Lord Tony's Wife Part 31

"So much the better. He'll excite no suspicion in that case in the minds of the frequenters of the Rat Mort. Then I'll instruct him to start a brawl--a fracas--soon after the arrival of the Kernogan wench. The row will inevitably draw the English adventurers hot-haste to the spot, either in the hope of getting the Kernogans away during the _melee_ or with a view to protecting them. As soon as they have appeared upon the scene, the half company of the Marats will descend on the house and arrest every one inside it."

"It all sounds remarkably simple," rejoined Carrier, and with a leer of satisfaction he turned to Jacques Lalouet.

"What think you of it, citizen?" he asked.

"That it sounds so remarkably simple," replied young Lalouet, "that personally I should be half afraid...."

"Of what?" queried Chauvelin blandly.

"If you fail, citizen Chauvelin...."

"Impossible!"

"If the Englishmen do not appear?"

"Even so the citizen proconsul will have lost nothing. He will merely have failed to gain the twenty thousand francs. But the Kernogans will still be in his power and citizen Martin-Roget's ten thousand francs are in any case a.s.sured."

"Friend Jean-Baptiste," concluded Lalouet with his habitual insolent familiarity, "you had better do what citizen Chauvelin wants. Ten thousand francs are good ... and thirty better still. Our privy purse has been empty far too long, and I for one would like the handling of a few brisk notes."

"It will only be twenty-eight, citizen Lalouet," interposed Chauvelin blandly, "for commandant Fleury will want one thousand francs and his men another thousand to stimulate their zeal. Still! I imagine that these hard times twenty-eight thousand francs are worth fighting for."

"You seem to be fighting and planning and scheming for nothing, citizen Chauvelin," retorted young Lalouet with a sneer. "What are you going to gain, I should like to know, by the capture of that dare-devil Englishman?"

"Oh!" replied Chauvelin suavely, "I shall gain the citizen proconsul's regard, I hope--and yours too, citizen Lalouet. I want nothing more except the success of my plan."

Young Lalouet jumped down to his feet. He shrugged his shoulders and through his fine eyes shot a glance of mockery and scorn on the thin, shrunken figure of the Terrorist.

"How you do hate that Englishman, citizen Chauvelin," he said with a light laugh.

IV

Carrier having fully realised that he in any case stood to make a vast sum of money out of the capture of the band of English spies, gave his support generously to Chauvelin's scheme. Fleury, summoned into his presence, was ordered to place himself and half a company of Marats at the disposal of citizen Chauvelin. He demurred and growled like a bear with a sore head at being placed under the orders of a civilian, but it was not easy to run counter to the proconsul's will. A good deal of swearing, one or two overt threats and the citizen commandant was reduced to submission. The promise of a thousand francs, when the reward for the capture of the English spies was paid out by a grateful Government, overcame his last objections.

"I think you should rid yourself of that obstinate oaf," was young Lalouet's cynical comment, when Fleury had finally left the audience chamber; "he is too argumentative for my taste."

Chauvelin smiled quietly to himself. He cared little what became of every one of these Nantese louts once his great object had been attained.

"I need not trouble you further, citizen Carrier," he said as he finally rose to take his leave. "I shall have my hands full until I myself lay that meddlesome Englishman bound and gagged at your feet."

The phrase delighted Carrier's insensate vanity. He was overgracious to Chauvelin now.

"You shall do that at the Rat Mort, citizen Chauvelin," he said with marked affability, "and I myself will commend you for your zeal to the Committee of Public Safety."

"Always supposing," interposed Jacques Lalouet with his cynical laugh, "that citizen Chauvelin does not let the whole rabble slip through his fingers."

"If I do," concluded Chauvelin drily, "you may drag the Loire for my body to-morrow."

"Oh!" laughed Carrier, "we won't trouble to do that. _Au revoir_, citizen Chauvelin," he added with one of his grandiloquent gestures of dismissal, "I wish you luck at the Rat Mort to-night."

Jacques Lalouet ushered Chauvelin out. When he was finally left standing alone at the head of the stairs and young Lalouet's footsteps had ceased to resound across the floors of the rooms beyond, he remained quite still for awhile, his eyes fixed into vacancy, his face set and expressionless; and through his lips there came a long-drawn-out sigh of intense satisfaction.

"And now, my fine Scarlet Pimpernel," he murmured softly, "once more _a nous deux_."

Then he ran swiftly down the stairs and a moment later was once more speeding toward Le Bouffay.

CHAPTER V

THE MESSAGE OF HOPE

I

After Martin-Roget and Chauvelin had left her, Yvonne had sat for a long time motionless, almost unconscious. It seemed as if gradually, hour by hour, minute by minute, her every feeling of courage and of hope were deserting her. Three days now she had been separated from her father--three days she had been under the constant supervision of a woman who had not a single thought of compa.s.sion or of mercy for the "aristocrat" whom she hated so bitterly.

At night, curled up on a small bundle of dank straw Yvonne had made vain efforts to s.n.a.t.c.h a little sleep. Ever since the day when she had been ruthlessly torn away from the protection of her dear milor, she had persistently clung to the belief that he would find the means to come to her, to wrest her from the cruel fate which her pitiless enemies had devised for her. She had clung to that hope throughout that dreary journey from dear England to this abominable city. She had clung to it even whilst her father knelt at her feet in an agony of remorse. She had clung to hope while Martin-Roget alternately coaxed and terrorised her, while her father was dragged away from her, while she endured untold misery, starvation, humiliation at the hands of Louise Adet: but now--quite unaccountably--that hope seemed suddenly to have fled from her, leaving her lonely and inexpressibly desolate. That small, shrunken figure which, wrapped in a dark mantle, had stood in the corner of the room watching her like a serpent watches its prey, had seemed like the forerunner of the fate with which Martin-Roget, gloating over her helplessness, had already threatened her.

She knew, of course, that neither from him, nor from the callous brute who governed Nantes, could she expect the slightest justice or mercy.

She had been brought here by Martin-Roget not only to die, but to suffer grievously at his hands in return for a crime for which she personally was in no way responsible. To hope for mercy from him at the eleventh hour were worse than futile. Her already overburdened heart ached at thought of her father: he suffered all that she suffered, and in addition he must be tortured with anxiety for her and with remorse.

Sometimes she was afraid that under the stress of desperate soul-agony he might perhaps have been led to suicide. She knew nothing of what had happened to him, where he was, nor whether privations and lack of food or sleep, together with Martin-Roget's threats, had by now weakened his morale and turned his pride into humiliating submission.

II

A distant tower-clock struck the evening hours one after the other.

Yvonne for the past three days had only been vaguely conscious of time.

Martin-Roget had spoken of a few hours' respite only, of the proconsul's desire to be soon rid of her. Well! this meant no doubt that the morrow would see the end of it all--the end of her life which such a brief while ago seemed so full of delight, of love and of happiness.

The end of her life! She had hardly begun to live and her dear milor had whispered to her such sweet promises of endless vistas of bliss.

Yvonne shivered beneath her thin gown. The north-westerly blast came in cruel gusts through the unglazed window and a vague instinct of self-preservation caused Yvonne to seek shelter in the one corner of the room where the icy draught did not penetrate quite so freely.

Eight, nine and ten struck from the tower-clock far away: she heard these sounds as in a dream. Tired, cold and hungry her vitality at that moment was at its lowest ebb--and, with her back resting against the wall she fell presently into a torpor-like sleep.

Suddenly something roused her, and in an instant she sat up--wide-awake and wide-eyed, every one of her senses conscious and on the alert.

Something had roused her--at first she could not say what it was--or remember. Then presently individual sounds detached themselves from the buzzing in her ears. Hitherto the house had always been so still; except on the isolated occasions when Martin-Roget had come to visit her and his heavy tread had caused every loose board in the tumble-down house to creak, it was only Louise Adet's shuffling footsteps which had roused the dormant echoes, when she crept upstairs either to her own room, or to throw a piece of stale bread to her prisoner.

But now--it was neither Martin-Roget's heavy footfall nor the shuffling gait of Louise Adet which had roused Yvonne from her trance-like sleep.

It was a gentle, soft, creeping step which was slowly, cautiously mounting the stairs. Yvonne crouching against the wall could count every tread--now and then a board creaked--now and then the footsteps halted.

Yvonne, wide-eyed, her heart stirred by a nameless terror was watching the door.

The piece of tallow-candle flickered in the draught. Its feeble light just touched the remote corner of the room. And Yvonne heard those soft, creeping footsteps as they reached the landing and came to a halt outside the door.

Every drop of blood in her seemed to be frozen by terror: her knees shook: her heart almost stopped its beating.