It was an exceptionally dark night, and the rain was falling in
torrents. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, wrapped in a piece of sacking, had taken
shelter right underneath the coal-cart; even then he was getting wet
through to the skin.
He had worked hard for two days coal-heaving, and the night before he
had found a cheap, squalid lodging where at any rate he was protected
from the inclemencies of the weather; but to-night he was expecting
Blakeney at the appointed hour and place. He had secured a cart of the
ordinary ramshackle pattern used for carrying coal. Unfortunately there
were no covered ones to be obtained in the neighbourhood, and equally
unfortunately the thaw had set in with a blustering wind and driving
rain, which made waiting in the open air for hours at a stretch and in
complete darkness excessively unpleasant.
But for all these discomforts Sir Andrew Ffoulkes cared not one jot. In
England, in his magnificent Suffolk home, he was a confirmed sybarite,
in whose service every description of comfort and luxury had to
be enrolled. Here tonight in the rough and tattered clothes of a
coal-heaver, drenched to the skin, and crouching under the body of
a cart that hardly sheltered him from the rain, he was as happy as a
schoolboy out for a holiday.
Happy, but vaguely anxious.
He had no means of ascertaining the time. So many of the church-bells
and clock towers had been silenced recently that not one of those
welcome sounds penetrated to the dreary desolation of this canal wharf,
with its abandoned carts standing ghostlike in a row. Darkness had set
in very early in the afternoon, and the heavers had given up work soon
after four o’clock.
For about an hour after that a certain animation had still reigned round
the wharf, men crossing and going, one or two of the barges moving in or
out alongside the quay. But for some time now darkness and silence had
been the masters in this desolate spot, and that time had seemed to Sir
Andrew an eternity. He had hobbled and tethered his horse, and stretched
himself out at full length under the cart. Now and again he had crawled
out from under this uncomfortable shelter and walked up and down in
ankle-deep mud, trying to restore circulation in his stiffened limbs;
now and again a kind of torpor had come over him, and he had fallen into
a brief and restless sleep. He would at this moment have given half his
fortune for knowledge of the exact time.
But through all this weary waiting he was never for a moment in doubt.
Unlike Armand St. Just, he had the simplest, most perfect faith in his
chief. He had been Blakeney’s constant companion in all these adventures
for close upon four years now; the thought of failure, however vague,
never once entered his mind.
He was only anxious for his chief’s welfare. He knew that he would
succeed, but he would have liked to have spared him much of the physical
fatigue and the nerve-racking strain of these hours that lay between
the daring deed and the hope of safety. Therefore he was conscious of
an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief
patches of fitful sleep, and through the numbness that invaded his whole
body while the hours dragged wearily and slowly along.
Then, quite suddenly, he felt wakeful and alert; quite a while--even
before he heard the welcome signal--he knew, with a curious, subtle
sense of magnetism, that the hour had come, and that his chief was
somewhere near by, not very far.
Then he heard the cry--a seamew’s call--repeated thrice at intervals,
and five minutes later something loomed out of the darkness quite close
to the hind wheels of the cart.
“Hist! Ffoulkes!” came in a soft whisper, scarce louder than the wind.
“Present!” came in quick response.
“Here, help me to lift the child into the cart. He is asleep, and has
been a dead weight on my arm for close on an hour now. Have you a dry
bit of sacking or something to lay him on?”
“Not very dry, I am afraid.”
With tender care the two men lifted the sleeping little King of France
into the rickety cart. Blakeney laid his cloak over him, and listened
for awhile to the slow regular breathing of the child.
“St. Just is not here--you know that?” said Sir Andrew after a while.
“Yes, I knew it,” replied Blakeney curtly.
It was characteristic of these two men that not a word about the
adventure itself, about the terrible risks and dangers of the past few
hours, was exchanged between them. The child was here and was safe,
and Blakeney knew the whereabouts of St. Just--that was enough for Sir
Andrew Ffoulkes, the most devoted follower, the most perfect friend the
Scarlet Pimpernel would ever know.
Ffoulkes now went to the horse, detached the nose-bag, and undid the
nooses of the hobble and of the tether.
“Will you get in now, Blakeney?” he said; “we are ready.”
And in unbroken silence they both got into the cart; Blakeney sitting
on its floor beside the child, and Ffoulkes gathering the reins in his
hands.
The wheels of the cart and the slow jog-trot of the horse made scarcely
any noise in the mud of the roads, what noise they did make was
effectually drowned by the soughing of the wind in the bare branches of
the stunted acacia trees that edged the towpath along the line of the
canal.
Sir Andrew had studied the topography of this desolate neighbourhood
well during the past twenty-four hours; he knew of a detour that would
enable him to avoid the La Villette gate and the neighbourhood of the
fortifications, and yet bring him out soon on the road leading to St.
Germain.
Once he turned to ask Blakeney the time.
“It must be close on ten now,” replied Sir Percy. “Push your nag along,
old man. Tony and Hastings will be waiting for us.”
It was very difficult to see clearly even a metre or two ahead, but the
road was a straight one, and the old nag seemed to know it almost as
well and better than her driver. She shambled along at her own pace,
covering the ground very slowly for Ffoulkes’s burning impatience. Once
or twice he had to get down and lead her over a rough piece of ground.
They passed several groups of dismal, squalid houses, in some of which
a dim light still burned, and as they skirted St. Ouen the church clock
slowly tolled the hour of midnight.
But for the greater part of the way derelict, uncultivated spaces of
terrains vagues, and a few isolated houses lay between the road and the
fortifications of the city. The darkness of the night, the late hour,
the soughing of the wind, were all in favour of the adventurers; and
a coal-cart slowly trudging along in this neighbourhood, with two
labourers sitting in it, was the least likely of any vehicle to attract
attention.
Past Clichy, they had to cross the river by the rickety wooden bridge
that was unsafe even in broad daylight. They were not far from their
destination now. Half a dozen kilometres further on they would be
leaving Courbevoie on their left, and then the sign-post would come
in sight. After that the spinney just off the road, and the welcome
presence of Tony, Hastings, and the horses. Ffoulkes got down in order
to make sure of the way. He walked at the horse’s head now, fearful lest
he missed the cross-roads and the sign-post.
The horse was getting over-tired; it had covered fifteen kilometres, and
it was close on three o’clock of Monday morning.
Another hour went by in absolute silence. Ffoulkes and Blakeney took
turns at the horse’s head. Then at last they reached the cross-roads;
even through the darkness the sign-post showed white against the
surrounding gloom.
“This looks like it,” murmured Sir Andrew. He turned the horse’s
head sharply towards the left, down a narrower road, and leaving the
sign-post behind him. He walked slowly along for another quarter of an
hour, then Blakeney called a halt.
“The spinney must be sharp on our right now,” he said.
He got down from the cart, and while Ffoulkes remained beside the horse,
he plunged into the gloom. A moment later the cry of the seamew rang out
three times into the air. It was answered almost immediately.
The spinney lay on the right of the road. Soon the soft sounds that to a
trained ear invariably betray the presence of a number of horses reached
Ffoulkes’ straining senses. He took his old nag out of the shafts, and
the shabby harness from off her, then he turned her out on the piece
of waste land that faced the spinney. Some one would find her in the
morning, her and the cart with the shabby harness laid in it, and,
having wondered if all these things had perchance dropped down from
heaven, would quietly appropriate them, and mayhap thank much-maligned
heaven for its gift.
Blakeney in the meanwhile had lifted the sleeping child out of the cart.
Then he called to Sir Andrew and led the way across the road and into
the spinney.
Five minutes later Hastings received the uncrowned King of France in his
arms.
Unlike Ffoulkes, my Lord Tony wanted to hear all about the adventure
of this afternoon. A thorough sportsman, he loved a good story of
hairbreadth escapes, of dangers cleverly avoided, risks taken and
conquered.
“Just in ten words, Blakeney,” he urged entreatingly; “how did you
actually get the boy away?”
Sir Percy laughed--despite himself--at the young man’s eagerness.
“Next time we meet, Tony,” he begged; “I am so demmed fatigued, and
there’s this beastly rain--”
“No, no--now! while Hastings sees to the horses. I could not exist long
without knowing, and we are well sheltered from the rain under this
tree.”
“Well, then, since you will have it,” he began with a laugh, which
despite the weariness and anxiety of the past twenty-four hours had
forced itself to his lips, “I have been sweeper and man-of-all-work at
the Temple for the past few weeks, you must know--”
“No!” ejaculated my Lord Tony lustily. “By gum!”
“Indeed, you old sybarite, whilst you were enjoying yourself heaving
coal on the canal wharf, I was scrubbing floors, lighting fires, and
doing a number of odd jobs for a lot of demmed murdering villains,
and”--he added under his breath--“incidentally, too, for our league.
Whenever I had an hour or two off duty I spent them in my lodgings, and
asked you all to come and meet me there.”
“By Gad, Blakeney! Then the day before yesterday?--when we all met--”
“I had just had a bath--sorely needed, I can tell you. I had been
cleaning boots half the day, but I had heard that the Simons were
removing from the Temple on the Sunday, and had obtained an order from
them to help them shift their furniture.”
“Cleaning boots!” murmured my Lord Tony with a chuckle. “Well! and
then?”
“Well, then everything worked out splendidly. You see by that time I was
a well-known figure in the Temple. Heron knew me well. I used to be his
lanthorn-bearer when at nights he visited that poor mite in his prison.
It was ‘Dupont, here! Dupont there!’ all day long. ‘Light the fire in
the office, Dupont! Dupont, brush my coat! Dupont, fetch me a light!’
When the Simons wanted to move their household goods they called loudly
for Dupont. I got a covered laundry cart, and I brought a dummy with
me to substitute for the child. Simon himself knew nothing of this, but
Madame was in my pay. The dummy was just splendid, with real hair on its
head; Madame helped me to substitute it for the child; we laid it on the
sofa and covered it over with a rug, even while those brutes Heron and
Cochefer were on the landing outside, and we stuffed His Majesty the
King of France into a linen basket. The room was badly lighted, and
any one would have been deceived. No one was suspicious of that type of
trickery, so it went off splendidly. I moved the furniture of the Simons
out of the Tower. His Majesty King Louis XVII was still concealed in the
linen basket. I drove the Simons to their new lodgings--the man still
suspects nothing--and there I helped them to unload the furniture--with
the exception of the linen basket, of course. After that I drove my
laundry cart to a house I knew of and collected a number of linen
baskets, which I had arranged should be in readiness for me. Thus loaded
up I left Paris by the Vincennes gate, and drove as far as Bagnolet,
where there is no road except past the octroi, where the officials might
have proved unpleasant. So I lifted His Majesty out of the basket and
we walked on hand in hand in the darkness and the rain until the poor
little feet gave out. Then the little fellow--who has been wonderfully
plucky throughout, indeed, more a Capet than a Bourbon--snuggled up in
my arms and went fast asleep, and--and--well, I think that’s all, for
here we are, you see.”
“But if Madame Simon had not been amenable to bribery?” suggested Lord
Tony after a moment’s silence.
“Then I should have had to think of something else.”
“If during the removal of the furniture Heron had remained resolutely in
the room?”
“Then, again, I should have had to think of something else; but remember
that in life there is always one supreme moment when Chance--who is
credited to have but one hair on her head--stands by you for a brief
space of time; sometimes that space is infinitesimal--one minute, a few
seconds--just the time to seize Chance by that one hair. So I pray you
all give me no credit in this or any other matter in which we all work
together, but the quickness of seizing Chance by the hair during the
brief moment when she stands by my side. If Madame Simon had been
un-amenable, if Heron had remained in the room all the time, if Cochefer
had had two looks at the dummy instead of one--well, then, something
else would have helped me, something would have occurred; something--I
know not what--but surely something which Chance meant to be on our
side, if only we were quick enough to seize it--and so you see how
simple it all is.”
So simple, in fact, that it was sublime. The daring, the pluck, the
ingenuity and, above all, the super-human heroism and endurance which
rendered the hearers of this simple narrative, simply told, dumb with
admiration.
Their thoughts now were beyond verbal expression.
“How soon was the hue and cry for the child about the streets?” asked
Tony, after a moment’s silence.
“It was not out when I left the gates of Paris,” said Blakeney
meditatively; “so quietly has the news of the escape been kept, that I
am wondering what devilry that brute Heron can be after. And now no more
chattering,” he continued lightly; “all to horse, and you, Hastings,
have a care. The destinies of France, mayhap, will be lying asleep in
your arms.”
“But you, Blakeney?” exclaimed the three men almost simultaneously.
“I am not going with you. I entrust the child to you. For God’s sake
guard him well! Ride with him to Mantes. You should arrive there at
about ten o’clock. One of you then go straight to No.9 Rue la Tour. Ring
the bell; an old man will answer it. Say the one word to him, ‘Enfant’;
he will reply, ‘De roi!’ Give him the child, and may Heaven bless you
all for the help you have given me this night!”
“But you, Blakeney?” reiterated Tony with a note of deep anxiety in his
fresh young voice.
“I am straight for Paris,” he said quietly.
“Impossible!”
“Therefore feasible.”
“But why? Percy, in the name of Heaven, do you realise what you are
doing?”
“Perfectly.”
“They’ll not leave a stone unturned to find you--they know by now,
believe me, that your hand did this trick.”
“I know that.”
“And yet you mean to go back?”
“And yet I am going back.”
“Blakeney!”
“It’s no use, Tony. Armand is in Paris. I saw him in the corridor of the
Temple prison in the company of Chauvelin.”
“Great God!” exclaimed Lord Hastings.
The others were silent. What was the use of arguing? One of themselves
was in danger. Armand St. Just, the brother of Marguerite Blakeney! Was
it likely that Percy would leave him in the lurch.
“One of us will stay with you, of course?” asked Sir Andrew after
awhile.
“Yes! I want Hastings and Tony to take the child to Mantes, then to make
all possible haste for Calais, and there to keep in close touch with the
Day-Dream; the skipper will contrive to open communication. Tell him to
remain in Calais waters. I hope I may have need of him soon.
“And now to horse, both of you,” he added gaily. “Hastings, when you
are ready, I will hand up the child to you. He will be quite safe on the
pillion with a strap round him and you.”
Nothing more was said after that. The orders were given, there was
nothing to do but to obey; and the uncrowned King of France was not
yet out of danger. Hastings and Tony led two of the horses out of the
spinney; at the roadside they mounted, and then the little lad for whose
sake so much heroism, such selfless devotion had been expended, was
hoisted up, still half asleep, on the pillion in front of my Lord
Hastings.
“Keep your arm round him,” admonished Blakeney; “your horse looks quiet
enough. But put on speed as far as Mantes, and may Heaven guard you
both!”
The two men pressed their heels to their horses’ flanks, the beasts
snorted and pawed the ground anxious to start. There were a few
whispered farewells, two loyal hands were stretched out at the last,
eager to grasp the leader’s hand.
Then horses and riders disappeared in the utter darkness which comes
before the dawn.
Blakeney and Ffoulkes stood side by side in silence for as long as the
pawing of hoofs in the mud could reach their ears, then Ffoulkes asked
abruptly:
“What do you want me to do, Blakeney?”
“Well, for the present, my dear fellow, I want you to take one of the
three horses we have left in the spinney, and put him into the shafts of
our old friend the coal-cart; then I am afraid that you must go back the
way we came.”
“Yes?”
“Continue to heave coal on the canal wharf by La Villette; it is the
best way to avoid attention. After your day’s work keep your cart and
horse in readiness against my arrival, at the same spot where you
were last night. If after having waited for me like this for three
consecutive nights you neither see nor hear anything from me, go back
to England and tell Marguerite that in giving my life for her brother I
gave it for her!”
“Blakeney--!”
“I spoke differently to what I usually do, is that it?” he interposed,
placing his firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I am degenerating,
Ffoulkes--that’s what it is. Pay no heed to it. I suppose that carrying
that sleeping child in my arms last night softened some nerves in my
body. I was so infinitely sorry for the poor mite, and vaguely wondered
if I had not saved it from one misery only to plunge it in another.
There was such a fateful look on that wan little face, as if destiny had
already writ its veto there against happiness. It came on me then how
futile were our actions, if God chooses to interpose His will between us
and our desires.”
Almost as he left off speaking the rain ceased to patter down against
the puddles in the road. Overhead the clouds flew by at terrific speed,
driven along by the blustering wind. It was less dark now, and Sir
Andrew, peering through the gloom, could see his leader’s face. It was
singularly pale and hard, and the deep-set lazy eyes had in them just
that fateful look which he himself had spoken of just now.
“You are anxious about Armand, Percy?” asked Ffoulkes softly.
“Yes. He should have trusted me, as I had trusted him. He missed me at
the Villette gate on Friday, and without a thought left me--left us all
in the lurch; he threw himself into the lion’s jaws, thinking that he
could help the girl he loved. I knew that I could save her. She is in
comparative safety even now. The old woman, Madame Belhomme, had been
freely released the day after her arrest, but Jeanne Lange is still in
the house in the Rue de Charonne. You know it, Ffoulkes. I got her there
early this morning. It was easy for me, of course: ‘Hola, Dupont!
my boots, Dupont!’ ‘One moment, citizen, my daughter--’ ‘Curse thy
daughter, bring me my boots!’ and Jeanne Lange walked out of the Temple
prison her hand in that of that lout Dupont.”
“But Armand does not know that she is in the Rue de Charonne?”
“No. I have not seen him since that early morning on Saturday when he
came to tell me that she had been arrested. Having sworn that he would
obey me, he went to meet you and Tony at La Villette, but returned to
Paris a few hours later, and drew the undivided attention of all the
committees on Jeanne Lange by his senseless, foolish inquiries. But
for his action throughout the whole of yesterday I could have smuggled
Jeanne out of Paris, got her to join you at Villette, or Hastings in St.
Germain. But the barriers were being closely watched for her, and I had
the Dauphin to think of. She is in comparative safety; the people in
the Rue de Charonne are friendly for the moment; but for how long? Who
knows? I must look after her of course. And Armand! Poor old Armand! The
lion’s jaws have snapped over him, and they hold him tight. Chauvelin
and his gang are using him as a decoy to trap me, of course. All that
had not happened if Armand had trusted me.”
He sighed a quick sigh of impatience, almost of regret. Ffoulkes was the
one man who could guess the bitter disappointment that this had meant.
Percy had longed to be back in England soon, back to Marguerite, to a
few days of unalloyed happiness and a few days of peace.
Now Armand’s actions had retarded all that; they were a deliberate bar
to the future as it had been mapped out by a man who foresaw everything,
who was prepared for every eventuality.
In this case, too, he had been prepared, but not for the want of trust
which had brought on disobedience akin to disloyalty. That absolutely
unforeseen eventuality had changed Blakeney’s usual irresponsible gaiety
into a consciousness of the inevitable, of the inexorable decrees of
Fate.
With an anxious sigh, Sir Andrew turned away from his chief and went
back to the spinney to select for his own purpose one of the three
horses which Hastings and Tony had unavoidably left behind.
“And you, Blakeney--how will you go back to that awful Paris?” he said,
when he had made his choice and was once more back beside Percy.
“I don’t know yet,” replied Blakeney, “but it would not be safe to ride.
I’ll reach one of the gates on this side of the city and contrive to
slip in somehow. I have a certificate of safety in my pocket in case I
need it.
“We’ll leave the horses here,” he said presently, whilst he was helping
Sir Andrew to put the horse in the shafts of the coal-cart; “they cannot
come to much harm. Some poor devil might steal them, in order to escape
from those vile brutes in the city. If so, God speed him, say I. I’ll
compensate my friend the farmer of St. Germain for their loss at
an early opportunity. And now, good-bye, my dear fellow! Some time
to-night, if possible, you shall hear direct news of me--if not, then
to-morrow or the day after that. Good-bye, and Heaven guard you!”
“God guard you, Blakeney!” said Sir Andrew fervently.
He jumped into the cart and gathered up the reins. His heart was heavy
as lead, and a strange mist had gathered in his eyes, blurring the last
dim vision which he had of his chief standing all alone in the gloom,
his broad, magnificent figure looking almost weirdly erect and defiant,
his head thrown back, and his kind, lazy eyes watching the final
departure of his most faithful comrade and friend.