CHAPTER NINETEEN
The League
Although Choisy is only twelve or fifteen kilometres from Paris, it was in those days just a small provincial town with its Hôtel de Ville and its Committee of Public Safety sitting there, its Grand' Place, its ancient castle then used as a prison, and its famous bridge across the Seine. To the South and West of the Grand' Place there were two or three residential streets with a few substantial, stone-built houses, the homes of professional men, or of tradespeople who had retired on a competence, and farther along a few isolated, poorer-looking houses, such a one as old Levet's, lying back from the road behind a small grille and a tiny front garden. But all these features only covered a small area, round which stretched fields and spinneys, with here and there a cottage for the most part roofless and derelict.
It was in one of these dilapidated cottages which stood in a meadow about half-way between Choisy and the height on which was perched the Château de La Rodière, that what looked like a troupe of itinerant musicians had sought shelter against the cold. They had made up a fire in the wide open hearth; the smoke curled up the chimney, and they sat round with their knees drawn up to their chins and their arms encircling their knees. There were four of them altogether inside the cottage, and one sat outside on a broken-down stool propped against the wall, apparently on the watch. In a corner of the room a number of musical instruments were piled up, a miscellaneous collection of violin, guitar, trumpet and drum. Precariously perched on the top of this pile of rubbish sat Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., the most fastidious dandy fashionable London had ever known, the arbiter of elegance, the friend of the Prince of Wales, the adored of every woman in England. He too was unwashed, unkempt, unshaved, his slender hands, those hands a queen had once termed exquisite, were covered with grime, his nails were in the deepest mourning. He wore a tattered blouse, on his head a Phrygian cap which had once been red. At the moment he was scraping a fiddle, drawing from it wailing sounds that provoked loud groans from his friends and an occasional missile hurled at his head.
"We are in for some fine sport, I imagine, what?" Lord Anthony Dewhurst remarked, and dug his teeth into a hard apple, which he had just extracted from his breeches' pocket.
"Tony," one of the others demanded — it was my Lord Hastings, "where did you get that apple?"
"My sweetheart gave it me. She stole it from her neighbour's garden ..."
My Lord Tony got no further. He was attacked all at once from three sides. Three pairs of hands were stretched out to wrest the apple from him.
"We are in for some fine sport!" Lord Tony had declared before the attack on his apple was launched. He held it up at arm's length, trying to rescue it from his assailants who made grabs at it and invariably got in one another's way, until a firm hand finally seized it and Blakeney's pleasant drawly voice was raised to say:
"I'll toss you all for this precious thing ... what there is left of it."
Sir Andrew Ffoulkes won the toss, and the apple, which had suffered wreckage during the fight, was finally hurled at the head of the revered chief, who had resumed his attempts at getting a tune out of his cracked fiddle. A distant church clock had struck eleven a few minutes ago. The man on the watch outside put his head in at the door and announced curtly:
"Here he comes."
And presently Devinne came in. He was dressed in his ordinary clothes with dark coat, riding breeches and boots. His face wore a sullen look and he scarcely glanced either at his friends or at his chief, just flung himself on the ground in front of the fire and muttered between his teeth:
"God! I'm tired!"
After a moment or two while no one else spoke he added as if grudgingly:
"I'm sorry I'm late, Percy. I had to put up my horse and..."
"Listen to this, you fellows," Blakeney said with a chuckle as he scraped his fiddle and extracted from it a wailing version of the Marseillaise.
Young Devinne jumped to his feet, strode across the floor and snatched the fiddle out of Blakeney's hand.
"Percy!" he cried hoarsely.
"You don't like it, my dear fellow? Well, I don't blame you, but —— "
"Percy," the young man rejoined, "you've got to be serious ... you have got to help me ... it is all damnable ... damnable ... I shall go mad if this goes on much longer ... and if you don't help me."
He was obviously beside himself with excitement, strode up and down the place, his hand pressed tightly against his forehead. The words came tumbling out through his lips, whilst his voice was raucous with agitation.
Blakeney watched him for a moment or two without speaking. His face through all the grime and disfigurement wore that expression of infinite sympathy and understanding of which he, of all men, appeared to hold the secret, the understanding of other people's troubles and difficulties, and that wordless sympathy which so endeared him to his friends.
"Help you, my dear fellow," he now said. "Of course, we'll all help you, if you want us. What are we here for but to help each other, as well as those poor wretches who are in trouble through no fault of their own?"
Then, as Devinne said nothing for the moment, just continued to pace up and down, up and down like a trapped feline, he went on:
"Tell us all about it, boy. It is this La Rodière business, isn't it?"
"It is. And a damnable business it will be, unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless you do something about it in double quick time. Those ruffians in Choisy are planning mischief. You knew that two days ago, and you have done nothing. I wanted to go up to La Rodière to warn them of what was in the wind. I could have done it yesterday, gone up there this morning. It wouldn't have interfered with any of your plans: and it would have meant all the world to me. But what did you do? You took me along with Stowmarries to drive that old abbé as far as Vitry, a job any fool could have done."
"But you did it so admirably, my dear fellow," Sir Percy put in quietly, when young Devinne paused for want of breath. He had come to a halt in front of his chief, glaring at him with eyes that held anything but deference; his face was flushed, beads of perspiration stood on his forehead and glued his matted hair to his temples.
"You did the fool's job, as you call it, as admirably as you have always done everything the League set you to do; and you did it because you happen to have been born a gentleman and the son of a very great gentleman who honoured me with his friendship, and because you have always remembered that you swore to me on your word of honour that, while we are all of us engaged on the business of the League, you would obey me in all things."
"An oath of that sort," the young man retorted vehemently, "does not bind a man when —— "
"When he is in love, and the woman he loves is in danger..." Sir Percy broke in gently. "That is what you were going to say, was it not, lad?"
He rose and put a kindly hand on Devinne's shoulder.
"Don't think I don't understand, my dear fellow," he said earnestly. "I do. God knows I do. But you know that the word of honour of an English gentleman is a big thing. A very, very big thing and a very hard one sometimes. So hard that nothing on earth can break it: but if by the agency of some devil, that word should be broken, then honour is irretrievably shattered too.
"Now tell me," he resumed more lightly, "did you on your way back from Vitry call in on Charles Levet and tell him that the Abbé Edgeworth is by now safely on his way to the Belgian frontier?"
Devinne looked sullen.
"I forgot," he said curtly.
Blakeney gave a quaint little laugh:
"Gad! That is a pity," he said. "Fancy forgetting a little thing like that. But we have no control over our memory, have we?