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

front of Yvonne, and crossing her mighty arms over her ponderous chest she eyed the “aristo” with unconcealed malignity.

“We do know that the slut is lying⁠—that is where you make the mistake, Lemoine. A slut, that’s what she is⁠—and the friend whom she’s going to meet⁠ ⁠… ? Well!” she added, turning with an ugly leer toward the other women, “we all know what sort of friend that one is likely to be, eh, mesdames? Bringing evil fame on this house, that’s what the wench is after⁠ ⁠… so as to bring the police about our ears⁠ ⁠… I wouldn’t trust her, not another minute. Out with you and at once⁠—do you hear?⁠ ⁠… this instant⁠ ⁠… Lemoine has parleyed quite long enough with you already!”

Despite all her resolutions Yvonne was terribly frightened. While the hideous old hag talked and screamed and waved her coarse, red arms about, the unfortunate young girl with a great effort of will, kept repeating to herself: “I am not frightened⁠—I must not be frightened. He assured me that these people would do me no harm.⁠ ⁠…” But now when the woman had ceased speaking there was a general murmur of:

“Throw her out! Spy or aristo we don’t want her here!” whilst some of the men added significantly: “I am sure that she is one of Carrier’s spies and in league with his Marats! We shall have those devils in here in a moment if we don’t look out! Throw her out before she can signal to the Marats!”

Ugly faces charged with hatred and virulence were thrust threateningly forward⁠—one or two of the women were obviously looking forward to joining in the scramble, when this “stuck-up wench” would presently be hurled out into the street.

“Now then, my girl, out you get,” concluded the woman Lemoine, as with an expressive gesture she proceeded to roll her sleeves higher up her arm. She was about to lay her dirty hands on Yvonne, and the poor girl was nearly sick with horror, when one of the men⁠—a huge, coarse giant, whose muscular torso, covered with grease and grime showed almost naked through a ragged shirt which hung from his shoulders in strips⁠—seized the woman Lemoine by the arm and dragged her back a step or two away from Yvonne.

“Don’t be a fool, petite mère,” he said, accompanying this admonition with a blasphemous oath. “Slut or no, the wench may as well pay you something for the privilege of staying here. Look at that cloak she’s wearing⁠—the shoe-leather on her feet. Aren’t they worth a bottle of your sour wine?”

“What’s that to you, Paul Friche?” retorted the woman roughly, as with a vigorous gesture she freed her arm from the man’s grasp. “Is this my house or yours?”

“Yours, of course,” replied the man with a coarse laugh and a still coarser jest, “but this won’t be the first time that I have saved you from impulsive folly. Yesterday you were for harbouring a couple of rogues who were Marats in disguise: if I hadn’t given you warning, you would now have swallowed more water from the Loire than you would care to hold. But for me two days ago you would have received the goods pinched by Ferté out of Balaze’s shop, and been thrown to the fishes in consequence for the entertainment of the proconsul and his friends. You must admit that I’ve been a good friend to you before now.”

“And if you have, Paul Friche,” retorted the hag obstinately, “I paid you well for your friendship, both yesterday and the day before, didn’t I?”

“You did,” assented Friche imperturbably. “That’s why I want to serve you again tonight.”

“Don’t listen to him, petite mère,” interposed one of two out of the crowd. “He is a white-livered skunk to talk to you like that.”

“Very well! Very well!” quoth Paul Friche, and he spat vigorously on the ground in token that henceforth he divested himself from any responsibility in this matter, “don’t listen to me. Lose a benefit of twenty, perhaps forty francs for the sake of a bit of fun. Very well! Very well!” he continued as he turned and slouched out of the group to the further end of the room, where he sat down on a barrel. He drew the stump of a clay pipe out of the pocket of his breeches, stuffed it into his mouth, stretched his long legs out before him and sucked away at his pipe with complacent detachment. “I didn’t know,” he added with biting sarcasm by way of a parting shot, “that you and Lemoine had come into a fortune recently and that forty or fifty francs are nothing to you now.”

“Forty or fifty? Come! come!” protested Lemoine feebly.

II

Yvonne’s fate was hanging in the balance. The attitude of the small crowd was no less threatening than before, but immediate action was withheld while the Lemoines obviously debated in their minds what was best to be done. The instinct to “have at” an aristo with all the accumulated hatred of many generations was warring with the innate rapacity of the Breton peasant.

“Forty or fifty?” reiterated Paul Friche emphatically. “Can’t you see that the wench is an aristo escaped out of Le Bouffay or the entrepôt?” he added contemptuously.

“I know that she is an aristo,” said the woman, “that’s why I want to throw her out.”

“And get nothing for your pains,” retorted Friche roughly. “If you wait for her friends we may all of us get as much as twenty francs each to hold our tongues.”

“Twenty francs each.⁠ ⁠…” The murmur was repeated with many a sigh of savage gluttony, by everyone in the room⁠—and repeated again and again⁠—especially by the women.

“You are a fool, Paul Friche⁠ ⁠…” commented Lemoine.

“A fool am I?” retorted the giant. “Then let me tell you, that ’tis you who are a fool and worse. I happen to know,” he added, as he once more rose and rejoined the group in the centre of the room, “I happen to know