The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini

      CHAPTER XXXV

       MESSENGERS

       Table of Contents

      André-Louis had grown leaner than his habit in those days, and this not from any lenten fare. For however hunger might tighten its grip upon the people, there was no fasting for those who could pay—and the Baron was certainly of these.

      It was the mental strain of that time of intrigue and anxious labour that had worn him; and mingled with this a yearning that seemed to gnaw his vitals, intensified by the utter absence of direct news from Aline de Kercadiou. He assured himself that it was at the dictates of prudence that she had not sent him any letter by any of the occasional messengers who passed between Monsieur d'Entragues and his Paris agent, the Chevalier de Pomelles, and he sought to content himself with the personal assurances which one or two of these had been able to give him that Mademoiselle de Kercadiou continued at Hamm with her father and that she was well.

      There had been a curious passage with Langéac, met by merest chance at Pomelles's house at Bourg-Égalité. One of André-Louis's periodic visits to the royalist agent in quest of news had happened to synchronize with the arrival there of Langéac coming straight from Hamm. It was the young royalist's first visit to Paris since his flight after the miscarried affair at the Temple.

      At sight of André-Louis he had visibly lost colour and his eyes had dilated, so that André-Louis had exclaimed: 'How, now, Langéac. Am I a ghost?'

      'Faith! It is what I ask myself.'

      It was André-Louis's turn to stare. 'Do you mean that you have supposed me dead for all these months?'

      'What else was I to suppose?'

      'What else? What else? Name of a name! But Verney followed you to Hamm with the news of my survival. Did you never hear of it?'

      Langéac's expression was odd. He looked uncomfortable. His eyes shifted under the other's keen regard, and it was only after a long moment that he answered. 'Ah, Verney! Verney was delayed on the road ...'

      'But he got there ultimately,' André-Louis interrupted him impatiently. The sluggishness of Langéac's wits had always moved him to impatience. He had never concealed from Langéac that he accounted him a fool, and Langéac had resented this with all a fool's mean bitterness.

      'Oh, yes,' he answered slowly, sneering. 'He got there ultimately. But I had left by then.'

      'Yet you have been there since. You are just arrived from there. Did you never hear that I survived?'

      'I never heard you mentioned that I can remember,' drawled Langéac. And further to put him down, he added, 'Why should they mention you?'

      Exasperated, André-Louis looked at the Chevalier de Pomelles, who sat gravely listening. 'He asks me that? I suppose they know at Hamm what keeps me here in Paris. I suppose they are aware that I risk the guillotine every day of the week in my endeavours to wreck the revolution, and bring the House of Bourbon back to France. I suppose they know it, Monsieur de Pomelles?'

      'Oh, but of course they know it.' The Chevalier was emphatic. 'They know it and esteem it.'

      That had happened two months ago, in September. Thereafter Monsieur de Langéac had lingered in Paris until the fall of Chabot and the popular ferment that had followed it. De Batz had thought it right that some account of this should be sent to the Regent, and with André-Louis had sought Pomelles for the purpose. Pomelles had agreed with him, and having Langéac under his hand, proposed to use him as the bearer of the news. There was at that moment in the minds of the members of the Royalist Committee in Paris some little doubt as to the Regent's precise whereabouts. Whilst there was no positive news that he had yet left Hamm, it was known that his duty lay in Toulon, where the royalists, supported by Admiral Hood with the British fleet and by some Spanish troops, were making their resolute stand. The presence amongst them of the representative of the House of Bourbon on whose behalf this stand was being made was being so urgently demanded that it was probable he would already have set out to place himself at their head. But in the absence of positive information, Langéac's instructions were that he should go to Hamm in the first instance, following the Regent thence if he should already have departed, and making his way to Toulon by sea from Leghorn or some other convenient Italian port, since by land the place was unapproachable.

      As he was setting out, André-Louis came to ask of him the favour of bearing a letter to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. It was a letter whose chief object was to beg her to send him, be it but a line in her own hand, herself to confirm the assurances he received indirectly that all was well with her and with his godfather.

      Monsieur de Langéac accepted perforce the commission, and there could be little doubt that he had executed it, since it was known that, in spite of those insistent demands for the Regent's presence in Toulon, his Highness was still at Hamm when Langéac arrived there, and indeed for some time thereafter.

      His lingering there was a circumstance exasperating to a good many of Monsieur's supporters, and to none more exasperating than to the Comte d'Avaray, whose affection for him was sincere, who had his honour at heart, and who was distressed to know that his neglect of it in this hour of crisis was by many being assigned to pusillanimity.

      It may well be that pusillanimity and sloth played some part in that reluctance to depart from the dull security of Hamm. Monsieur d'Entragues, however, did not think so, and Monsieur d'Entragues was not happy. To him, whatever reasons there may have been to account for the Regent's inaction, it was clear that one of them was his infatuation for Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. Out of his cynical knowledge of men, Monsieur d'Entragues was persuaded that the real cure for this lay in possession. Therefore he had practised patience. But time was passing. The Regent's interests demanded his presence in Toulon. Yet if he advised this, he might miss his chance of encompassing the supplanting of Madame de Balbi, and so, of assuming a definite and abiding ascendancy over d'Avaray. Thus d'Entragues was confronted with a choice of evils, and in his heart he cursed the prudishness of Mademoiselle de Kercadiou which had made her withstand in all these months the assiduous wooing of his Highness.

      What, in Heaven's name, did the girl want? Had she no sense of duty to a Prince of the Blood? It was not even as if she were restrained by any mawkish sense of duty in any other quarter, since she believed that her unspeakable plebeian lover Moreau had perished four months ago. And what the devil ailed his Highness that he should be so patient and so nice? Since Monsieur knew his own mind, why didn't he take a short way with the girl? He loved to be accounted a libertine. Why the devil couldn't he behave like one.

      D'Entragues had thoughts of giving him a hint to that effect. But he hesitated. And meanwhile d'Avaray was at the Regent's elbow, pressing him with talk of honour and duty to go and encourage by his presence those who were ready to lay down their lives for him in Toulon.

      Things were in this pass when Langéac arrived at Hamm with the news of the events in Paris which were shaking the credit of the Convention in the eyes of the people. He reported himself to d'Entragues, and d'Entragues carried him off to the Regent, and was the only witness to the interview in that long bare room