Lord Tony’s Wife, Baroness Orczy [bill gates best books TXT] 📗

to Redhill: but the roads were axle deep in mud, and evening was gathering in very fast. Nobody would take him. He wanted a horse and a guide. I was on the spot⁠—as disreputable a bar-loafer as you ever saw in your life. I offered to take him. He had no choice. He had to take me. No one else had offered. I took him to the Bottom Inn. There he met our esteemed friend M. Chauvelin.⁠ ⁠…”

“Chauvelin!” cried Tony, suddenly roused from the dull apathy of his immeasurable grief, at sound of that name which recalled so many exciting adventures, such mad, wild, hair-breadth escapes. “Chauvelin! What in the world is he doing here in England?”

“Brewing mischief, of course,” replied Blakeney dryly. “In disgrace, discredited, a marked man⁠—what you will⁠—my friend M. Chauvelin has still an infinite capacity for mischief. Through the interstices of a badly fastened shutter I heard two blackguards devising infinite devilry. That is why, Tony,” he added, “I urged an immediate marriage as the only real protection for Yvonne de Kernogan against those blackguards.”

“Would to God you had been more explicit!” exclaimed Tony with a bitter sigh.

“Would to God I had,” rejoined the other, “but there was so little time, with licences and whatnot all to arrange for, and less than an hour to do it in. And would you have suspected the Duc himself of such execrable duplicity even if you had known, as I did then, that the so-called Martin-Roget hath name Adet, and that he matures thoughts of deadly revenge against the duc de Kernogan and his daughter?”

“Martin-Roget? the banker⁠—the exiled royalist who.⁠ ⁠…”

“He may be a banker now⁠ ⁠… but he certainly is no royalist⁠—he is the son of a peasant who was unjustly put to death four years ago by the duc de Kernogan.”

“Ye gods!”

“He came over to England plentifully supplied with money⁠—I could not gather if the money is his or if it has been entrusted to him by the revolutionary government for purposes of spying and corruption⁠—but he came to England in order to ingratiate himself with the duc de Kernogan and his daughter, and then to lure them back to France, for what purpose you may well imagine.”

“Good God, man⁠ ⁠… you can’t mean⁠ ⁠… ?”

“He has chartered a smuggler’s craft⁠—or rather Chauvelin has done it for him. Her name is the Hollandia, her master hath name Kuyper. She was to be in Portishead harbour on the last day of November: all her papers in order. Cargo of West India sugar, destination Amsterdam, consignee some Mynheer over there. But Martin-Roget, or whatever his name may be, and no doubt our friend Chauvelin too, were to be aboard her, and also M. le duc de Kernogan and his daughter. And the Hollandia is to put into Le Croisic for Nantes, whose revolutionary proconsul, that infamous Carrier, is of course Chauvelin’s bosom friend.”

Sir Percy Blakeney finished speaking. Lord Tony had listened to him quietly and in silence: now he rose and turned resolutely to his friend. There was no longer any trace in him of that stunned apathy which had been the primary result of the terrible blow. His young face was still almost unrecognisable from the lines of grief and horror which marred its habitual fresh, boyish look. He looked twenty years older than he had done a few hours ago, but there was also in his whole attitude now the virility of more mature manhood, its determination and unswerving purpose.

“And what can I do now?” he asked simply, knowing that he could trust his friend and leader with what he held dearest in all the world. “Without you, Blakeney, I am of course impotent and lost. I haven’t the head to think. I haven’t sufficient brains to pit against those cunning devils. But if you will help me.⁠ ⁠…”

Then he checked himself abruptly, and the look of hopeless despair once more crept into his eyes.

“I am mad, Percy,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug of the shoulders, “gone crazy with grief, I suppose, or I shouldn’t talk of asking your help, of risking your life in my cause.”

“Tony, if you talk that rubbish, I shall be forced to punch your head,” retorted Blakeney with his light laugh. “Why man,” he added gaily, “can’t you see that I am aching to have at my old friend Chauvelin again?”

And indeed the zest of adventure, the zest to fight, never dormant, was glowing with compelling vigour now in those lazy eyes of his which were resting with such kindliness upon his stricken friend. “Go home, Tony!” he added, “go, you rascal, and collect what things you want, while I send for Hastings and Ffoulkes, and see that four good horses are ready for us within the hour. Tonight we sleep at Portishead, Tony. The Daydream is lying off there, ready to sail at any hour of the day or night. The Hollandia has twenty-four hours’ start of us, alas! and we cannot overtake her now: but we’ll be in Nantes ere those devils can do much mischief: and once in Nantes!⁠ ⁠… Why, Tony man! think of the glorious escapes we’ve had together, you and I! Think of the gay, mad rides across the north of France, with half-fainting women and swooning children across our saddlebows! Think of the day when we smuggled the de Tournais out of Calais harbour, the day we snatched Juliette Déroulède and her Paul out of the tumbril and tore across Paris with that howling mob at our heels! Think! think, Tony! of all the happiest, merriest moments of your life and they will seem dull and lifeless beside what is in store for you, when with your dear wife’s arms clinging round your neck, we’ll fly along the quays of Nantes on the road to liberty! Ah, Tony lad! were it not for the anxiety which I know is gnawing at your heart, I would count this one of the happiest hours of my happy life!”

He was so