by the guard…’

He paused and swore again. His companion’s silence appeared to irritate him.

‘What do you advise me to do, citizen Chauvelin?’ he asked.

‘For the moment,’ replied Chauvelin imperturbably, ‘I should advise you to join me in a walk along the quay as far as Le Bouffay. I have work to see to inside the building and the north-westerly wind is sure to be of good counsel.’

An angry retort hovered on Martin-Roget’s lips, but after a second or two he succeeded in holding his irascible temper in check. He gave a quick sigh of impatience.

‘Very well,’ he said curtly. ‘Let us to Le Bouffay by all means. I have much to think on, and as you say the north-westerly wind may blow away the cobwebs which for the nonce do o’ercloud my brain.’

And the two men wrapped their mantles closely round their shoulders, for the air was keen. Then they descended the staircase of the hotel and went out into the street.

In the centre of the Place the guillotine stood idle—the paint had worn off her sides—she looked weather-beaten and forlorn—stern and forbidding still, but in a kind of sullen loneliness, with the ugly stains of crimson on her, turned to rust and grime.

The Place itself was deserted, in strange contrast to the bustle and the movement which characterized it in the days when the death of men, women and children was a daily spectacle here for the crowd. Then a constant stream of traffic, of carts and of tumbrils, of soldiers and gaffers encumbered it in every corner, now a few tumble-down booths set up against the frontage of the grim edifice—once the stronghold of the Dukes of Brittany, now little else but a huge prison—a few vendors and still fewer purchasers of the scanty wares displayed under their ragged awnings, one or two idlers loafing against the mud-stained walls, one or two urchins playing in the gutters were the only signs of life. Martin-Roget with his colleague Chauvelin turned into the Place from the quay—they walked rapidly and kept their mantles closely wrapped under their chin, for the afternoon had turned bitterly cold. It was then close upon five o’clock—a dark, moonless, starless night had set in with only a suspicion of frost in the damp air; but a blustering north-westerly wind blowing down the river and tearing round the narrow streets and the open Place, caused passers-by to muffle themselves, shivering, yet tighter in their cloaks.

Martin-Roget was talking volubly and excitedly, his tall, broad figure towering above the slender form of his companion. From time to time he tossed his mantle aside with an impatient, febrile gesture and then paused in the middle of the Place, with one hand on the other man’s shoulder, marking a point in his discourse or emphasizing his argument with short staccato sentences and brief, emphatic words. Chauvelin—placid and impenetrable as usual—listened much and talked little. He was ready to stand still or to walk along just as his colleague’s mood demanded; in the darkness, and with the collar of a large mantle pulled tightly up to his ears, it was impossible to guess by any sign in his face what was going on in his mind.

They were a strange contrast these two men—temperamentally as well as physically—even though they had so much in common and were both the direct products of the same social upheaval which was shaking the archaic dominion of France to its very foundations. Martin-Roget, tall, broad-shouldered, bull-necked, the typical self-educated peasant, with square jaw and flat head, with wide bony hands and spatulated fingers: and Chauvelin—the aristocrat turned demagogue, thin and frail-looking, bland of manner and suave of speech, with delicate hands and pale, almost ascetic face.

The one represented all that was most brutish and sensual in this fight of one caste against the other, the thirst for the other’s blood, the human beast that has been brought to bay through wrongs perpetrated against it by others and has turned upon its oppressors, lashing out right and left with blind and lustful fury at the crowd of tyrants that had kept him in subjection for so long. Whilst Chauvelin was the personification of the spiritual side of this bloody Revolution—the spirit of cool and calculating reprisals that would demand an eye for an eye and see that it got two. The idealist who dreams of the righteousness of his own cause and the destruction of its enemies, but who leaves to others the accomplishment of all the carnage and the bloodshed which his idealism has demanded, and which his reason has appraised as necessary for the triumph of which he dreams. Chauvelin was the man of thought and Martin-Roget the man of action. With the one, revenge and reprisals were selfish desires, the avenging of wrongs done to himself or to his caste, hatred for those who had injured him or his kindred. The other had no personal feelings of hatred: he had no personal wrongs to avenge: his enemies were the enemies of his party, the erstwhile tyrants who in the past had oppressed an entire people. Every man, woman or child who was not satisfied with the present Reign of Terror, who plotted or planned for its overthrow, who was not ready to see husband, father, wife or child sacrificed for the ultimate triumph of the Revolution was in Chauvelin’s sight a noxious creature, fit only to be trodden under heel and ground into subjection or annihilation as a danger to the State.

Martin-Roget was the personification of sans-culottism, of rough manners and foul speech—he chafed against the conventions which forced him to wear decent clothes and boots on his feet—he would gladly have seen every one go about the streets half-naked, unwashed, a living sign of that downward levelling of castes which he and his friends stood for, and for which they had fought and striven and committed every crime which human passions let loose could invent. Chauvelin, on the other hand, was one of those who wore fine linen and buckled shoes and whose hands were delicately washed and perfumed whilst they signed decrees which sent hundreds of women and children to a violent and cruel death.

The one trod in the paths of Danton: the other followed in the footsteps of Robespierre.

II

Together the two men mounted the outside staircase which leads up past the lodge of the concierge and through the clerk’s office to the interior of the stronghold. Outside the monumental doors they had to wait a moment or two while the clerk examined their permits to enter.

‘Will you come into my office with me?’ asked Chauvelin of his companion; ‘I have a word or two to add to my report for the Paris courier to-night. I won’t be long.’

‘You are still in touch with the Committee of Public Safety then?’ asked Martin-Roget.

‘Always,’ replied the other curtly.

Martin-Roget threw a quick, suspicious glance on his companion. Darkness and the broad brim of his sugar-loaf hat effectually concealed even the outlines of Chauvelin’s face, and Martin-Roget fell to musing over one or two things which Carrier had blurted out awhile ago. The whole of France was overrun with spies these days—every one was under suspicion, every one had to be on his guard. Every word was overheard, every glance seen, every sign noted.

What was this man Chauvelin doing here in Nantes? what reports did he send up to Paris by special courier? He, the miserable failure who had ceased to count was nevertheless in constant touch with that awful Committee of Public Safety which was wont to strike at all times and unexpectedly in the dark. Martin-Roget shivered beneath his mantle. For the first time since his schemes of vengeance had wholly absorbed his mind he regretted the freedom and safety which he had enjoyed in England, and he marvelled if the miserable game which he was playing would be worth the winning in the end. Nevertheless he had followed Chauvelin without comment. The man appeared to exercise a fascination over him—a kind of subtle power, which emanated from his small shrunken figure, from his pale keen eyes and his well-modulated, suave mode of speech.

III

The clerk had handed the two men their permits back. They were allowed to pass through the gates.

In the hall some half-dozen men were nominally on guard—nominally, because discipline was not over strict these days, and the men sat or lolled about the place; two of them were intent on a game of dominoes, another was watching them, whilst the other three were settling some sort of quarrel among themselves which necessitated vigorous and emphatic gestures and the copious use of expletives. One man, who appeared to be in command, divided his time impartially between the domino-players and those who were quarrelling.

The vast place was insufficiently lighted by a chandelier which hung from the ceiling and a couple of small oil-lamps placed in the circular niches in the wall opposite the front door.

No one took any notice of Martin-Roget or of Chauvelin as they crossed the hall, and presently the latter pushed open a door on the left of the main gates and held it open for his colleague to pass through.

‘You are sure that I shall not be disturbing you?’ queried Martin-Roget.

‘Quite sure,’ replied the other curtly. ‘And there is something I must say to you…where I know that I shall not be overheard.’

Then he followed Martin-Roget into the room and closed the door behind him. The room was scantily furnished with a square deal table in the centre, two or three chairs, a broken-down bureau leaning against one wall and an iron stove wherein a meagre fire sent a stream of malodorous smoke through sundry cracks in its chimney-pipe. From the ceiling there hung an oil-lamp the light of which was thrown down upon the table, by a large green shade made of cardboard.

Chauvelin drew a chair to the bureau and sat down; he pointed to another and Martin-Roget took a seat beside the table. He felt restless and excited—his nerves all on the jar: his colleague’s calm, sardonic glance acted as a further irritant to his temper.