Lord Tony's Wife: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel

The terrible sounds of fighting and screaming and cursing, the crash of broken glass and overturned benches came to her as through a partition – close by but muffled.

In the immediate nearness all was silence and darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ENGLISH ADVENTURERS

I

It was with that muffled din still ringing in her ear and with the conception of all that was going on, on the other side of the partition, standing like an awesome spectre of evil before her mind, that Yvonne woke to the consciousness that her father was dead.

He lay along the last half-dozen steps of a narrow wooden staircase which had its base in the narrow, cupboard-like landing on to which the Lemoines had just thrust them both. Through a small heart-shaped hole cut in the door of the partition-wall, a shaft of feeble light struck straight across to the foot of the stairs: it lit up the recumbent figure of the last of the ducs de Kernogan, killed in a brawl in a house of evil fame.

Weakened by starvation, by the hardships of the past few days, his constitution undermined by privations and mayhap too by gnawing remorse, he had succumbed to the stunning blow dealt to him by a half drunken brute. His cry: "Yvonne! A moi!" was the last despairing call of a soul racked with remorse to the daughter whom he had so cruelly wronged.

When first that feeble shaft of light had revealed to her the presence of that inert form upon the steps, she had struggled to her feet and – dazed – had tottered up to it. Even before she had touched the face, the hands, before she had bent her ear to the half-closed mouth and failed to catch the slightest breath, she knew the full extent of her misery. The look in the wide-open eyes did not terrify her, but they told her the truth, and since then she had cowered beside her dead father on the bottom step of the narrow stairs, her fingers tightly closed over that one hand which never would be raised against her.

An unspeakable sense of horror filled her soul. The thought that he – the proud father, the haughty aristocrat, should lie like this and in such a spot, dragged in and thrown down – no doubt by Lemoine – like a parcel of rubbish and left here to be dragged away again and thrown again like a dog into some unhallowed ground – that thought was so horrible, so monstrous, that at first it dominated even sorrow. Then came the heartrending sense of loneliness. Yvonne Dewhurst had endured so much these past few days that awhile ago she would have affirmed that nothing could appal her in the future. But this was indeed the awful and overwhelming climax to what had already been a surfeit of misery.

This! she, Yvonne, cowering beside her dead father, with no one to stand between her and any insult, any outrage which might be put upon her, with nothing now but a few laths between her and that yelling, screeching mob outside.

Oh! the loneliness! the utter, utter loneliness!

She kissed the inert hand, the pale forehead: with gentle, reverent fingers she tried to smooth out those lines of horror and of fear which gave such a pitiful expression to the face. Of all the wrongs which her father had done her she never thought for a moment. It was he who had brought her to this terrible pass: he who had betrayed her into the hands of her deadliest enemy: he who had torn her from the protecting arms of her dear milor and flung her and himself at the mercy of a set of inhuman wretches who knew neither compunction nor pity.

But all this she forgot, as she knelt beside the lifeless form – the last thing on earth that belonged to her – the last protection to which she might have clung.

II

Out of the confusion of sounds which came – deadened by the intervening partition – to her ear, it was impossible to distinguish anything very clearly. All that Yvonne could do, as soon as she had in a measure collected her scattered senses, was to try and piece together the events of the last few minutes – minutes which indeed seemed like days and even years to her.

Instinctively she gave to the inert hand which she held an additional tender touch. At any rate her father was out of it all. He was at rest and at peace. As for the rest, it was in God's hands. Having only herself to think of now, she ceased to care what became of her. He was out of it all: and those wretches after all could not do more than kill her. A complete numbness of senses and of mind had succeeded the feverish excitement of the past few hours: whether hope still survived at this moment in Yvonne Dewhurst's mind it were impossible to say. Certain it is that it lay dormant – buried beneath the overwhelming misery of her loneliness.

She took the fichu from her shoulders and laid it reverently over the dead man's face: she folded the hands across the breast. She could not cry: she could only pray, and that quite mechanically.

The thought of her dear milor, of his clever friend, of the message which she had received in prison, of the guide who had led her to this awful place, was relegated – almost as a memory – in the furthermost cell of her brain.

III

But after awhile outraged nature, still full of vitality and of youth, re-asserted itself. She felt numb and cold and struggled to her feet. From somewhere close to her a continuous current of air indicated the presence of some sort of window. Yvonne, faint with the close and sickly smell, which even that current failed to disperse, felt her way all round the walls of the narrow landing.

The window was in the wall between the partition and the staircase, it was small and quite low down. It was crossed with heavy iron bars. Yvonne leaned up against it, grateful for the breath of pure air.

For awhile yet she remained unconscious of everything save the confused din which still went on inside the tavern, and at first the sounds which came through the grated window mingled with those on the other side of the partition. But gradually as she contrived to fill her lungs with the cold breath of heaven, it seemed as if a curtain was being slowly drawn away from her atrophied senses.

Just below the window two men were speaking. She could hear them quite distinctly now – and soon one of the voices – clearer than the other – struck her ear with unmistakable familiarity.

"I told Paul Friche to come out here and speak to me," Yvonne heard that same voice say.

"Then he should be here," replied the other, "and if I am not mistaken…"

There was a pause, and then the first voice was raised again.

"Halt! Is that Paul Friche?"

"At your service, citizen," came in reply.

"Well! Is everything working smoothly inside?"

"Quite smoothly; but your Englishmen are not there."

"How do you know?"

"Bah! I know most of the faces that are to be found inside the Rat Mort at this hour: there are no strangers among them."

The voice that had sounded so familiar to Yvonne was raised now in loud and coarse laughter.

"Name of a dog! I never for a moment thought that there were any Englishmen about. Citizen Chauvelin was suffering from nightmare."

"It is early yet," came in response from a gentle bland voice, "you must have patience, citizen."

"Patience? Bah!" ejaculated the other roughly. "As I told you before 'tis but little I care about your English spies. 'Tis the Kernogans I am interested in. What have you done with them, citizen?"

"I got that blundering fool Lemoine to lock them up on the landing at the bottom of the stairs."

"Is that safe?"

"Absolutely. It has no egress save into the tap-room and up the stairs, to the rooms above. Your English spies if they came now would have to fly in and out of those top windows ere they could get to the aristos."

"Then in Satan's name keep them there awhile," urged the more gentle, insinuating voice, "until we can make sure of the English spies."

"Tshaw! What foolery!" interjected the other, who appeared to be in a towering passion. "Bring them out at once, citizen Friche … bring them out … right into the middle of the rabble in the tap-room… Commandant Fleury is directing the perquisition – he is taking down the names of all that cattle which he is arresting inside the premises – let the ci-devant duc de Kernogan and his exquisite daughter figure among the vilest cut-throats of Nantes."

"Citizen, let me urge on you once more …" came in earnest persuasive accents from that gentle voice.

"Nothing!" broke in the other savagely. "To h – ll with your English spies. It is the Kernogans that I want."

Yvonne, half-crazed with horror, had heard the whole of this abominable conversation wherein she had not failed to recognise the voice of Martin-Roget or Pierre-Adet, as she now knew him to be. Who the other two men were she could easily conjecture. The soft bland voice she had heard twice during these past few days, which had been so full of misery, of terror and of surprise: once she had heard it on board the ship which had taken her away from England and once again a few hours since, inside the narrow room which had been her prison. The third man who had subsequently arrived on the scene was that coarse and grimy creature who had seemed to be the moving evil spirit of that awful brawl in the tavern.

What the conversation meant to her she could not fail to guess. Pierre Adet had by what he said made the whole of his abominable intrigue against her palpably clear. Her father had been right, after all. It was Pierre Adet who through some clever trickery had lured her to this place of evil. How it was all done she could not guess. The message … the device … her walk across the street … the silence … the mysterious guide … which of these had been the trickery?.. which had been concocted by her enemy?.. which devised by her dear milor?

Enough that the whole thing was a trap, a trap all the more hideous as she, Yvonne, who would have given her heart's blood for her beloved, was obviously the bait wherewith these friends meant to capture him and his noble chief. They knew evidently of the presence of the gallant Scarlet Pimpernel and his band of heroes here in Nantes – they seemed to expect their appearance at this abominable place to-night. She, Yvonne, was to be the decoy which was to lure to this hideous lair those noble eagles who were still out of reach.

And if that was so – if indeed her beloved and his valiant friends had followed her hither, then some part of the message of hope must have come from them or from their chief … and milor and his friend must even now be somewhere close by, watching their opportunity to come to her rescue … heedless of the awful danger which lay in wait for them … ignorant mayhap of the abominable trap which had been so cunningly set for them by these astute and ferocious brutes.

Yvonne a prisoner in this narrow space, clinging to the bars of what was perhaps the most cruel prison in which she had yet been confined, bruised her hands and arms against those bars in a wild desire to get out. She longed with all her might to utter one long, loud and piercing cry of warning to her dear milor not to come nigh her now, to fly, to run while there was yet time; and all the while she knew that if she did utter such a cry he would hurry hot-haste to her side. One moment she would have had him near – another she wished him an hundred miles away.

IV